Anne Fausto-Sterling > Quotes

“Scientists do not simply read nature to find truths to apply in the social world. Instead, they use truths taken from our social relationships to structure, read, and interpret the natural”
― Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality

“Ever since the field of biology emerged in the United States and Europe at the start of the nineteenth century, it has been bound up in debates over sexual, racial, and national politics. And as our social viewpoints have shifted, so has the science of the body.”
― Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality

“Male and female babies may be born. But those complex, gender-loaded individuals we call men and women are produced. The complex assembly line includes all of our socialization processes, of which the acquisition of scientific knowledge is but one. Since our culture offers a privileged place to science, however, it is an especially important one.”
― Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men

“If the state and the legal system have an interest in maintaining a two-party sexual system, they are in defiance of nature. For biologically speaking, there are many gradations running from female to male; and depending on how one calls the shots, one can argue that along that spectrum lie at least five sexes - and perhaps even more. For some time medical investigators have recognized the concept of the intersexual body... Indeed, I would argue further that sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum that defies the constraints of even five categories.”
― Anne Fausto-Sterling