Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This an excellent book on the "gender theory". It is also a starting point for new gender activism. Kessler tells us the intersexed "real lives stories" of pain and suffering. She deconstructs the medical retoric as to how doctors "enforce gender" while inflicting both physical and psychic harm on their intersexed patiennts. She compares the gential reconstruction imposed on the intersexed with that begrundingly provided to (m-to-f) transsexual women and suggested to women with genital cancer. Kessler shows a how we might change gender for the benifit of all. She says: "Institutionalized mutilations occur because the gentials too are taken too seriously...If we want people to respect particular bodies, they need to be taught to lose respect for ideal ones." She suggest that genital piercing, people creating "custom" gentials or men growing breast for their own self pleasure are initial steps to breaking down the connetion between body and gender. From that the two gender system will break down.
Her book has a large number of foot notes and cross references to other works. She is well read and very current. The text is some 131 pages. The footnotes are another 30 pages. The glossary is 4 pages. The bibliography is 10 page. And the index is another 12. This a very well researched book with innovative ideas.
Her closing words are: "We must use what ever means to we have to give up on gender. The problems of intersexuality [and gayness, transsexuals, transvities, ect] will vanish and we will, compensate intersexuals for all the lessons they have provided."
Click Here to see more reviews about: Lessons from the Intersexed
"This is a brave book. Kessler says things that need to be said, and she says them clearly, concisely, and with respect for the people whose lives are most affected by the questions she confronts. A must read for anyone concerned with intersex issues." --Holly Devor, author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality and FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society."While the physician's response to an infant with ambiguous genitalia has been to produce categories like the 'successful vagina' and the 'good enough penis,' Kessler takes her cues from intersexuals themselves. This book is a brilliant and long overdue call for the reevaluation of gender variability." --Judith Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity"Fascinating in what it tells us not only about situation in which sex assignment is uncertain but about the astonishingly weak empirical foundations on which the medical orthodoxies of binary sex and gender are built. A must for anyone interested in the ways widely accepted social beliefs and scientific explanations generate and reinforce each other." --Ruth Hubbard, author of The Politics of Women's Biology and Exploding the Gene MythFrom the moment intersexuality--the condition of having physical markers (genitals, gonads, or chromosomes) that are neither clearly female nor male--is suspected and diagnosed, social institutions are mobilized in order to maintain the two seemingly objective sexual categories. Infants' bodies are altered, and the "ambiguous" is made "normal." As Kessler argues, the way the medical and psychological professions manage intersexuality is guided by our culture's beliefs about gender and genitals rather than by the needs of the child.Interviews with pediatric surgeons and endocrinologists as well as parents of intersexed children and adults who were treated for this condition in childhood lead Kessler to propose several new approaches for physicians in dealing with parents and children. Beyond the medical sphere, the author also evaluates a political vanguard intent on gaining acceptance by physicians and society at large of an intersexed identity.Lessons from the Intersexed explores the possibilities and implications of suspending a commitment to two "natural" genders. It addresses gender destabilization issues arising from intersexuality and compels a rethinking of the meaning of gender, genitals, and sexuality.Suzanne J. Kessler is professor of psychology at Purchase College, State University of New York. She is coauthor of Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach.
Click here for more information about Lessons from the Intersexed
0 comments:
Post a Comment