Wordtrade.com
Medicine
Review Essays of Academic, Professional & Technical Books in the Humanities & Sciences
Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution by Leonard Shlain (Viking) From the best selling author of Art and Physics and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess comes a provocative new book, Sex, Time and Power, that will change our views of human sexuality and evolution.
According to Leonard Shlain, Chief of
Laparoscopic Surgery at
Many women assume the invention of the Pill was the most
important sexual event in history. But many eons earlier, they acquired a far
more potent power: they became the first female of any species to gain the
mental grit necessary to override their sexual urges and demand sex on their
terms. Men, who craved sex more than any other mate animal, were suddenly faced
with a crisis unknown to other species—they confronted females firmly in
possession of minds of their own. A woman’s veto over sex became the source of
her power and the root of his frustration. For the first time among the animals,
men had to negotiate sex with women.
Bipedalism, narrow pelvises and enormous fetal heads
precipitated a crisis for our species resulting in a legion of changes. Women,
facing the grave threat of dying during childbirth, needed to grasp the link
between sex and painful labor nine months later. But, first, they had to learn
how to maneuver in the dimension of the future. They lost estrus (heat),
acquired a menses accompanied by heavy bleeding and painful cramps, and began to
experience orgasms, all necessary evolutionary adaptations allowing them to
discover time.
Women then taught the majestic secret of foresight to men,
who used it to become the planet’s most fearsome predator. Men learned, to their
dismay, that they were mortal. Finally, upon figuring out their role in
impregnation, men realized they could live on through their children. These
insights changed how men related to women and why they adopted the role of
husbands and fathers.
In Sex, Time and Power, Shlain explores how these archaic insights dramatically altered all subsequent human culture, from the nature of courtship, to the origin of marriage, to the evolution of language, funerals, and religions. He offers carefully reasoned, and certain to be controversial, discussions on such subjects as menstruation, orgasm, puberty, circumcision, male aggression, menopause, baldness, left-handedness, the evolution of language, homosexuality, and the origin of marriage.
Written in a lively and accessible style,
Sex, Time and Power is a compelling book that challenges accepted views
of human sexuality and is sure to stimulate new thinking about old ideas and
generate heated debate in the media and among readers interested in human
evolution and the history of sexuality.
The Science/Fiction of Sex: Feminist Deconstruction and the Vocabularies of
Heterosex by Annie Potts
(Routledge)
What can we learn from exploring the differences in male and female orgasmic
experience? Is the penis an entity with a mind of its own?
These issues and others, such as the popular portrayals of male sexuality as
active and outwardly focused, and female sexuality as passive and internally
located, are discussed in
The Science/Fiction of Sex.
Part of the series,
Women and Psychology, which brings together current theory and research on
women and psychology, it bridges the gap between abstract research and the
reality of women’s lives by integrating theory and practice, research and
policy. Each book in the series addresses a ‘cutting edge’ issue of research.
Exploring contemporary feminist and
post-structuralist theories of sex and gender, Annie Potts, who teaches critical
sexuality studies in the Department of Gender Studies at the University of
Canterbury, New Zealand, investigates how people make sense of such concepts as
heterosexuality, orgasm, sexual dysfunction, femininity and masculinity.
As explained in the book, there are three prevalent discourses operating within
contemporary sexology: the biological imperative, the coital
imperative, and the orgasmic imperative. The biological and coital
imperatives say that penile-vaginal intercourse is the normal and natural sexual
activity between men and women, since it serves to procreate the species. The
orgasmic imperative says that sexual activity culminates most healthily in
orgasm.
The Science/Fiction of Sex
analyzes and challenges these three
dominant discourses in terms of both female sexual pleasures and safer sex.
Potts asked men and women about their actual experiences of heterosex. This
interview material, combined with excerpts from sexological and medical texts
and features from film and television, draws attention to the ways in which
western cultural constructs influence our ideas and experiences of the body, sex
and gender. Contemporary theories of sex and gender are explored alongside an
investigation of how people make sense of such concepts as heterosexuality,
orgasm, sexual dysfunction, femininity and masculinity, and safer sex practice.
The Science/Fiction of Sex will be of great
interest to those studying women and psychology as well as gender studies,
cultural studies, feminist studies, sociology, philosophy, public health and
education.
Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World: Readings and Sources
edited by Laura K. McClure (Interpreting Ancient History: Blackwell)
explores the fascinating world of sex and gender roles in the classical
period. It provides readers with essays that represent a range of
perspectives on women, gender and sexuality in the ancient world. They
are accessible to general readers whilst also challenging them to
confront problems of evidence and interpretation, new theories and
methodologies, and contemporary assumptions about gender and sexuality.
