Download or read book Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex written by Alice Domurat Dreger and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 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.

Download or read book Hermaphroditism written by John C. Avise and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-18 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While it is true that members of most sexually reproducing species can be defined as either male or female, those who belong to the rest of the biological world are not so simply understood. Hermaphroditic creatures reproduce both as male and as female individuals, providing a fascinating glimpse into alternative sexual practices in nature and their ecological and evolutionary successes and failures. Eloquently written by an award-winning biologist and pioneer in molecular ecology, this primer on hermaphroditism traces the phenomenon throughout Earth's myriad species, accounting for the adaptive significance of alternative sexual systems. Accessible and richly illustrated, the text maps the evolutionary origins of hermaphroditism, as well as its historical instances and fictional representations, underscoring the relevance of dual sexuality to our biological, intellectual, and cultural making. John C. Avise describes the genetics, ecology, phylogeny, and natural history of hermaphroditic plants, fish, and invertebrate animals and details organisms that either reproduce simultaneously as male and female or switch routinely between one sex and the other. Filled with surprising creatures and compelling revelations, this textbook stands alone in its clear yet comprehensive treatment of hermaphroditism and its unique challenge to the supremacy of separate sexes.

Download or read book Middlesex written by Jeffrey Eugenides and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-07-18 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning eight decades and chronicling the wild ride of a Greek-American family through the vicissitudes of the twentieth century, Jeffrey Eugenides’ witty, exuberant novel on one level tells a traditional story about three generations of a fantastic, absurd, lovable immigrant family -- blessed and cursed with generous doses of tragedy and high comedy. But there’s a provocative twist. Cal, the narrator -- also Callie -- is a hermaphrodite. And the explanation for this takes us spooling back in time, through a breathtaking review of the twentieth century, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie’s grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set our narrator’s life in motion. Middlesex is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It’s a brilliant exploration of divided people, divided families, divided cities and nations -- the connected halves that make up ourselves and our world.

Download or read book The Hermaphrodite written by Julia Ward Howe and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-12-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in the 1840s and published here for the first time, Julia Ward Howe's novel about a hermaphrodite is unlike anything of its time--or, in truth, of our own. Narrated by Laurence, who is raised and lives as a man, is loved by men and women alike, and can respond to neither, this unconventional story explores the understanding "that fervent hearts must borrow the disguise of art, if they would win the right to express, in any outward form, the internal fire that consumes them." Laurence describes his repudiation by his family, his involvement with an attractive widow, his subsequent wanderings and eventual attachment to a sixteen-year-old boy, his own tutelage by a Roman nobleman and his sisters, and his ultimate reunion with his early love. His is a story unique in nineteenth-century American letters, at once a remarkable reflection of a largely hidden inner life and a richly imagined tale of coming of age at odds with one's culture. Howe wrote "The Hermaphrodite" when her own marriage was challenged by her husband's affection for another man--and when prevailing notions regarding a woman's appropriate role in patriarchal structures threatened Howe's intellectual and emotional survival. The novel allowed Howe, and will now allow her readers, to occupy a speculative realm otherwise inaccessible in her historical moment.

Download or read book The Female Brain written by Louann Brizendine, MD and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2007-08-07 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Dr. Brizendine wrote The Female Brain ten years ago, the response has been overwhelming. This New York Times bestseller has been translated into more than thirty languages, has sold nearly a million copies between editions, and has most recently inspired a romantic comedy starring Whitney Cummings and Sofia Vergara. And its profound scientific understanding of the nature and experience of the female brain continues to guide women as they pass through life stages, to help men better understand the girls and women in their lives, and to illuminate the delicate emotional machinery of a love relationship. Why are women more verbal than men? Why do women remember details of fights that men can’t remember at all? Why do women tend to form deeper bonds with their female friends than men do with their male counterparts? These and other questions have stumped both sexes throughout the ages. Now, pioneering neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, M.D., brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and who they love. While doing research as a medical student at Yale and then as a resident and faculty member at Harvard, Louann Brizendine discovered that almost all of the clinical data in existence on neurology, psychology, and neurobiology focused exclusively on males. In response to the overwhelming need for information on the female mind, Brizendine established the first clinic in the country to study and treat women’s brain function. In The Female Brain, Dr. Brizendine distills all her findings and the latest information from the scientific community in a highly accessible book that educates women about their unique brain/body/behavior. The result: women will come away from this book knowing that they have a lean, mean, communicating machine. Men will develop a serious case of brain envy.

