Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome

by Sarah S. Richardson

Overview

Human genomes are 99.9 percent identical—with one prominent exception. Instead of a matching pair of X chromosomes, men carry a single X, coupled with a tiny chromosome called the Y. Tracking the emergence of a new and distinctive way of thinking about sex represented by the unalterable, simple, and visually compelling binary of the X and Y chromosomes, Sex Itself examines the interaction between cultural gender norms and genetic theories of sex from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present, postgenomic age.
           
Using methods from history, philosophy, and gender studies of science, Sarah S. Richardson uncovers how gender has helped to shape the research practices, questions asked, theories and models, and descriptive language used in sex chromosome research. From the earliest theories of chromosomal sex determination, to the mid-century hypothesis of the aggressive XYY supermale, to the debate about Y chromosome degeneration, to the recent claim that male and female genomes are more different than those of humans and chimpanzees, Richardson shows how cultural gender conceptions influence the genetic science of sex. 
           
Richardson shows how sexual science of the past continues to resonate, in ways both subtle and explicit, in contemporary research on the genetics of sex and gender. With the completion of the Human Genome Project, genes and chromosomes are moving to the center of the biology of sex. Sex Itself offers a compelling argument for the importance of ongoing critical dialogue on how cultural conceptions of gender operate within the science of sex.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226084688
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	11/06/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sarah S. Richardson is professor of the history of science and of studies of women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University. She directs the Harvard GenderSci Lab.

Read an Excerpt

SEX ITSELF

The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome

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By Sarah S. Richardson

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Sarah S. Richardson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-08468-8

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CHAPTER 1

Sex Itself

Human genomes are 99.9 percent identical—with one prominent exception: instead of a matching pair of X chromosomes, men carry a single X, coupled with a small chromosome called the Y. Today, with the genome sequences of the human X and Y chromosomes at hand, geneticists are searching anew for the elements of maleness and femaleness—for what the famous American fly geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan in 1916 called "sex itself." With knowledge of the genes animating sex differences, researchers hope to aid medical understanding of sex-specific diseases and uncover the foundations of male-female differences in cognition, intelligence, and behavior. Some suggest that we will at last discover what it means to be a male or a female. Some hope that genomics will help us measure, quantitatively and precisely, differences between men and women. According to commentators in the March 2005 issue of Nature, which announced the publication of the complete sequence of the human X chromosome, these differences will likely prove to be greater than ever thought.

Tracking the emergence of a new and distinctive way of thinking about sex represented by the unalterable, simple, and visually compelling binary of the X and Y chromosomes, this book examines the interaction between cultural gender norms and genetic theories of sex from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present postgenomic age. The past century has seen enormous shifts in the biological model of sex. At the turn of the twentieth century, the metabolic theory ruled the day. Biologists believed that metabolic rate mediated masculinity and femininity and determined whether a newly fertilized egg became male or female. The hormonal model emerged in the 1920s and dominated the midcentury. The sex hormones, pharmaceutically powerful, quantitative, and malleable agents of sexual behavior and secondary sex characters, have been the overwhelming focus of histories of twentieth-century scientific ideas about sex. The genetic account of sex has received far less attention.

The genetic binary of the X and Y chromosomes was discovered at the turn of the twentieth century. It entered human biomedicine with revelations of cases of human males with extra X chromosomes (XXY) and females with only one X (XO) in the 1950s. Now, with the completion of the Human Genome Project, genes and chromosomes are moving to the center of the biology of sex. As this book shows, the X and Y chromosomes, little symbols of unbreachable sex dimorphism, came to anchor a conception of sex as a biologically fixed and unalterable binary, the very conception premonitioned by Morgan's "sex itself."

From the earliest theories of chromosomal sex determination, to the midcentury hypothesis of the aggressive XYY supermale, the longstanding belief that the X is the "female chromosome," and the recent claim that males and females have "different genomes," cultural gender conceptions have influenced the direction of sex chromosome genetics. Gender has helped to shape the questions that are asked, the theories and models proposed, the research practices employed, and the descriptive language used in the field of sex chromosome research. Analyzing the history of human sex chromosomes as gendered objects of scientific knowledge, this book adds gender to our intellectual histories of human genetics, and genetics to our histories of scientific theories of sex and gender.

