The study of sexual dimorphism in psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders is challenging due to the complex interplay of diverse biological, psychological, and social factors. Males are more ...susceptible to neurodevelopmental disorders including intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, and attention-deficit activity disorder. Conversely, after puberty, females are more prone to major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders compared to males. One major biological factor contributing to sex differences is the sex chromosomes. First, the X and Y chromosomes have unique and specific genetic effects as well as downstream gonadal effects. Second, males have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome, while females have two X chromosomes. Thus, sex chromosome constitution also differs between the sexes. Due to this complexity, determining genetic and downstream biological influences on sexual dimorphism in humans is challenging. Sex chromosome aneuploidies, such as Turner syndrome (X0) and Klinefelter syndrome (XXY), are common genetic conditions in humans. The study of individuals with sex chromosome aneuploidies provides a promising framework for studying sexual dimorphism in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Here we will review and contrast four syndromes caused by variation in the number of sex chromosomes: Turner syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, XYY syndrome, and XXX syndrome. Overall we describe an increased rate of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder, along with the increased rates of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders in one or more of these conditions. In addition to contributing unique insights about sexual dimorphism in neuropsychiatric disorders, awareness of the increased risk of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders in sex chromosome aneuploidies can inform appropriate management of these common genetic disorders.
This book investigates how varying practices of gender shaped people's lives and experiences across the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. Exploring how gender was linked with other ...socio-political characteristics such as wealth, status, age and life-stage, as well as with individual choices, in the very different world of classical antiquity is fascinating in its own right. But later perceptions of ancient literature and art have profoundly influenced the development of gendered ideologies and hierarchies in the West, and influenced the study of gender itself. Questioning how best to untangle and interpret difficult sources is a key aim. This book exploits a wide range of archaeological, material cultural, visual, spatial, demographic, epigraphical and literary evidence to consider households, families, life-cycles and the engendering of time, legal and political institutions, beliefs about bodies, sex and sexuality, gender and space, the economic implications of engendered practices, and gender in religion and magic.
The number of women in positions of power and authority in Japanese companies has remained small despite the increase in the number of educated women and the passage of legislation on gender ...equality. InToo Few Women at the Top, Kumiko Nemoto draws on theoretical insights regarding Japan's coordinated capitalism and institutional stasis to challenge claims that the surge in women's education and employment will logically lead to the decline of gender inequality and eventually improve women's status in the Japanese workplace.
Nemoto's interviews with diverse groups of workers at three Japanese financial companies and two cosmetics companies in Tokyo reveal the persistence of vertical sex segregation as a cost-saving measure by Japanese companies. Women's advancement is impeded by customs including seniority pay and promotion, track-based hiring of women, long working hours, and the absence of women leaders. Nemoto contends that an improvement in gender equality in the corporate system will require that Japan fundamentally depart from its postwar methods of business management. Only when the static labor market is revitalized through adoption of new systems of cost savings, employee hiring, and rewards will Japanese women advance in their chosen professions. Comparison with the situation in the United States makes the author's analysis of the Japanese case relevant for understanding the dynamics of the glass ceiling in U.S. workplaces as well.
What did sex mean for ordinary people before the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, who were often pitied by later generations as repressed, unfulfilled and full of moral anxiety? This book ...provides the first rounded, first-hand account of sexuality in marriage in the early and mid-twentieth century. These award-winning authors look beyond conventions of silence among the respectable majority to challenge stereotypes of ignorance and inhibition. Based on vivid, compelling and frank testimonies from a socially and geographically diverse range of individuals, the book explores a spectrum of sexual experiences, from learning about sex and sexual practices in courtship, to attitudes to the body, marital ideals and birth control. It demonstrates that while the era's emphasis on silence and strict moral codes could for some be a source of inhibition and dissatisfaction, for many the culture of privacy and innocence was central to fulfilling and pleasurable intimate lives.
Sexing the Body Fausto-Sterling, Anne
2000, 2008-08-04
eBook
This path-breaking study of gender and sexuality is the first to go beyond the nature/nurture debate to offer an alternate framework for considering questions of sex and sexuality.
