The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Hands of God
I began the research for this book in the way that I approach every scientific subject that interests me, by searching the literature. I soon discovered that far from being a product of the modern world, gender variance has been documented across cultures

Science writer Rudacille's sympathetic and well-researched elucidation of the threads that make up the tangled issue of gender variance, most visible in transsexuals, is lively enough to be a good introduction for the educated lay reader and documented enough for the scholar. She considers the interplay between the science of gender and the human side of transgender issues, beginning with the story of the Chevalier d'Éon, who spent the mid-1700s as a man and then lived over three decades as a woman. Her narrative progresses through Magnus Hirschfeld's Berlin Institute for Sexual Science and ends with the possibility that pesticides and synthetic estrogens may be increasing gender variance by affecting human endocrinology. Seven interviews with transsexuals prominent in research or activism articulate both the theory and the practice of transsexualism, giving readers the human face of people who don't fit male and female archetypes. Rudacille adeptly discusses the controversies surrounding transsexuality, delving into the Kafka-esque issues around the psychiatric diagnosis of "gender identity dysphoria," giving time to those who question sexual reassignment surgery and covering the conflicts between transsexuals and homosexuals, especially lesbian feminists in the 1970s. Rudacille's evenhandedness bolsters her final opinion, which is that gender identity, including variance, is probably hardwired-and that "culture [should] follow nature's lead and celebrate variety."

Deborah Rudacille was researcher/writer at the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing from 1992 to 1997. She is the coauthor of Animals and Alternatives in Testing: History, Science and Ethics and the author of The Riddle of Gender..

	Home \| Forum \| Search
Health Parenting Personal Growth Relationships Religion & Spirituality Career & Money