The essays in
Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World represent a range of
perspectives on women, gender, and sexuality in the ancient world. They
are accessible to a general audience while at the same time challenging
readers to confront problems of evidence and interpretation, new
theories and methodologies, as well as their own contemporary
assumptions about gender and sexuality. They also address a range of
different literary genres, from ancient medical writings and
inscriptions to more canonical works such as epic, lyric, elegiac, and
dramatic poetry. From a pedagogical standpoint, all of the essays may
be paired with a diverse array of primary sources; for example, Helen
King's essay, "Bound to Bleed," responds not only to ancient Greek
medical writings but also to literary accounts of Artemis such as those
found in Athenian drama. Moreover, the essays represent a broad spectrum
of scholarly perspectives, and somewhat trace the debates and currents
of the field from the late 1960s to the late 1990s. Part I (Greece)
contains four essays on Greek literature and society and Part II (Rome)
includes four essays on Latin literature; Part III (Classical Tradition)
concludes the volume with a consideration of the Procne and Philomela
myth in both Greek and Roman sources and its relevance for feminist
scholars.
An attempt has been made to include perspectives not only on ancient
women, but also on men and masculinity in classical antiquity. Many of
the essays that deal explicitly with women and their representation also
illuminate the construction of male subjectivity. Some consider similar,
issues but from different angles or periods, such as King's essay on
women in Hippocrates and Richlin's on Pliny. The essays by Zeitlin and
Dover both aim at elucidating a larger issue, the function of gender
categories in classical Athens, although they do so by exploring the
different genres of drama and oratory. Winkler and Richlin, while
examining very different types of sources, both deploy a similar
approach drawn from women's history that views women as agents capable
of resisting male systems of control rather than victims. Both Joshel
and Wyke relate the literary representation of women in Roman texts to
their political environment. Unfortunately, space restrictions played a
much larger role than I would have liked in formulating this volume. The
focus has been restricted to literary texts, even though numerous books
and articles on gender, sexuality, and the visual arts have appeared in
recent years (see Kampen 1996; Stewart 1997; Koloski-Ostrow and Lyons
1997; B. Cohen 2000). These constraints also compelled me to omit many
stimulating and seminal essays, some of which are included in the
References and Further Reading at the end of this introduction.
To summarize the contents of the volume, it opens with an influential
essay by Dover that lays out Athenian attitudes toward sexuality and
serves as a good introduction to basic aspects of Athenian sexual
practices and social organization. Dover discusses the seclusion and
protection of reputable women, prohibitions against adultery and sexual
relations outside marriage, including prostitution and homosexuality,
the value placed on virginity for both males and females, and the
relation of homoerotic behavior to political life and social status.
Because this essay focuses mostly on fourth-century prose, including
oratory and philosophy, it has been paired with an excerpt from
Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium about the origins of the two
sexes.
Winkler's reading of Sappho situates a female voice in a discursive
universe created and transmitted by men. He shows how Sappho's poetry
appropriates traditional heroic and masculine vocabulary to articulate a
private, feminine world. But in contrast to the univocal narrative of
the Homeric tradition, these poems reflect multiple perspectives and
shifting identifications. This "many-mindedness," Winkler suggests,
reflects the difficulties encountered by women in a male-dominated
culture in which they are forced to become bilingual, proficient both in
the culture of the linguistic minority and in the majority language of
men. This essay represents one approach to women's history that views
women as agents rather than as victims, empowered by their own
subculture and thus capable of resisting male control. Translations of
two of Sappho's poems accompany this piece, and two passages from
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey to which they are compared.
King explores the meaning of female virginity, a topic also briefly
addressed by Dover, in ancient Greek thought and myth. She begins with
the premise that the concept of woman for the Greeks always involved
ambiguity. Focusing on a short medical treatise entitled Peri
Parthenion (On Unmarried Girls), King draws on structuralist theory to
analyze the role of the goddess Artemis in the female life cycle,
especially menstruation. The treatise elucidates the importance of
menstruation and pregnancy for female health: the inability to
menstruate, in Hippocrates' view, induces disease and even madness. King
then explores the contradictory functions of Artemis in female life: she
does not bleed but governs bleeding transitions; she both binds,
causing suffocation and strangulation, and releases, thereby
facilitating childbirth. These two contrary motions provide a conceptual
framework for understanding the meanings of female transitions in
ancient Greek culture. A translation of the Hippocratic treatise and a
passage from Euripides' Hippolytus concerning virginity conclude the
chapter.
