Tracy Duckett > Recent Status Updates

"this is not science fiction" it says, and then goes on to describe a situation which is basically The Borg from Star Trek XD

(And this is actually page 460 even if Goodreads for some reason doesn't regard that as possible.)

On page 448, having mentioned the historical occurrence of eunuchs, this book then claims, "we can today not merely castrate a man, but also change his sex through surgical and hormonal treatments." - no. No we cannot.
No human has ever changed their sex. How can a book like this claim otherwise?

Slightly baffling section on 'sex and gender' which argues both that "woman" as a "social term" has barely any connection to "female" and then also explains that a woman is "a female member" of a particular society.

That different cultures have put different expectations on women doesn't mean the concept hasn't been understood in terms of the female. The expectations weren't placed on random people.

There are so many lines in this I want to highlight, I should have got it on kindle.
"How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order? First, you never admit that the order is imagined..."

An interesting point about the myth/story that is the American Declaration of Independence and how the concept of equality that draws on is based in a Christian concept of "a divinely created soul" and therefore in conflict with the biological fact of evolution.
But it seems to me perfectly possible to recognise everyone as equally human regardless of creation or evolution.

Fascinating info about the idea of collective fatherhood in some traditional societies who believed "a child is not born from the sperm of a single man, but from the accumulation of sperm in a woman's womb. A good mother will make a point of having sex with several different men, especially when she is pregnant, so that her child will enjoy the qualities (and paternal care)" of multiple men.
Lovely concept.

On the importance of shared myths to human civilisation: "Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights - and the money paid out in fees. Yet none of these things exist outside the stories that people invent and tell one another."

"fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively" - fascinating point that what makes humans really distinct from other creatures is our ability to describe things that don't exist, and that this ability to tell stories allows us to co-operate flexibly in large numbers.

I find some of this book quite contradictory in what it understands 'woman' to be.
A few paragraphs after, "society has adopted a simple masculine and feminine polarity," we have a point about how evolving neuroscience is showing us "individuals operate within a spectrum rather than discrete boxes", which reads oddly so soon after a recognition the boxrs are a cultural invention anyway.

This is full of interesting history, but I'm not sure how much faith to put in any of the information in here after reading that someone "who had joined the Scots Guards as a man, became the first transgender soldier and the first woman on the front line".
If this is someone who was born male, then this is not someone who was ever a woman on the front line or anywhere else.