Nov 18 2013
Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome
The notion that men and women are starkly different from one another and that that conflict between the sexes is so inherent there’s no point fighting it, is deeply ingrained in our culture. In fact, that ‘Men are From Mars, and Women are from Venus’ is no longer just a book title – it is a popular metaphor in our lexicon and has formed the basis of countless films and television series. After all, men and women are different at the genetic level – men have an X and a Y chromosome, while women have two X chromosomes.
To ground gender differences in biological research became a popular sport. Larry Summers, when he was President of Harvard University in 2005 gave a speech where he attempted to explain that the different representations of men and women in mathematics may be explained by differences in their innate ability. Summers’ words touched off a firestorm of protest from feminists.
But that was not the first time feminists have challenged the argument of genetic superiority. In fact, feminists and women in science fields have long studied genetic science to undermine biological determinist theories.
Now, as research on the human genome offers an unprecedented look at the real genetic differences between men and women, what conclusions have such studies come to? How different are men and women really? Are we different based on social constructs of what is expected of us, or are our differences genetically hardwired? The answers to these questions are more complex than we might think.
GUEST: Sarah Richardson, author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome, Assistant Professor of the History of Science and of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality, at Harvard University, and co-editor of Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age.
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