Anne Fausto-Sterling

How sexually dimorphic are we? Review and synthesis

The belief that Homo sapiens is absolutely dimorphic with the respect to sex chromosome composition, gonadal structure, hormone levels, and the structure of the internal genital duct systems and external genitalia, derives from the platonic ideal that for each sex there is a single, universally correct developmental pathway and outcome. We surveyed the medical literature from 1955 to the present for studies of the frequency of deviation from the ideal male or female. We conclude that this frequency may be as high as 2% of live births. The frequency of individuals receiving “corrective” genital surgery, however, probably runs between 1 and 2 per 1,000 live births (0.1–0.2%). Am. J. Hum. Biol. 12:151–166, 2000.

The Bare Bones of Sex: Part 1—Sex and Gender

H ere are some curious facts about bones. They can tell us about the kinds of physical labor an individual has performed over a lifetime and about sustained physical trauma. They get thinner or thicker (on average in a population) in different historical periods and in response to different colonial regimes (Molleson 1994; Larsen 1998). They can indicate class, race, and sex (or is it gender—wait and see). We can measure their mineral density and whether on average someone is likely to fracture a limb but not whether a particular individual with a particular density will do so. A bone may break more easily even when its mineral density remains constant (Peacock et al. 2002). Culture shapes bones. For example, urban ultraorthodox Jewish adolescents have lowered physical activity, less exposure to sunlight, and drink less milk than their more secular counterparts. They also have greatly decreased mineral density in the vertebrae of their lower backs, that is, the lumbar vertebrae (Taha et al. 2001). Chinese women who work daily in the fields have increased bone mineral content and density. The degree of increase correlates with the amount of time spent in physical activity (Hu et al. 1994); weightlessness in space flight leads to bone loss (Skerry 2000); gymnastics training in young women ages seventeen to twentyseven correlates with increased bone density despite bone resorption caused by total lack of menstruation (Robinson et al. 1995). Consider also some recent demographic trends: in Europe during the past thirty years, the number of vertebral fractures has increased threeto fourfold for women and more than fourfold for men (Mosekilde 2000); in some

Women and science

Synopsis This article explores two interconnected questions: why are there not more women scientists, and what would scientific inquiry and subject matter consist of if there were equal numbers of male and female scientists. The latter question relates additionally to the problem of how to change the forms of scientific inquiry and teaching in order to achieve full entry of women into the scientific workplace. In answering these questions I have pointed out that the reconstruction of the real history of women in science is only in its earliest stages. Furthermore, examination of the evidence indicates that the assertions that women are less mathematically able and less scientifically creative than men are more myth than fact. Finally, I have pointed out that science is a social construct, and have explored the likelihood that full equality for women in science would profoundly alter the structure of scientific practice itself.

The Bare Bones of Race

In this paper I examine claims of racial difference in bone density and find that the use and definitions of race in medicine lack a theoretical foundation. My central argument is that the social produces the biological in a system of constant feedback between body and social experience. By providing a different angle of vision on claimed racial differences I hope to move the conversation away from an ultimately futile discussion of nature versus nurture, where time is held constant and place seen as irrelevant, and begin to build a new paradigm for examining the contributions of geographic ancestry, individual lifecycle experience, race, and gender to varied patterns of health and disease.

Refashioning Race: DNA and the Politics of Health Care

Something is happening to race. Historically, in discussions of race and science, science has either been on the side of the devil or of God.1 But science is a socially contingent knowledge-seeking activity. It can serve the interests of the State, for better or for worse; more commonly, it serves several social masters and produces mixed messages. After World War II, liberal ideologists, primarily through the unesco statement on race, rejected the typology of fi xed racial categories in favor of the abstraction “universal man.” Donna Haraway documents this brilliantly in a number of works. To back up the new ideology, liberals called on the social sciences and especially the biological sciences for documentation. As Haraway puts it, for phylogenies and types, new accounts of race substituted “gene fl ow, migration, isolation, mutation, and selection [as] the privileged scientifi c objects of knowledge” (Primate 202). By making modern biology the mainstay of this new narrative of universal man, liberal policy makers hoped to banish racism and racial categories from our social systems. But this modernist moment, despite a fl urry of efforts to beef it up in the 1990s, is in big trouble. As they focused on the institutional constructs of race, scholars emphasized that race is “I Am a Racially Profi ling Doctor” —Satel 56

Life in the XY corral.

Synopsis This essay outlines some of the ways in which contemporary developmental biology has been shaped by the exigencies of particular social movements and ideologies. The work is divided into three parts. Part One explores how the removal of the developing organism from its environmental context and the placement of the nucleus rather than the integrated cell at the head of a developmental control hierarchy has powerfully advanced our abilities to create chimeric organisms, to use genetic engineering for better and for worse and even to create mammalian clones. Part Two outlines a relationship between a central tenet of developmental and evolutionary theory, the continuity of the germ line, and the eugenics movement active during the first quarter of this century. Part Three discusses how assumptions about gender which are deeply embedded in our language have affected theories of male and female development.

Sexing the baby: Part 2--Applying dynamic systems theory to the emergences of sex-related differences in infants and toddlers.

During the first three years of life, children acquire knowledge about their own gender and the gendered nature of their environment. At the same time, sex-related behavioral differences emerge. How are we to understand the processes by which bodily differentiation, behavioral differentiation and gendered knowledge intertwine to produce male and female, masculine and feminine? In this article, we describe four central developmental systems concepts applied by psychologists to the study of early human development and develop them in enough depth to show how they play out, and what sort of knowledge-gathering strategies they require. The general theoretical approach to understanding the emergence of bodily/behavioral difference has broad applicability for the health sciences and for the study of gender disparities. Using dynamic systems theory will deepen and extend the reach of theories of embodiment current in the health sciences literature.

The Dynamic Development of Gender Variability

We diagram and discuss theories of gender identity development espoused by the clinical groups represented in this special issue. We contend that theories of origin relate importantly to clinical practice, and argue that the existing clinical theories are under-developed. Therefore, we develop a dynamic systems framework for gender identity development. Specifically, we suggest that critical aspects of presymbolic gender embodiment occur during infancy as part of the synchronous interplay of caregiver-infant dyads. By 18 months, a transition to symbolic representation and the beginning of an internalization of a sense of gender can be detected and consolidation is quite evident by 3 years of age. We conclude by suggesting empirical studies that could expand and test this framework. With the belief that better, more explicit developmental theory can improve clinical practice, we urge that clinicians take a dynamic developmental view of gender identity formation into account.

Sexing the baby: Part 1 – What do we really know about sex differentiation in the first three years of life?

The most common paradigm used to analyze health differences between men and women, is to divide the body from the social environment. In such a model, the bodily contribution and the social contribution add up to 100%. A few health science researchers offer more sophisticated approaches. None, however, offer an intensive study of the first several years of life in order to offer a model which integrates biology and culture in a fashion that demonstrates the productive processes by which gender itself emerges. In this article, we identify the earliest known sex-related biological and behavioral differences in young infants, toddlers and their parents and indicate how these might relate to health and disease. We frame these differences using unifying concepts from the study of neuroplasticity and dynamic systems theory.

Rates of RNA synthesis during early embryogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract We determined the absolute rates of RNA synthesis during embryogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster by measuring the incorporation of 3 H-5-orotic acid into RNA, and the specific activity of the UTP pool. Initially (preblastoderm) the rate of RNA synthesis is relatively high, but declines to a lower level by gastrulation. The data suggest that RNA synthesis is initiated during very early embryogenesis.