Today, scientific and popular literature on the sex chromosomes is rich with examples of the gendering of the X and Y. Humorous maps of the X and Y chromosome—pinned up on laboratory walls and always good for a laugh in an otherwise dry scientific talk—assign stereotypical female and male traits to the X and Y, from the "Jane Austen appreciation locus" to "channel flipping" (see fig. 1.1). The X is dubbed the "female chromosome," takes the feminine pronoun "she," and has been described as the "big sister" to "her derelict brother that is the Y" and as the "sexy" chromosome. The X is frequently associated with the mysteriousness and variability of the feminine, as in a 2005 Science article headlined "She Moves in Mysterious Ways" and beginning, "The human X chromosome is a study in contradictions." The X is also described in traditionally gendered terms as the more "sociable," "controlling," "conservative," "monotonous," and "motherly" of the two sex chromosomes. Similarly, the Y is a "he" and ascribed traditional masculine qualities—"macho," "active," "clever," "wily," "dominant," and also "degenerate," "lazy," and "hyperactive."

Three common gendered tropes feature in popular and scientific writing on the sex chromosomes. This first is the portrayal of the X and Y as a heterosexual couple with traditionally gendered opposite or complementary roles and behaviors. For instance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) geneticist David Page says, "The Y married up, the X married down.... The Y wants to maintain himself but doesn't know how. He's falling apart, like the guy who can't manage to get a doctor's appointment or can't clean up the house or apartment unless his wife does it." Biologist and science writer David Bainbridge narrates the evolutionary history of the X and Y as a "sad divorce," set in motion when the "couple first stopped dancing," after which "they almost stopped communicating completely." The X is now an "estranged partner" of the Y, he writes, "having to resort to complex tricks." Oxford University geneticist Bryan Sykes similarly describes the X and Y as having a "once happy marriage" full of "intimate exchanges" now reduced to only an occasional "kiss on the cheek." A 2006 article on X-X pairing in females in Science by Pennsylvania State University geneticist Laura Carrel is headlined "'X'-Rated Chromosomal Rendezvous."

Second, sex chromosome biology is often conceptualized as a war of the sexes. In Matt Ridley's 1999 Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, the chapter on the X and Y chromosomes is titled "Conflict." It relates a story, straight from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (1992), of two chromosomes locked in antagonism and never able to understand each other. A 2007 ScienceNOW Daily News article similarly insists on describing a finding about the Z chromosome in male birds (the equivalent of the X in humans) as demonstrating "A Genetic Battle of the Sexes," while Bainbridge describes the lack of a second X in males as a "divisive ... discrepancy between boys and girls," a genetic basis for the supposed war of the sexes.

Third, sex chromosome researchers promote the X and Y as symbols of maleness and femaleness with which individuals are expected to identify and in which they might take pride. Sykes offers the Y chromosome as a totem of male bonding, urging males to celebrate their unique Y chromosomes, and calling for them to join together to save the Y from extinction in his 2003 Adam's Curse: A Future without Men. Females are also encouraged to identify with their Xs. Natalie Angier urges that women "must take pride in [their] X chromosomes.... They define femaleness." The "XX Factor" is a Slate column about women's work and life issues with the slogan "What Women Really Think" and is also the name of an annual competition for female video gamers. The promotional video for the US Society for Women's Health Research, designed to convince the viewer of how very different men and women really are, is titled What a Difference an X Makes!

