In the mid-1950s, newspapers and magazines excitedly reported on scientist-explorers undertaking daring expeditions to harpoon gray whales off the North American Pacific Coast. Tales of enraged mother whales bashing boats and groups of men attempting risky technological feats painted an image of maritime scientific adventure. The scene of these adventures was the foggy southern California… Read more →
Tag: Biology
Intersex Revolutionary War Hero Did Good Because Doctors Did No Harm
The startling knowledge that the Polish nobleman and military leader, Casimir Pulaski, a hero of the American Revolution, may have been intersex should leave us with two important takeaways. First, people have always been born with intersex traits, or atypical sex development. Even the ancient laws of the Talmud recognized this fact, offering rules for… Read more →
The Trump Administration Wants to Define a Person’s Sex at Birth. It’s Just Not That Simple
A memo circulating through the Trump Administration proposes that several government agencies should define sex as “a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” according to the New York Times. This definition is a blunt instrument that, along with its cruel dismissal of the transgender population,… Read more →
Almost Fourteen: The Book That Stopped Me in My Research Tracks
One of the things I always warn people about before their first archival trip is just how boring historical research can be. We sit for days in silent archives, flipping through folders of papers, hoping to find little tidbits that we can build into a cohesive narrative about the past. (Thank goodness for the invention… Read more →
Sex and Gender in a Petri Dish
The HeLa cell line, infamously derived in 1951 from the tumor of Henrietta Lacks, was cultured and immortalized to provide standardized research material for scientists, generating an astonishing 74,000 scientific publications. HeLa, originating from “female” cells, became the most widely used cell line in twentieth century biomedical science, including in critical areas such as cancer… Read more →
Being the Same and Different
This time last year, I’d just returned from three months at the University of Vienna being the Käthe Leichter visiting professor in Gender Studies and Women’s Studies. This position, much like Iris Andraschek’s installation Der Muse Reicht’s, which dominates the inner courtyard of the main campus there, indicates the strides that gender studies has made… Read more →