Download or read book The Evolution of Anisogamy written by Tatsuya Togashi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-14 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Darwin identified the existence of separate male and female gametes as one of the central mysteries of evolutionary biology. 150 years later, the question of why male gametes exist remains an intriguing puzzle. In this, the first book solely devoted to the evolution of anisogamy, top theorists in the field explore why gamete dimorphism characterizes nearly all plants and animals. Did separate male and female gametes evolve as a result of competition, or does anisogamy instead represent selection for cooperation? If disruptive selection drove the evolution of anisogamy, with male gametes focused on search and fusion, and female gametes provisioning the new zygote, why do some algal species continue to produce gametes of a single size? Does sperm limitation, or escape from infection, better explain the need for extremely small, highly mobile sperm? Written by leaders in the field, this volume offers an authoritative and cutting-edge overview of evolutionary theory.

Download or read book Tractus de Hermaphrodites Or A Treatise of Hermaphrodites written by Giles Jacob and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tractus de Hermaphrodites..." is a book dedicated to the subject of hermaphrodites, that rare breed of people of unique reproductive biology. Speaking candidly on what is often a taboo subject, it covers different aspects of hermaphrodite life beginning with a listing of at least five types of such persons. The book also speculates the possible reasons for such person's existence, from the perspective of what was known, or believed, in the eighteenth century.

Download or read book Unmaking Sex written by Anne E. Linton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-24 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark study in the history of sexuality which redefines thinking about sex and gender in nineteenth-century France and beyond.

Download or read book The Evolution of Primary Sexual Characters in Animals written by Janet Leonard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-16 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Primary sexual traits, those structures and processes directly involved in reproduction, are some of the most diverse, specialized, and bizarre in the animal kingdom. Moreover, reproductive traits are often species-specific, suggesting that they evolved very rapidly. This diversity, long the province of taxonomists, has recently attracted broader interest from evolutionary biologists, especially those interested in sexual selection and the evolution of reproductive strategies. Primary sexual characters were long assumed to be the product of natural selection, exclusively. A recent alternative suggests that sexual selection explains much of the diversity of "primary" sexual characters. A third approach to the evolution of reproductive interactions after copulation or insemination has been to consider the process one of sexual conflict. That is, the reproductive processes of a species may reflect, as does the mating system, evolution acting on males and on females, but in different directions. In this volume, authors explore a wide variety of primary sexual characters and selective pressures that have shaped them, from natural selection for offspring survival to species-isolating mechanisms, sperm competition, cryptic female choice and sexual arms races. Exploring diverse reproductive adaptations from a theoretical and practical perspective, The Evolution of Primary Sexual Characters will provide an unparalleled overview of sexual diversity in many taxa and an introduction to the issues in sexual selection that are changing our view of sexual processes.

Download or read book Intersex written by Morgan Holmes and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2008 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: intersex/uality is trouble -- Making meaning: representations and misrepresentations -- Representations and misrepresentations -- Bodies, knowledge, and identity -- Rethinking the meaning and management of intersexuality.

Download or read book A Mechanical and Critical Enquiry Into the Nature of Hermaphrodites written by James Parsons and published by . This book was released on 1741 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical account of the hermaphrodite, detailing religious laws and superstitions as well as persecution.

Download or read book Born Both written by Hida Viloria and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world's foremost intersex activists, a candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of gender identity, self-acceptance, and love. My name is Hida Viloria. I was raised as a girl but discovered at a young age that my body looked different. Having endured an often turbulent home life as a kid, there were many times when I felt scared and alone, especially given my attraction to girls. But unlike most people in the first world who are born intersex--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--I grew up in the body I was born with because my parents did not have my sex characteristics surgically altered at birth. It wasn't until I was twenty-six and encountered the term intersex in a San Francisco newspaper that I finally had a name for my difference. That's when I began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders--to be both and neither. I tried living as a feminine woman, an androgynous person, and even for a brief period of time as a man. Good friends would not recognize me, and gay men would hit on me. My gender fluidity was exciting, and in many ways freeing--but it could also be isolating. I had to know if there were other intersex people like me, but when I finally found an intersex community to connect with I was shocked, and then deeply upset, to learn that most of the people I met had been scarred, both physically and psychologically, by infant surgeries and hormone treatments meant to "correct" their bodies. Realizing that the invisibility of intersex people in society facilitated these practices, I made it my mission to bring an end to it--and became one of the first people to voluntarily come out as intersex at a national and then international level. Born Both is the story of my lifelong journey toward finding love and embracing my authentic identity in a world that insists on categorizing people into either/or, and of my decades-long fight for human rights and equality for intersex people everywhere.

