Customer Reviews
Polemics �r� us - By: elizabeth veldon, 10 Jan 2005 
OK so it's a polemic but it's funny, well researched, intelligent & frankly disturbing.
Fasto Sterling shows how scientists have constructed false gender dichotomies out of insufficient data & deletion of anything that didn't fit (the Damned data of Charles Fort's Book of the Damned if you like) & that scientific 'truth' is no more than a collection of unchallenged assumptions & predeceases.
This is not the first book to discuss these topics but that it does so with a political agenda makes it invigorating. Her claim that science & surgeons are trying to remove gender variant bodies from existence is a wake up call.
Highly recommended.
An informative and revealing read - By: , 29 Aug 2003 An accessible book that lays out the historical assumptions about sex & gender & subjects them to insightful critique. "Sexing the Body" reveals the important role science has playedin reinforcing social consensus on the nature of sexuality & effectively erasing sexually ambiguous bodies from society.
Fausto-Sterling's arguments are so decisive that it is impossible to close the book without a serious re-examination of one's own attitudes to sex & gender, & a sense of shock at the physical, sexual & psychological obstacles intersexuals - those with physical elements of both male & female - facein a world which acknowledges only two sexes.
Informative, challenging & much recommended.