When Alfred Kinsey's massive studiesSexual Behavior in the Human MaleandSexual Behavior in the Human Femaleappeared in 1948 and 1953, their detailed data spurred an unprecedented public discussion of ...the nation's sexual practices and ideologies. As they debated what behaviors were normal or average, abnormal or deviant, Cold War Americans also celebrated and scrutinized the state of their nation, relating apparent changes in sexuality to shifts in its political structure, economy, and people.American Sexual Characteremploys the studies and the myriad responses they evoked to examine national debates about sexuality, gender, and Americanness after World War II. Focusing on the mutual construction of postwar ideas about national identity and sexual life, this wide-ranging, shrewd, and lively analysis explores the many uses to which these sex surveys were put at a time of extreme anxiety about sexual behavior and its effects on the nation. Looking at real and perceived changes in masculinity, female sexuality, marriage, and homosexuality, Miriam G. Reumann develops the notion of "American sexual character," sexual patterns and attitudes that were understood to be uniquely American and to reflect contemporary transformations in politics, social life, gender roles, and culture. She considers how apparent shifts in sexual behavior shaped the nation's workplaces, homes, and families, and how these might be linked to racial and class differences.
Presenting a range of data obtained from secondary schools in the UK and US, this path-breaking book explores the role played by language in constructing sexual identities. Analysing the often ...complex ways in which homophobia, heterosexism and heteronormativity are enacted within school contexts, it shows that by analysing language, we can discover much about how educators and students experience sexual diversity in their schools, how sexual identities are constructed through language, and how different statuses are ascribed to different sexual identities.
Motivated by the lack of scholarly understanding of the substantial gender difference in attitudes toward the use of military force, Richard C. Eichenberg has mined a massive data set of public ...opinion surveys to draw new and important conclusions. By analyzing hundreds of such surveys across more than sixty countries,Gender, War, and World Orderoffers researchers raw data, multiple hypotheses, and three major findings.
Eichenberg poses three questions of the data: Are there significant differences in the opinions of men and women on issues of national security? What differences can be discerned across issues, culture, and time? And what are the theoretical and political implications of these attitudinal differences? Within this framework,Gender, War, and World Ordercompares gender difference on military power, balance of power, alliances, international institutions, the acceptability of war, defense spending, defense/welfare compromises, and torture. Eichenberg concludes that the centrality of military force, violence, and war is the single most important variable affecting gender difference; that the magnitude of gender difference on security issues correlates with the economic development and level of gender equality in a society; and that the country with the most consistent gender polarization across the widest range of issues is the United States.
As anyone who has read Chaucer'sCanterbury Talesknows, Middle English literature is rife with sexually explicit language and situations. Less canonical works can be even more brazen in describing ...illicit acts of sexual activity and sexual violence. Such scenes and language were not, however, included exclusively for titillation. InObscene Pedagogies, Carissa M. Harris argues instead for obscenity's usefulness in sexual education. She investigates the relationship between obscenity, gender, and pedagogy in Middle English and Middle Scots literary texts from 1300 to 1580 to show how sexually explicit and defiantly vulgar speech taught readers and listeners about sexual behavior and consent.
Through innovative close readings of literary texts including erotic lyrics, single-woman's songs, debate poems between men and women, Scottish insult poetry battles, andThe Canterbury Tales, Harris demonstrates how through its transgressive charge and galvanizing shock value, obscenity taught audiences about gender, sex, pleasure, and power in ways both positive and harmful. She focuses in particular on understudied female-voiced lyrics and gendered debate poems, many of which have their origin in oral culture, and includes teaching-ready editions of fourteen largely unknown anonymous lyrics in women's voices. Harris's own voice, proudly witty and sharply polemical, inspires the reader to address these medieval texts with an eye on contemporary issues of gender, violence, and misogyny.
Christians under Coversshifts how scholars and popular media talk about religious conservatives and sex. Moving away from debates over homosexuality, premarital sex, and other perceived sexual sins, ...Kelsy Burke examines Christian sexuality websites to show how some evangelical Christians use digital media to promote the idea that God wants married, heterosexual couples to have satisfying sex lives. These evangelicals maintain their religious beliefs while incorporating feminist and queer language into their talk of sexuality-encouraging sexual knowledge, emphasizing women's pleasure, and justifying marginal sexual practices within Christian marriages. This illuminating ethnography complicates the boundaries between normal and subversive, empowered and oppressed, and sacred and profane.
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