(6 reviews) Author: Alice Domurat Dreger ISBN : 9780674089273 New from $79.62 Format: PDFPunctuated with remarkable case studies, this book explores extraordinary encounters between hermaphrodites--people born with "ambiguous" sexual anatomy--and the medical and scientific professionals who grappled with them. Alice Dreger focuses on events in France and Britain in the late nineteenth century, a moment of great tension for questions of sex roles. While feminists, homosexuals, and anthropological explorers openly questioned the natures and purposes of the two sexes, anatomical hermaphrodites suggested a deeper question: just how many human sexes are there? Ultimately hermaphrodites led doctors and scientists to another surprisingly difficult question: what is sex, really?
Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex takes us inside the doctors' chambers to see how and why medical and scientific men constructed sex, gender, and sexuality as they did, and especially how the material conformation of hermaphroditic bodies--when combined with social exigencies--forced peculiar constructions. Throughout the book Dreger indicates how this history can help us to understand present-day conceptualizations of sex, gender, and sexuality. This leads to an epilogue, where the author discusses and questions the protocols employed today in the treatment of intersexuals (people born hermaphroditic). Given the history she has recounted, should these protocols be reconsidered and revised?
A meticulously researched account of a fascinating problem in the history of medicine, this book will compel the attention of historians, physicians, medical ethicists, intersexuals themselves, and anyone interested in the meanings and foundations of sexual identity.
- Hardcover: 268 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1 edition (May 20, 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0674089278
- ISBN-13: 978-0674089273
- Product Dimensions: 1 x 6.4 x 9.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex PDF
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.By A Customer
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.By "gabecca"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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