Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Which sex is the norm?

Schiebinger’s piece, “Theories of Race and Gender,” explains that since Aristotle, society has posited women as the deviation from the male norm. Men were regarded as the “core” of humanity, with women as a necessary abnormality. When included in cross-cultural studies, women automatically became the “Other,” the most distant and anomalous members of an already “savage” society: women, in essence, are the “Other” of the “Other.” This view contrasts one position of 21st century medicine, mentioned in previous articles such as Fausto-Sterling’s. The newer notion of femininity and masculinity explains males as the deviation of females— the reverse of the Aristotelian position.
For example, clinical medicine asserts that genetically, men are women (XX) with a chromosomal substitution, making XY. And even though biologically both sexes naturally produce estrogens and androgens (just in different amounts), large amounts of testosterone are considered to make a man more masculine, while estrogen has little or no bearing on femininity. In fact, men with androgen insensitivity are said to be physically feminine, while women with little estrogen are not considered manly. Further, clinical medicine conceives men as women without a penis; 90% of transgender babies are assigned the female sex because genitals are automatically feminine without a properly sized phallus. I am interested in learning how and why the West began viewing men, rather than women, as the deviant sex. How long will it take medicine to recognize men and women as two equal but disparate sexes, rather than analogies of one another? And finally, how many years until medicine formally acknowledges the existence of “in-betweens”?

No comments: