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Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus. Right? The subject of sex differences is a staple of popular culture, and various fields—sociology, psychology, neurobiology, and, recently, genomics—have taken on the topic. Studies have argued that women talk more than men, that men occupy both high and low extremes of intelligence, and even, recently, that there are strong differences in the very wiring of male and female brains.
In her new book Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome, Sarah S. Richardson, an assistant professor of the history of science and of studies of women, gender, and sexuality, examines science’s claims to reveal “what is really real about male and female.” Her focus is on the sex chromosomes, the stretches of DNA referred to as X and Y that together determine biological sex in most mammals: individuals with two X chromosomes are female, and those with one X and one Y are male. The sex chromosomes, says Richardson, are “objects of scientific knowledge that have circulated between popular culture and scientific research...
In her new book Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome, Sarah S. Richardson, an assistant professor of the history of science and of studies of women, gender, and sexuality, examines science’s claims to reveal “what is really real about male and female.” Her focus is on the sex chromosomes, the stretches of DNA referred to as X and Y that together determine biological sex in most mammals: individuals with two X chromosomes are female, and those with one X and one Y are male. The sex chromosomes, says Richardson, are “objects of scientific knowledge that have circulated between popular culture and scientific research...