While King focuses primarily on fifth-century medical writing, Zeitlin
provides another perspective on the male representation of women in a
different but contemporary literary genre, that of Athenian tragedy.
Influenced by social anthropology and structuralist and psychoanalytic
theory, Zeitlin analyzes how tragedy constructs and deconstructs
categories of masculine and feminine. She argues for tragedy as a
feminizing , genre that functions as an "initiatory process" with the
ultimate purpose of strengthening male civic identity. Athenian tragedy
thus exploits the female as an Other through which the male spectator
comes to understand himself. In the theater of Dionysus, female
characters serve as a vehicle for exploring the "male project of
selfhood." Passages that illustrate some of Zeitlin's discussion follow
the essay, including Deianira's speech announcing her intention to
restore her husband's love by means of magic and Heracles' final
condemnation of her in Sophocles' Women of Trachis, and the
metatheatrical scene of cross-dressing in Euripides' Bacchae.
Like the Dover essay in Part I, Finley's piece offers a general
introduction to the study of women - although not sexual behavior - in
Roman society. The essay emphasizes the problems facing social
historians who attempt to study Roman women, since they appear only in
male authors predisposed to the "salacious and scandalous." Finley
traces the problem to the Roman practice of denying women social
subjectivity: they lacked individual names in the proper sense and their
virtues - beauty, evenness of temperament, chastity, and childbearing -
served to reinforce the malegoverned familia. Only religion provided an
outlet for Roman women's energies and talents. The essay has been paired
with a range of Roman funerary inscriptions for departed wives and
daughters that highlight the traditional female virtues and even praise
some non-traditional ones.
Observing that Livy's history of Rome is full of raped, dead, or absent
women, such as Tarpeia and the Sabines, Joshel examines the role played
by violence against women in Roman myths of foundation. She focuses on
Lucretia, a virtuous wife raped by an arrogant king, who commits ;
suicide to protect her reputation and to provide a public lesson about
female chastity, and on Verginia, a daughter killed by her father to
defend her from the threat of rape. Joshel seeks to understand why each
of these stories precedes or catalyzes a revolutionary moment in the
political prehistory of Rome. Influenced by Theweleit's Male Fantasies
(see Works Cited in Chapter 7), an account of masculinist ideology in
Nazi Germany, she juxtaposes images of violence against women in Rome,
Nazi Germany, and the contemporary United States to interrogate
representations of gender in the formation and destruction of empires.
The women in these texts therefore comment not only on the status of
women in Roman society, but also on the Roman construction of manhood.
A translation of Livy's account of Lucretia from The Founding of Rome
accompanies the essay.
Wyke addresses more fully the question of the relation between literary
representation and social reality raised earlier by Finley in connection
with Roman women. Her essay also fruitfully engages with the issue of
compromised masculinity raised by Zeitlin, albeit from the angle of the
mistress, or puella domina, of Latin love elegy. Focusing on the figure
of Cynthia in Propertius, Wyke attempts to "read through" the poems to a
living woman as a means of elucidating the difficulties of relating
women in texts to women in society. She argues that Cynthia's
representation is inextricably bound to issues of poetic practice:
although realistically drawn, Cynthia as mistress is a poetic fiction
that conforms to the requirements of the elegiac genre, related not to
the life of the poet, but to the "grammar" of his poetry. At the same
time, Wyke shows how this literary construction engages with
contemporary political discourses on women in the early Empire. The
essay is paired with translations of Propertius 1.8a-b and 2.5 as well
as a passage from Cicero's Pro Caelio on another notorious mistress,
Clodia, the real-life lover of the poet Catullus.
Richlin's analysis of Pliny the Elder's treatise on the curative and
harmful powers of the products of the female body in his encyclopedic
Natural History, especially breast milk and menstrual fluid, concludes
the Roman section. This essay examines some rather obscure material, "a
little-known wilderness" that could be characterized as folk medicine,
to understand Roman ideas about female sexuality; in doing so, it
engages directly with work on women in the Greek medical writers, such
as that of King. Pliny's text considers the mundane aspects of female
life, including menstruation, fertility, contraception, abortion,
aphrodisiacs, pregnancy, childbirth, and infant care, topics of little
interest to the Roman poets. She shows how Pliny's discussion attributes
a dangerous power to the female body and its reproductive capacity that
reveals how deeply ambivalent the Romans felt about women. Richlin
argues that Pliny can serve as starting point for two different
approaches to women's history, one that views women as the victims of
male oppression, the other that sees them as agents able to subvert the
male system. In the former view, Pliny reinforces ideas about Roman
society as an oppressive patriarchy; in the latter, he shows the
fundamental power this society attributed to women and their bodies. The
essay concludes with a translation of the relevant passage from Pliny's
Natural History.