Download or read book Sex Difference in Christian Theology written by Megan K. DeFranza and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-08 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charts a faithful theological middle course through complex sexual issues How different are men and women? When does it matter to us -- or to God? Are male and female the only two options? In Sex Difference in Christian Theology Megan DeFranza explores such questions in light of the Bible, theology, and science. Many Christians, entrenched in culture wars over sexual ethics, are either ignorant of the existence of intersex persons or avoid the inherent challenge they bring to the assumption that everybody is born after the pattern of either Adam or Eve. DeFranza argues, from a conservative theological standpoint, that all people are made in the image of God -- male, female, and intersex -- and that we must listen to and learn from the voices of the intersexed among us.

Download or read book Female Male Or Both written by Satyendra Yadav and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whenever the things go beyond the common thinking it gives pain, astonished someone and make it laugh someone. But this journey will compels you to think beyond the box. And the theme of it, which one I am going to share with you is not an exception but it is exception from your common world. Let's your thought go beyond the barrier. Crush all the resistance in the way of your thought, let blow your thought like wind. A world where the things have their own meaning, everything is different from our realistic world. All the living creatures have their own happiness and pleasure. The people of this world don't spend their time to understand their counterpart. Even they don't have to care about their counterpart, like extramarital affairs, dual relationship, grief of being so far, suspense or doubt on their counterpart. They don't waste their logical energy and priceless time to understand the relation between husband and wife, girlfriend and boyfriend etc. They utilize their brain and time in developing technology, making romance and developing the living standards. Because there is not any organ in their body which can define them male or female. They exist in the form of hermaphrodite (Hermaphrodite is a form of living creature in which both the sex present in the single body). Single body has both the quality of male and female. Their body included with female and male, identical and reproductive organ. Half of the body parts appear like female and remaining half is like male body parts. Their half part of body is like girl and another half is like a boy i.e. One side of chick is as soft as a girl and another side is as rough as a boy. One leg covers with hairs and another one is so smooth and clean. Left part is a cultivated with female organ and right part is male organ. There under garment of upper body's one part is taking curved shape like bra and other part is as simple as vest. A society in which all the creature is exist in the combination of both the sex i.e. in the form of hermaphrodite (combination of male and female). Let it be a dog, hen, got, elephant, Hippocrates, birds, donkey etc. Even the ant is also in the combination of male and female. These all creature love themselves. They don't have to find out their male or female partner. In these ways their curiosities satisfy with their either part there is not any hide and seek type game.

Download or read book Fixing Sex written by Katrina Karkazis and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when a baby is born with “ambiguous” genitalia or a combination of “male” and “female” body parts? Clinicians and parents in these situations are confronted with complicated questions such as whether a girl can have XY chromosomes, or whether some penises are “too small” for a male sex assignment. Since the 1950s, standard treatment has involved determining a sex for these infants and performing surgery to normalize the infant’s genitalia. Over the past decade intersex advocates have mounted unprecedented challenges to treatment, offering alternative perspectives about the meaning and appropriate medical response to intersexuality and driving the field of those who treat intersex conditions into a deep crisis. Katrina Karkazis offers a nuanced, compassionate picture of these charged issues in Fixing Sex, the first book to examine contemporary controversies over the medical management of intersexuality in the United States from the multiple perspectives of those most intimately involved. Drawing extensively on interviews with adults with intersex conditions, parents, and physicians, Karkazis moves beyond the heated rhetoric to reveal the complex reality of how intersexuality is understood, treated, and experienced today. As she unravels the historical, technological, social, and political forces that have culminated in debates surrounding intersexuality, Karkazis exposes the contentious disagreements among theorists, physicians, intersex adults, activists, and parents—and all that those debates imply about gender and the changing landscape of intersex management. She argues that by viewing intersexuality exclusively through a narrow medical lens we avoid much more difficult questions. Do gender atypical bodies require treatment? Should physicians intervene to control the “sex” of the body? As this illuminating book reveals, debates over treatment for intersexuality force reassessment of the seemingly natural connections between gender, biology, and the body.

Download or read book Female Male or Both written by Satyendra Kumar Yadav and published by Booktango. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A world where living creatures don’t have to maintain the sex ratio, even they are not afraid of being raped. Committing rape or maintaining sex ratio is like a joke among the society, because the living creature exists in the form of hermaphrodite. You can get the flavor of hermaphrodite and their priorities.

Download or read book Early Modern Hermaphrodites written by R. Gilbert and published by Springer. This book was released on 2002-04-19 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century, hermaphrodites were discussed and depicted in a range of artistic, mythological, scientific and erotic contexts. Early Modern Hermaphrodites looks at some of those representations to explore the stories they tell about ambiguous sex and gender in early modern England. Gilbert examines the often contradictory ways in which hermaphrodites were represented as both spiritual ideals and sexual grotesques; as freaks, erotic objects and medical curiosities' and as literary metaphors and signs of social decay.