| View Larger Image | Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex | Paperbackby Alice Domurat Dreger (Author)
| List Price: | $24.50 | | Price: | $19.11 | | You Save: | $5.39 (22%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Harvard University Press | | Page Count: | 268 Pages | | Publication Date: | March 04, 2000 | | Sales Rank: | 170,271th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Punctuated with remarkable case studies, this book explores extraordinary encounters between hermaphrodites -- people born with "ambiguous" sexual anatomy -- and the medical and scientific professionals who were confronted by them. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 5 reviews)
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useful. by Helen Boyd (Brooklyn, NY United States)  3 Stars
September 05, 2006
This one's easy: 1) It's a great introduction to Intersex issues; 2) in the trans community we talk a lot about the distinction between sex and gender, and often like to mention how gender is constructed but sex isn't. This book, however, points out that sex, too, is constructed: in this case, by modern medicine; 3) it's a little more academic, sometimes is repetitive, but it's got a wealth of information.
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I've only met 5 Hermaphrodites and they were nice. by M. Franta (Walnut, CA United States)  5 Stars
August 07, 2005
I'm in the medical field - I've been a nurse for 27 years and I've only run across 5 or 6 such individuals ala intersexual'
and it's a rare, rare book indeed that can carry on such an intellectual discussion on this condition.
What I learned that I valued the most is that modern western medics and nurses and parents should act in haste when encountering such a special person.
Sexual ambiguity is what it is....medical people were well-meaning when they saught to correct it, but they possibly could have destroyed the true gender identity of a intersexed individual.
Living in the enlightened society of today, with western modern standards, there is a lot less "fear" associated with intersexed persons.....more facination than fear anyhow.
This book is very intellectual - but understandable by the average college-read person. I encourage all persons who have become aware of this 'condition' to pick up this fine book - read it - and learn a bushel-full of facts regarding hermaphrodites and the various 'forms' people come equipped with. I have only yet begun to understand that this condition may be more prevelant than ever considered before.
This is a very facinating book and it comes with my highest recommendation for a truly underrepresented topic.
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an important book 5 Stars
May 07, 2001
I consider myself an "enlightened" feminist and of course I believe that gender is socially constructed, but I still had a lot to learn from this book. It's not just that gender is socially constructed, but sex itself: nothing is "natural." Nothing -- not chromasomes, genitals, nor secondary sex characteristics like breasts, facial hair, body hair, and voice -- has meaning until we ascribe it a meaning. Doctors and the medical profession have participated in the social construction of gender and sex by creating the hermaphrodite as a monstrosity that deviates from binary norms rather than as a part of a continuum of sex and gender.Dreger's book focuses on the collision of hermaphrodites with the medical profession in 19th century Britain and France, a time period when feminists and homosexuals were beginning to challenge sexual boundries. Dreger sucessfully balences stories of individuals with the larger social context. Also, she never resorts to euphemisms, and the accompanying photographs are something that is missing from the standard human anatomy textbook. We should see and appreciate humanity in all its infinite variety and not force anyone to conform to a constructed "norm."Dreger's final chapter explores the plight of the intersexed in contemporary America. If we are truely to "celebrate diversity," we are going to have to become educated about the millions of intersexed in this country and become sensitive to their issues... because they are issues that concern us all.
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Amazing! 5 Stars
April 27, 1999
This book is wonderful! It gives a tremendous amount of insight to the intersexed. A must for anyone interested in the history of sexuality.
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Exposes cultural imperative disguised as medical necessity 5 Stars
May 27, 1998
The history of the clinical management of intersex has previously been relegated to medical texts- texts which illuminate technologies to "treat" intersex while ignoring the experience of the recipients of such protocols. Alice Dreger's book unveils the identities of those who heretofore have appeared in textbook photographs and illustrations with their genitals in sharp focus but with their faces obscured. In the process, Dreger reveals how medicine has often tragically subordinated what is between the patient's ears and in the patient's heart to what is between the patient's legs. While physicians would be well-served to incorporate the information and perspectives Dreger offers, the book should appeal to a far larger audience because it challenges the reader's assumption that sex is like Carvel (two flavors only) when in reality it is Baskins & Robbins.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality
by Anne Fausto-Sterling (Author)
This path-breaking study of gender and sexuality is the first to go beyond the nature/nurture debate to offer an alternate framework for considering questions of sex and sexuality. Why do some people prefer heterosexual love while others fancy the same sex? Is sexual identity biologically determined or a product of convention? In this brilliant and provocative book, the acclaimed author of Myths of Gender argues that even the most fundamental knowledge about sex is shaped by the culture...
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| Intersex in the Age of Ethics (Ethics in Clinical Medicine Series)
by Alice Domurat Dreger (Author), Alice Domurat Dreger (Editor)
The range of ethical issues that arise in regard to the treatment of intersex infants, children, and adults is representative of clinical healthcare ethics generally. By incorporating the perspective of patients and their stories in its account, Intersex in the Age of Ethics does more than introduce the question of healthcare ethics in microcosm, it leads the reader to examine the effect of ethical reflection on the lives of patients. David T. Ozar, Loyola University of Chicago
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| Herculine Barbin (Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth Century French Hermaphrodite)
by Michel Foucault (Author), Richard McDougall (Translator)
With an eye for the sensual bloom of young schoolgirls, and the torrid style of the romantic novels of her day, Herculine Barbin tells the story of her life as a hermaphrodite. Herculine was designated female at birth. A pious girl in a Catholic orphanage, a bewildered adolescent enchanted by the ripening bodies of her classmates, a passionate lover of another schoolmistress, she is suddenly reclassified as a man. Alone and desolate, he commits suicide at the age of thirty in a miserable attic...
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| Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School
by C. J. Pascoe (Author)
High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a...
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| One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal
by Alice Domurat Dreger (Author)
Must children born with socially challenging anatomies have their bodies changed because others cannot be expected to change their minds? One of Us views conjoined twinning and other "abnormalities" from the point of view of people living with such anatomies, and considers these issues within the larger historical context of anatomical politics. Anatomy matters, Alice Domurat Dreger tells us, because the senses we possess, the muscles we control, and the resources we require to keep our...
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