In the final essay, Joplin examines the myth of Philomela, a woman raped
and then brutally silenced by her sister's husband, and its meanings for
feminist scholars. The tragic poet Sophocles coined the phrase, "the
voice of the shuttle," to refer to the tapestry that Philomela wove to
tell her story. Joplin critiques the appropriation of this phrase by a
male scholar to celebrate male literary creation rather than "the
violated woman's emergence from silence." By beginning with this
critique, Joplin shows the reader how traditional critics reinforce the
cultural assumptions of the texts they interpret. Approaching Ovid's
version of the myth from a structuralist perspective, she demonstrates
how such classical myths, even violent ones, may empower feminist
critics. For example, the Philomela myth posits woman as an agent who
shapes her own destiny, as an artist and creator, while the successful
weaving stratagem shows the ultimate failure of male domination.
Readings that resist traditional interpretations may therefore rescue
classical sources for feminist scholars and writers. The essay concludes
with a selection from Ovid's Metamorphoses that tells the story of
Tereus, Procne, and Philomela.
Gender, Sexuality, and Early Music edited by Todd C. Borgerding
(Criticism and Analysis of Early Music: Routledge) This
collection addresses questions of gender and sexuality as they relate to music
from the middle ages to the early seventeenth century. These essays present a
body of scholarship that considers music as part of the history of sexuality,
stimulating conversation within musicology as well as bringing music studies
into dialogue with feminist, gender and queer theory. "Music is indeed well suited to women,
and perhaps also to others who have the appearance of men, but not to real men;
for the latter ought not to render their minds effeminate and afraid of death."'
The well‑known declaration of a Renaissance courtier reminds us, perhaps better
than any other document, that attitudes connecting gender and sexuality to music
inherited from antiquity occupied a central position in the epistemology of
early modern music. And while the men populating Castiglione's court ultimately
reassure the reader (and themselves) that, by the authority of Plato, Aristotle,
Lycurgus et al., music need not necessarily negate masculinity, yet the anxious
note of their discourse shows that they did not forget those women, or those
emasculated men, whose presence they so acutely sensed. This is worth
remembering if only because we have for so long accepted male heterosexuality as
normative; but the rhetoric of the courtiers exchange, proceeding from a norm
(women, effeminate men) in order to define the exception ("real men" who play
music) suggests that the situation in early modem Europe was somewhat more
complicated than that. Recent musical scholarship on early
modern repertories has, in fact, been busy complicating the discourse of
musicology. Scholars drawing on the traditions of feminism, gender studies, and
queer studies (who have sometimes been described as practicing the "New
Musicology") have a long tradition of being received with a polemic that
reproduces the anxiety of Castiglione's courtiers. However, it might be claimed
that the unease with which the topic of gender and sexuality has been sometimes
met in the modern academy has lessened since the years when essays by such
scholars as Susan McClary or Suzanne Cusick would raise a maelstrom of
opposition, with the masculinity of not only music, but the discipline of
musicology at stake. Now, if controversy exists, its tone is somewhat less
strident, and the study of gender and sexuality has become a part of our
mainstream musical culture. These topics appear regularly in leading journals,
and no national or international meeting of music scholars seems complete
without a contribution exploring feminitity, masculinity, or one of a variety of
sexualities. Polemics between "Old" and "New" musicologies are increasingly
supplanted by intelligent assessment of what is learned about music when we
bring fundamental questions of the human condition to the table. Such work as
that by Robert Kendrick' and Craig Monson on nuns,' Suzanne Cusick on the
gendering of the MonteverdiArtusi debate,' or Laura Macy' and Kate van Orden on
eroticism in secular repertories,' has been met not so much with outrage as with
excitement. The writers for this volume owe much to
these and other scholars, but, as will become apparent, do not adhere to a
single methodology in their approach to gender, sexuality, and music. The
question of female patronage is taken up by Donna Cardamone Jackson, who
reassesses the tragic biography of Isabella d'Este in order to place her
contributions in the context of a gendered society. Biography also occupies
Thomasin LeMay, who blends modern feminist scholarship with historical record to
produce a fresh view of the life of Madalenna Casulana. The musical and visual
portrayal of martial women on stage is the topic of two important studies here.
