Follow up Post 2/15

The first two chapters of Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto-Sterling are an interesting overview of the gray area in the defining of gender and the way that women and men are not the only way that people can and should be defined. Fausto-Sterling’s points make one think about the way that people such a as a hermaphrodite are thought about in the world and how hard these people much have it. Fausto-Sterling seems to represent that there are many of these types of people and that these people have had a hard time throughout history. This whole reading made me think of how a parent would handle the situation of having a child whose sex is not very clear. It must be a hard situation to be put in especially when a parent would be wanting to make the life of the child as easy as possible but not knowing how the child will feel about the situation when they are old enough to understand. It also makes you think about the world in how it is not welcoming to people who have issues like this and how it is sad that people have to feel like they need to change themselves drastically to fit in and to be accepted by the general population. The way that hermaphrodites are treated is symptomatic of the way that all people who do not fit into gender and cultural norms are treated and it is sad to think that many people are treated like they cannot be themselves in this world. Reading works like this can open a persons eyes to issues that are foreign to them and can really change how you think of people who are different from you and realize that they may have been born the way they are just like you have been born the way you are. What may seem unnatural to you is the only way they have ever known themselves and just like you cannot change the circumstance of your birth, neither can they.