The past decade has witnessed a wave of critical scholarship on the potential of the genome-sequencing projects to resurrect dangerous notions of human difference, but the focus has been more on race than gender. With the painful history of racial science in the background, publicly funded genome projects have supported research by historians, philosophers, and bioethicists to study the impact of new genome science on marginalized, vulnerable, or underrepresented groups. The history of sexual science—an enterprise that famously admonished that higher education could impair women's ovaries, pronounced that women are ruled by their emotions and not their intellects, and asserted that women are developmentally arrested males halfway between men and children—holds similar cautions of the dangers of uncritical scientific constructions of sex differences. Yet the questions to which scholars have so carefully and urgently attended in the case of genetic research on race and ethnicity are not being asked of genetic research on sex and gender. With this book, I hope to open a conversation about the methods and models of sex difference research in a genomic age.

THE SEX CHROMOSOMES

Chromosomes, housed in the nucleus of each of our cells, are packages of DNA (see fig. 1.2). Humans have 23 pairs of them. Each pair is composed of a chromosome received from the egg and the sperm. The chromosomes contain tightly coiled strands of DNA unique to each chromosome. Twenty-two of the pairs are homologous, which means that other than the small differences in gene variants that we inherit from our parents, the two chromosomes are identical. The twenty-third pair is different. In the case of males, it comprises an X partnered with the much smaller Y. Males are thus said to be "XY." Females possess two Xs and are "XX."

The sex chromosomes are widely recognizable symbols of genetic science. Doctors use them to indicate the sex of a fetus, and school science textbooks feature memorable clinical anomalies such as the XXY Klinefelter's male, who has an extra X chromosome, and the XO Turner's female, who possesses one X instead of two. Classically, reproductively viable phenotypic sex in humans has been seen as a three-step process: chromosomal and genetic initiation of gonad determination (ovaries or testes), followed by the production of the correct ratio of sex steroids (androgens and estrogens), leading to the development and differentiation of the reproductive organs and secondary sexual characters. In males, testes determination begins during fetal development (see fig. 1.3). This involves a genetic pathway requiring the SRY gene on the Y chromosome and the SOX9 gene on chromosome 17. As will be discussed in chapter 6, the genetics of female ovary determination has been less studied than that of the testes, but it too requires a sequence of genetic signals. The WNT4 gene on chromosome 1 is emerging as a crucial genetic factor in ovarian development.

Though often described as the "female" and "male" chromosomes, there is nothing essential about the X and Y in relation to femaleness and maleness. Chromosomes are only one form of sex-determining mechanism in the natural world. Birds have sex chromosomes, but the system is the reverse of mammals. In our avian cousins, males have the duplicate larger chromosome (called ZZ), while females are heterozygous (ZW), possessing one larger and one smaller chromosome. In fruit flies, sex is determined by the ratio of X chromosomes to autosomes, rather than the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, as in mammals. For turtles and many reptiles, sex depends on the temperature of the environment during early development, not sex chromosomes. Some species have just one sex, some have three or more, and some can change sexes during their lifetimes—and this can depend purely on the arrangement of sex chromosomes, wholly on exposure to environmental factors, or on a combination of the two.

Indeed, the ambiguous and indeterminate relationship between the X, the Y, and sex will animate much of the story in this book. In principle, any chromosome may contain genes relevant to sex differences. There are also other sexed processes in the human genome, such as maternal and paternal genetic imprinting, a process by which gene variants may be active or inactive depending on the parent of origin. Nonetheless, for the past century, the sex chromosomes have been the principal objects of analysis of genetic sex research, and today they continue to dominate the landscape of genomic reasoning about sex and gender.

SEX ITSELF

In 1916, Morgan strenuously warned against thinking of the X and Y as "sex itself." He foresaw that the prominent dimorphism of the X and Y in the human genome would become imbued with special significance in the eyes of biologists. Indeed, the quest to know the thing itself or to access the first cause would become a central theme of twentieth-century molecular science. Within this new worldview, the anatomical markers of sex and the final expression of gender identity are not themselves "sex itself," but mere signifiers, traces, and elaborations of the genotypic dimorphism that underlies it all.