Kelley Harness shows how a female regency in early 17th century Florence
promoted the cult of virgins and female warriors through music in order to
solidify its political position, and Nina Treadwell unravels the influence of
patronage in the appearance of female warrior in Ferrarese spectacle. Several
essays provide fresh readings of important pieces or repertories. Laurie Strass
explores the development of a gendered modal language by madrigal composers
before Monteverdi, while Christina Fuhrmann reveals the erotic undertones in a
madrigal comedy by Alessandro Striggio. Lianne Curtiss listens for a feminist
voice in music based on the poetry of Christine de Pizan, and my own
contribution suggests through a reading of Planxit autem David that early
renaissance musical rhetoric was connected to a culture of homoeroticism.
Instrumental music emerges as an important category in this volume as well: Rose
Pruixma shows how ethnic dances were erotically colored in ballet de cour and
tragedie lyrique, and Andrew dell' Antonio unpacks the construction of desire in
early 17th century Italian instrumental music.
While important for what they contribute, these essays also point out that the
field is far from exhausted. Leaving aside the question of musics earlier than
the renaissance (which ultimately fell outside the scope of this volume), we are
faced with centuries teeming with erotically texted madrigals and chansons;
sacred music devoted to a pantheon of saints, the Virgin Mary, and Christ (whose
bodies and sexualities were central to their sanctity); issues of patronageall
of which need to be assessed with cultural and historical sensitivity. This
volume, then, represents the ongoing discussion of we other courtiers, who seek
to better understand the music and culture of early modern Europe. Contents: Series Editor's Foreword Acknowledgments
Introduction Todd Borgerding 1. Isabella Medici-Orsini: A Portrait of
Self-Affirmation Donna G. Cardamone 2. "Simil combattimento fatto de Dame": The
Musico-theatrical Entertainments of Margherita Gonzaga's balletto delle donne
and the Female Warrior in Ferrarese Cultural History Nina Treadwell 3. Madalena
Casulana: my body knows unheard of songs Thomasin LaMay 4. Chaste Warriors and
Virgin Martyrs in Florentine Musical Spectacle Kelley Harness 5. La nonne della
ninfa: Feminine Voices and Modal Rhetoric in the Generations Before Monteverdi
Laurie Stras 6. Gossip, Erotica, and the Male Spy in Alessandro Striggio's Il
Cicalamento delle donne al bucato (1567) Christina Fuhrmann 7. Construction of
Desire in Early Baroque Instrumental Music Andrew Dell'Antonio 8. Music, Sex,
and Ethnicity: Signification in Lully's Theatrical Costumes Rose A. Pruiksma 9.
Sic ego te dilegebam: Music, Homoeroticism, and the Sacred in Early Modern
Europe Todd Borgerding 10. Christine de Pizan and 'Dueil Angoisseux'ii Liane
Curtis Postscript: Dancing with the Ingrate Suzanne Cusick
Y
: The Descent of Men by Steve Jones (Houghton Mifflin) Steve
Jones is a best-selling British science writer, host of a hit BBC science
series, & witty science popularizer. His sardonic wit, makes
Y great general interest science, as fascinating to women as to men. This
entertaining, irreverent, offbeat but scholarly primer on the male anatomy &
male mind allows us, the general public, to follow along through the
complexities of genetics and even molecular biology to find out about the
precariousness and peculiarity of the male creature.
In a nutshell, Jones declares that it’s men, not women, who are the weaker sex.
Among other unlikely facts you might not have wanted to know: the average length
of a man's penis is less than six inches, while that of a blue whale is ten
feet. Here’s more of the growing list of male biological shortcomings:
The “prince of chromosomes” is not so royal after all. The Y chromosome
essentially exists to shuttle genes between females.
Men survive the death of a partner far less well than women do.
Over the past ten thousand years, genes show, most of the time men have
stayed at home and women have migrated.
Men’s sperm undergo more mutations than eggs of women the same age do.
Chemical pollution is driving down sperm counts.
These are only a few of the facts that spill out in
Y.
With literary flair and a jaunty style, Jones offers a landmark exploration of
maleness, based on today's explosion of biological research about what makes a
male – a topic of consuming interest to at least half the population. From novel
insights into men's hormones, to hair loss and the hydraulics of man's most
intimate organ, Jones lays out the case for and against masculinity. But this
self-proclaimed "biologist in the bedroom" goes far beyond discussing straight
science. He writes, for instance, of a meeting between Napoleon and Alexander
the Great in which they discussed baldness cures rather than matters of state.
And, as many angry males have found out, to the law, fatherhood means more than
genes – a father who is not a biological parent but who leaves a family with
children still has paternal responsibilities.
When released in
Steve Jones marshals recent research to reach a conclusion that many women have
long held: men are the second sex. Compared with their partners, men are in
relative decline, whether in social status or in length of life. Both halves of
the population have to learn to cope with the Y chromosome.
Y
helps show them how.
Headline 3
insert content here