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Myths Of Gender: Biological Theories About Women And Men, Revised Edition

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I'm not surprized that more people haven't read this book,because it gives the human being a maze of possiblities and HUMAN potential not limited by gender,which maybe to frightening for the Mars and Venused public to accept,since it leaves the door wide open for limitless potential and variations among persons atributed to individuality and not gender. I found other gender related books to be very limiting,which lead me to take some tests on spatial and verbal ability,let's just say,under the narrow Brain Sex mode,I would have a completely male brain in a female body!..after my test,my suspicions increased and I did some further reading and found this book. The writer explains how researchers may not be entirely ojective, how you cannot in any way base all gender behavior on a limited amount of subjects,since we of course have over a billion persons roaming the planet with many different individual abilites,and how there is an agenda against women's advancement in science and math,which of course demand sound logic and spatial reasoning. Expand your possibities,get the gender limits off your minds, and soar!

I was always puzzled when it came to these gender studies.
Anee Fausto Sterling tells us about how these studies are
subjective and misleading.How and why we find a continual stapple of books proclaiming 'innate sex differences".
From my own experiences,none of the sex difference books hold
water when it comes to the reality of everyday life.We see
such differences in individuals as to say it's not sex which
is the cause behind them.Everyone should read her book.It is
time to stop reinforcing sterotypes on people.

I read the second edition of 1992. It includes 48 additional pages to the 1985 original: a preface; a new chapter on brain anatomy concerning sex differences and homosexuality; an afterword. The author explains that the book is imcomplete in so far as it does NOT include the topics women and depression, mothering instincts and transsexuality.

Instead she tackles most of all the questions of wether men are really smarter, genes and gender, hormonal hurricanes (menstruation, menopause, female behavior) and how women are put in their evolutionary place (by patriarchy).

The central theme is wether there is any scientific merit to the popular perceptions of the myriad sex differences. Anne Fausto-Sterling exposes various past sexist theories by patriarchal scientists, which the latter dropped as soon as they found out that on a closer, updated look, they would actually FAVOR women. Only to be replaced by new misogynous theories. The entire field of sociobiology is unmasked as an illusion.

I would like to mention though that races among humans are yet another illusion, as she uses this term all too often according to the times she was writing in.

You may be interested in the more elaborate complementing Mismeasure of Women: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, or the Opposite Sex. Also of interest are The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) and Nature's Body: Gender In The Making Of Modern Science.

PS: On societies with fathers doing a bulk of the child care read for example Intimate Fathers: The Nature and Context of Aka Pygmy Paternal Infant Care, for current lack of knowledge about a book of a (lost?) South American people, in which fathers do/did even more of the child care.

I read the book a few years ago and have ever since been helped
along the way as I wind myself down the path of endless
"sex difference" books.
I read it before I read "Brain Sex" so I wasn't at all able to
be programmed into a set of beliefs so common these days.
Gender studies are flawed,they involve the subjectivity of the
"researcher" and bias.If the "researcher finds a woman to
have a road map and blueprints in her mind,she's said to have
been exposed to male hormones,as though a woman cannot have these
gifts without being somehow a "misfit" according to most
"researchers".And what of the man who has great writing and
memory but poor spatial and math ability? He is neating fitted
into a catagory of male who was exposed to female hormones.
Anyway the writer debunks these myths with straightforward
writing and objective conclusions to confusing answers other
writers come up with to explain a man with a female brain and
a woman with a male brain.
The "researchers" have assigned a very narrow set of abilities
to males and females,and they use the hormone theory to
perperuate it.
Hormones are cousins,and esrtogen,androgens,testostrone,progestrone are found in both
sexes and in individual amounts.This in turn gives little
truth to the notion of hormones playing a part in male or female
brain wiring.
Brains are not fixed,a spatial brain can be in a female and
a verbal in a male.
Read the book and find out how subjective and bias gender
research actually is.

Anne Fausto-Sterling attempts to discredit a variety of studies purporting to show fixed biological differences between the sexes. She is not completely successful. It is obvious that plenty of what has been believed about human females has proved false with time but for me A F-S goes a little too far in the opposite direction. Much of the nature/nurture argument is impossible to prove either way and the input of both is probably more equal than A F-S will allow.

Some of her arguments are also weak or wrong such as her suggestion that Santo Domingo 'penis at twelve' people actually have a choice in 'becoming' male or that in some cultures males do the bulk of the childcare. She does, though, provide an important amount of exposure of conflicting evidence across many studies from verbal skills, math, spatial ability to brain differences and hormones.

An important point she makes is about how we choose to understand difference and what we want to do about it. We all know that if some difference is supposedly found in males then this will automatically be given high status regardless of what that difference is. This is what is at the root of much of the argument of this book and at the root of women trying to destroy difference. But it would be strange if evolution has not selected for different bodies and behaviors to better suit the different ways men and women have been able to achieve reproductive success. It is important not to avoid the biology just to avoid male bias and what male dominated culture has been able to impose in the past.

Also the author rightly reminds us how important it is to remember individual variation.

Worth reading to balance some of what is written in the opposite direction but ultimately the truth is nearer the middle-ground.

Thought provoking and it makes us wonder why still to this day these crazy gender myths are still perpetuated in neuroscience. Glial cells is one example.

Anne Fausto-Sterling
Myths of Gender:
Biological Theories about Men and Women

(New York: Basic Books, 1985) 258 pages

An examination of several biological theories
that try to explain the observed differences between men and women.
None of the theories was successful.
A feminist critique of flawed science.
The causes of these differences will have to be sought
in psychology and sociology.

If you would like to discover better books on this subject,
search the Internet for the following bibliography:
"Best Books on Gender-Personality".

James Leonard Park, creator of the Gender-Pattern Chart.

I read this book for a summer reading program at my high school last summer. It was interesting and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys science textbook-like books. It was "very non-fiction" w/ stats and facts. Therefore, if you like things that way, and you are also interested in the subject, it's very helpful; a learning experience. The book is informative and helpful, some backing to common myths, some scientific backing to rumors floating around. The downfall is that it CAN get boring and takes forever to read. It's to be read in multiple sittings. In conclusion, it is either great or terrible, depending on your interests.