Biologists have never been under the illusion that genes and chromosomes are all there is to the biology of sex. Today, as in Morgan's time, researchers acknowledge that human biological "sex" is not diagnosed by any single factor, but is the result of a choreography of genes, hormones, gonads, genitals, and secondary sex characters. Today, academic sexologists typically distinguish between chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, hormonal sex, genital sex, and sexual identity. Some would add sexual preference, gender identity, morphological sex, fertility, and even brain sex to this list.

This layered conception of sex derives from clinical practice. It owes its origins to the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of sexual development and identity. Consider an individual with the intersex condition androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS). She may have "male" chromosomal sex (XY), "male" gonadal sex (internal undescended testes), and "male" hormonal sex (high levels of androgens), but "female" genitalia (breasts and vagina) and "female" identity. Similarly, a male-to-female transgender individual who has received hormonal and surgical therapy may have "male" chromosomal sex (XY), but "female" hormones, genitals, facial appearance, secondary sex characters, and identity. A uni-dimensional conception of sex falls apart in the face of these clinical encounters. Researchers and physicians have innovated accordingly, creating a conceptual apparatus for describing sex, gender, and sexuality in all of their social and biological dimensions.

In the 1970s, feminist theorists such as Gayle Rubin helped to cement this layered and contextual understanding of sex. Rubin distinguished between the biological category of "sex" (typically, male or female) and the social roles and expectations of "gender" (such as heterosexual masculinity and femininity). The sex/gender distinction analytically separates the anatomy and physiology of males and females (sex) from the behavioral and cultural expectations associated with the ideals of masculinity and femininity (gender). By design, the distinction underscores the idea that while sex may be fixed and given, gender is fluid and changeable.

Ironically, however, the sex/gender distinction served to harden the notion of the X and Y as "sex itself." In the late twentieth century, Western society underwent a revolution in gender roles, signified by the widespread entry of women into public life. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people asserted a political identity and became more socially visible. Hormone therapy and reconstructive surgery advanced to the point where doctors were able to alter the body chemistry, anatomy, and gendered appearance of a man or a woman. Although the morphological, genital, gonadal, and hormonal body was rendered more fluid by these developments, chromosomal sex remained intact as the kernel or foundation of the biological sex concept. The X and Y came to represent the necessary alter ego of gender fluidity, signifying what nature intended the sexual fate of the infant to be. Cynthia Kraus, writing on fly genetics, has memorably called this notion of genetic sex "naked sex," or "that part of sex which rebuffs the gender microscope."

The X and Y emerged from this twentieth-century project of troubling our conceptions of sex and gender at the base of a hierarchy of conceptual layers of sex and gender that moves from "hard" to "soft": chromosomal or genotypic sex; then hormonal, gonadal, and morphological sex; and finally gender presentation and sexual orientation. In common parlance, the distillation of "chromosomal sex" even began to be substituted for the notion of "biological sex." Conceived as developmentally prior to hormones and culture, the X and Y chromosomes remain our closest approximation of "sex itself."

The visual binary of the XX and the XY signify that part of sex that is thought to be unchangeable and most fundamental. At the level of the chromosomes, the gender rainbow, it is thought, falls away. The binary is stark: XX is female and XY is male. Among all of the conceptions of "sex," chromosomal sex is considered the most elemental and ultimately diagnostic of one's "true" sex. In the biosciences as well as in the popular imagination, the X and Y are seen as a source of order and clarity. In the midst of gender chaos, some take them to represent the essence of maleness and femaleness and the ultimate naturalness, and hence rightness, of social customs and practices organized around the different roles, interests, and capacities of the two sexes. While hormones and culture help to shape gender, genetics alone, it is thought, can reveal "sex itself."
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from SEX ITSELF by Sarah S. Richardson. Copyright © 2013 Sarah S. Richardson. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

1. Sex Itself

 
2. The Odd Chromosomes
 
3. How the X and Y Became the Sex Chromosomes


4. A New Molecular Science of Sex


5. A Chromosome for Maleness
 
6. Sexing the X
 
7. The Search for the Sex-Determining Gene

8. Save the Males!
 
9. Are Men and Women as Different as Humans and Chimpanzees?

10.Gender and the Human Genome
 
Acknowledgments
 
Notes
 
Bibliography
 Index

Editorial Reviews

Effortlessly combining methods from analytic philosophy of science, history of science, and gender analysis, Sarah S. Richardson offers a rich and extremely rewarding set of case studies of gender interactions with genetics, demonstrating how gender assumptions have led geneticists, over the course of a century, to ‘bypass standard methodology, ignore alternative models, privilege certain research questions, and skew their interpretation of evidence.’

