Messengers of Sex
Book (italiano):
Combining feminist theories of the body and science and technology studies, Roberts (sociology, Lancaster U., UK) examines the historical development and contemporary state of technoscientific and biomedical understandings of the role of hormones as "messengers of sex." She argues that the common understanding of hormones as "messengers of sex" is that they operate within closed biological or bodily systems, carrying messages that stimulate cells to produce proteins that act to create sexed brains, organs, bodies, and behaviors. They both derive from (inherent) sex and lead to the creation of (material) sex. Roberts however suggests that hormones not be seen as messaging an inherent sex within bodies but instead as "active agents in bio-social systems that constitute material-semiotic entities known as `sex'." This shift in the view of hormones may help resolve the long-standing difficulty in feminist theory that talks only about gender and the social and fails to address the existing physical and thus will aid in the formulation of feminist interventions into, for example, debates about the politics of hormonal medications such as the pill and hormone-replacement therapy. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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