WMST 1000Y Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Alice Dreger, Gender Role, Dualism

• School: Trent University
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: WMST 1000Y
• Professor: Katharine Bausch

Document Summary

Introduction to beyond the natural body (text pp. Emily martin, the egg and the sperm: how science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female. Alice dreger, where"s the rulebook for sex verification? (text pp. Defining genitals: who will make room for the intersexed? . Because biology, rather than society, sets constraints on the behavior and abilities of women. Scientists are actively constructing reality, rather than discovering reality. In the late 18th c, greeks described male and female bodies as fundamentally similar - Male turned inside herself , not a different sex, but a lesser version of the male body. During the 18th century, there was as shift that emphasized become increasingly focused on bodily differences. The depiction of female skull was used to prove that women"s intellectual capacities were inferior to men. By the 19th c, medical sciectists had extended this sexulaization to every part of the body: hair, bones, blood vessels, brains etc.