Elisabeth Lloyd

Erudite yet accessible, meticulously researched, and elegantly written, Sarah S. Richardson’s Sex Itself examines the history of modern genetic research on human sex difference. The book is ambitiously pitched and yet magisterially successful in delivering what it promises….There is no question that Richardson’s book will remain the most authoritative text on the subject for many years ahead.

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences

Through a series of deeply researched case studies, Sarah S. Richardson shows how thoroughly gender ideologies permeated twentieth- and twenty-first-century research on the so-called sex chromosomes. An essential addition to feminist science studies.

Helen E. Longino

This is the history I’ve been waiting for: the lucid recounting of a century’s worth of scientific and popular efforts to ground our notions of maleness and femaleness—and their supposed Mars/Venus opposition—in the strands of genetic material that we call X and Y. In Sex Itself, Sarah S. Richardson moves beyond simple notions of gender bias in science to carefully describe both how gender beliefs shape research trajectories and how scientific findings inform cultural and political agendas.

Steven Epstein

This book convincingly documents the social and cultural values molding changeable gender views and warns that prevailing norms influence the path of scientific research. Recommended.

Choice - R. A. Hoots

"Sex Itself offers an insightful analysis of how 'sex' and 'gender' as social odering concepts are woven into genetic research. . . . At the same time, [Richardson] offers something more than a straightforward account of how science is sexed and gendered. At its core, Sex Itself is concerned with ethics as much as history."

Women's Review of Books - Monica J. Casper

An understanding of the biology of sex and its relation to the complexities of human gender adequate to the postgenomic era is an urgently needed but dauntingly difficult task. It requires tracing the history from which scientific ideas of sex and gender have developed, and the echoes of which shape our contemporary concepts; a grasp of the decisive feminist critique of the science of sex and gender over the last half century, but one that goes beyond the disclosure of bias to survey comprehensively the influence of ideas about gender on science; and a proper understanding of the revolutionary developments in genomic science that have occurred in the last twenty years. This book provides all of these things with skill, sensitivity, and elegance. It will provide a definitive starting point for future discussions of this vital set of issues.

John Dupré

“An understanding of the biology of sex and its relation to the complexities of human gender adequate to the postgenomic era is an urgently needed but dauntingly difficult task. It requires tracing the history from which scientific ideas of sex and gender have developed, and the echoes of which shape our contemporary concepts; a grasp of the decisive feminist critique of the science of sex and gender over the last half century, but one that goes beyond the disclosure of bias to survey comprehensively the influence of ideas about gender on science; and a proper understanding of the revolutionary developments in genomic science that have occurred in the last twenty years. This book provides all of these things with skill, sensitivity, and elegance. It will provide a definitive starting point for future discussions of this vital set of issues.”

John Dupr

"Sex Itself offers an insightful analysis of how 'sex' and 'gender' as social odering concepts are woven into genetic research. . . . At the same time, [Richardson] offers something more than a straightforward account of how science is sexed and gendered. At its core, Sex Itself is concerned with ethics as much as history."--Monica J. Casper "Women's Review of Books"

"Sex Itself presents an excellent study of the role of gender in human genomics. With this work, Sarah S. Richardson fills a perplexing--and crucial--gap in the literature of gender and science."
--Evelyn Fox Keller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"An understanding of the biology of sex and its relation to the complexities of human gender adequate to the postgenomic era is an urgently needed but dauntingly difficult task. It requires tracing the history from which scientific ideas of sex and gender have developed, and the echoes of which shape our contemporary concepts; a grasp of the decisive feminist critique of the science of sex and gender over the last half century, but one that goes beyond the disclosure of bias to survey comprehensively the influence of ideas about gender on science; and a proper understanding of the revolutionary developments in genomic science that have occurred in the last twenty years. This book provides all of these things with skill, sensitivity, and elegance. It will provide a definitive starting point for future discussions of this vital set of issues."
--John Dupré, author of Processes of Life

