Christina's Thoughts -

I've let this go too long without updating. :-)


1. Apocryphal Tales by Karel Čapek
2. The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? by Jan Zalasiewicz
3. Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search For (and Synthesis of) Alien Life by Peter Ward
4. Deaf President Now!: The 1988 Revolution at Gaullaudet University by John B. Christensen and Sharon N. Barnartt
5. Deaf in America: Voices From a Culture by Carol Padden and Tom Humphries
6. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
7. Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements by Austin Burt and Robert Trivers
8. The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherin A. Liszt
9. She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan
10. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle
11. Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures by Carl Zimmer
12. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl by John Colapinto
13. Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs Edited by Jonathan Ames
14. Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People by Joan Roughgarden
15. Gender Shock: Exploding the Myths of Male and Female by Phyllis Burke
16. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe by John Boswell
17. The Transgender Companion (Male to Female) by Jennifer Seeley
18. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serrano
19. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex by Alice Domurat Dreger
20. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to RuPaul by Leslie Feinberg

Some very interesting books here. Evolution's Rainbow is divided into three parts. The first part is about gender and sex in the other animals. A lot of interesting examples of animals with multiple genders, defined in this context as different forms, both of males and of females, along with different behavioral patterns. She also argues for what she calls Social Selection against the popular notion of sexual selection, arguing, for example, that many features traditionally considered to exist for the purpose of attracting mates may actually function to ensure membership in social groups, and thus opportunity to mate. She also argues that many examples of "infidelity" in more-or-less monogamous species actually benefits the mate being "cheated on" as well as the "cheater". For example, she points out that if the male in a nest dies, he is often replaced by another male. If that male had previously mated with the female, he will share in raising the young who are already there, since he has a chance of being father to at least one of them. However, if he had not mated with the female, he will not help raise the young, and may even attack them. Thus, "cheating" benefits the female not from "superior genes", but simply from ensuring that her young will have a backup to raise them if something happens to her mate. It also benefits her mate in that, if something happens to him, his young (of which most of the nestlings will be) will be taken care of. Thus, using an economic metaphor, he "pays" a cost in terms of fewer eggs being fertilized by himself, but he gains insurance for his young. I found her arguments quite compelling.

The second part deals with individual humans, gender and sexuality in humans, theories of how those develop, etc.

The third part deals with gender and sexuality in various societies. Native American societies, Europe from antiquity to modern times, the Middle East, Polynesian cultures, Latin America, and modern America.

Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe is pretty much what the title implies. It details how same-sex couples (mostly male, since women weren't written much about in the past, so we have far too little information about their lives) lived in premodern Europe, and various forms of recognized unions. Surprisingly, even the early Christians had a ceremony that was similar to marriage for same-sex couples, until around the 14th century, when the church began to crack down on homosexuality and other forms of perceived sexual deviations. It's a fascinating book, describing the development of these institutions and the different ways they've been viewed by later historians of different generations.

Whipping Girl is a great book about transsexualism and feminism, about how society's views towards femininity shape its views of women, and especially of trans women, as well as of men who are perceived as effiminate.

Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex describes how medical science in the late 19th and early 20th century viewed those who were, at the time, called "hermaphrodites", a category that includes what we now call intersexual. The term was also used for others who were seen as outside the standard binary, including cross-dressers, transgendered people, homosexuals, and others. The author describes how doctors in the mid-19th century came to develop a rigid definition of sex, and attempted to shoehorn "hermaphrodites" into their "true sex". These doctors were disturbed by the existence of people who fell outside the strict gender divisions of their society, and insisted that there were only two genuine sexes, and that intersexual people were "really" just men or women with various deformities. Gradually, a definition developed that was based on gonads. Female if there were ovaries, male if there were testes. Which was problematic in that an individual could have a feminine-looking body, but have undescended or partially-descended testes, making them "really" a man, a discovery which might be made well into adulthood! Or even, in some cases, only upon performing an autopsy after the individual's death. And, of course, the insistence on shoehorning people into one or the other sex based on purely physical attributes often came into conflict with the subject's own identity! "But, my good woman, you are a man!" as one doctor exclaimed to a female-identified intersexual patient in frustration at her "stubborn" refusal to "accept the truth". It also deals a little bit with modern treatment of intersexual people