From Jessie

Something that struck me about Joanne Meyerowitz’s How Sex Changed, was just the unique nature of the whole topic in comparison to many of the other medical themes we have read about this semester. The issue of gender in How Sex Changed takes on many dimensions including medical, psychological, physical, personal and social. It is interesting in this author’s story to see how society and psychiatry played a role in defining “normal” gender roles, and to see how these definitions conflicted with the understanding, and feelings of sane people. It is interesting how despite personal liberties in America, peoples minds and bodies are still such a contested ground, as though the individual body still remains the property of the larger society. Despite an individuals personal feelings, and opinions regarding their body or sexual orientation, science, medicine and psychology have all played a role in defining what normal sexual roles are. In the past it seems science, medicine, and psychology may have betrayed themselves to the will of society, rather then remaining unbiased and simply seeking the socio-biological foundations of sex. It seems many medical professionals carried societal biases with them and rather looked at the blurred lines of gender as a societal problem requiring repair.

The matter of medicine yielding to society, over doing unbiased research seems to represent one of the great challenges to medicine throughout many of the books we have read this semester. I find the idea that medicine yields to society to be full of conflict, because we look to medicine as an embodiment of science, and see that science should be unbiased, yet researchers have historically allowed their own biases to play into their research, even when their research subjects include the bodies and minds of real people. This all raises questions about how free we all are, and what role the medical-industrial complex has in shaping the lives of individuals.