Anne Fausto-Sterton Gender And Sexuality

Since the dawn of the Victorian Era, society has perpetuated unrealistic gender performance ideals that supposedly find their roots within biological sexual differences. Judith Butler has spent a lifetime seeking to break the mold todays social constructions, specifically surrounding gender and sexuality. The theory this pioneer pegged is now known as Queer Theory, and brought forth in the education system through Queer Studies courses. In the text Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality by author Anne Fausto-Sterling, gender and sex are similarly challenged on both a social and biological level. When reviewing Fausto-Sterling’s work in conjunction with Queer Studies and Human Sexuality, an efficient and effective format is loosely based upon a Critical Literary analysis.
The stark expectations surrounding gender and sex of today’s society stem largely from a need to seek use of exclusionary language. Jacques Derrida, one of the many source contributors from which Judith Butler sought out to formulate Queer Theory as we know it today, pegged the idea that language is exclusionary in and of itself. His most commonly used example is that of “chair” versus “not chair”; how do you define a chair? If you were to look at a bench, a couch, a table, a swing, a bed- these things are “not chair”. Similar to this example is the situation that society forces every individual born into it to face- “male” and “not male”, or “female” and “not female”. Fausto-Sterling approaches this issue from a unique perspective that utilizes both her knowledge as biologist (looking towards the cellular basis of “sex”) paired with her self-proclaimed feminist perspective. Her perspective on a more sensible system of sex was initial...

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...e to present today. (Butler, 1989)
A single moment, a single movement, a single protest against the system is the first step to finding change. For every parent that says “leave my child intact”, it would be one day closer to a time when it will be socially appalling to cosmetically alter an infant child who is incapable of consent or comprehension. The fluidity, complexity, and ambiguity of human sexuality extends far beyond sexual preference and onward into gender and sex. Accepting that some things will never fit within a textbook definition, and celebrating difference rather than condemning it, would fulfil the dream of many minds such as Fausto-Sterling and Butler as well as the author. Only time and individuals that dare to reject the flawed system can ease the binds of ignorance that tie society so tightly to an outdated Victorian mindset of sex and gender.