"Effortlessly combining methods from analytic philosophy of science, history of science, and gender analysis, Sarah S. Richardson offers a rich and extremely rewarding set of case studies of gender interactions with genetics, demonstrating how gender assumptions have led geneticists, over the course of a century, to 'bypass standard methodology, ignore alternative models, privilege certain research questions, and skew their interpretation of evidence.'"
--Elisabeth Lloyd, Indiana University

"Erudite yet accessible, meticulously researched, and elegantly written, Sarah S. Richardson's Sex Itself examines the history of modern genetic research on human sex difference. The book is ambitiously pitched and yet magisterially successful in delivering what it promises....There is no question that Richardson's book will remain the most authoritative text on the subject for many years ahead."-- "History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences"

"In Sex Itself, Richardson takes gender criticism to a new level -- the genomic one.
Richardson compellingly argues that gender is central to our understandings of chromosomal sex, and advocates for the acknowledgement of the interplay between sex and gender so that we may recognize how gender acts not only as a source of bias, but as a productive force driving genetic research. Her impressively clear writing, and the clever illustrations judiciously sprinkled throughout the text, help her less scientifically inclined readers quickly develop requisite familiarity with core biological and genetic concepts. This is an excellent addition to the feminist science studies literature, which should enjoy a wide readership across disciplines."-- "Somatosphere"

"This is the history I've been waiting for: the lucid recounting of a century's worth of scientific and popular efforts to ground our notions of maleness and femaleness--and their supposed Mars/Venus opposition--in the strands of genetic material that we call X and Y. In Sex Itself, Sarah S. Richardson moves beyond simple notions of gender bias in science to carefully describe both how gender beliefs shape research trajectories and how scientific findings inform cultural and political agendas."
--Steven Epstein, author of Inclusion and Impure Science

"Through a series of deeply researched case studies, Sarah S. Richardson shows how thoroughly gender ideologies permeated twentieth- and twenty-first-century research on the so-called sex chromosomes. An essential addition to feminist science studies."
--Helen E. Longino, Stanford University

"Sex Itself is a provocative book that sits at the intersection of history, philosophy, and social studies of science and gender, and is well worth picking up."--Erika Lorraine Milam, Princeton University "Journal of the History of Biology"

"Accessible, beautifully written, and compelling (plus, the illustrations are excellent). I could hardly put the book down. . . . Sex Itself is not only valuable as a model of feminist empiricist work, but it is also courageous. Richardson takes the science seriously and follows its implications, even if it conflicts with trends in feminist theory; she takes feminist work seriously and applies its methods to critique scientific research. . . . An important contribution to feminist scholarship."--Sally Haslanger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy"

"Erudite and well-balanced. . . . Richardson takes issue with the perpetual reductionist view on sex differences. Perplexed by the suggestion made in 2005 that genetic differences between men and women are larger than those between humans and chimpanzees, she meticulously demonstrates how the genetics of sex has been modeled on alleged and often rehearsed gender distinctions between men and women. But she does more. Richardson skillfully demonstrates how instrumental sex differences have been in the development of genetics. . . . Not simply an account of the effect of gender on genetics, [Sex Itself] provides us with tools to think of the possibility of a gender-critical genetics."--Amade M'charek "Science"

"This book convincingly documents the social and cultural values molding changeable gender views and warns that prevailing norms influence the path of scientific research. Recommended."--R. A. Hoots, Sacramento City College "Choice"

From the Publisher

An understanding of the biology of sex and its relation to the complexities of human gender adequate to the postgenomic era is an urgently needed but dauntingly difficult task. It requires tracing the history from which scientific ideas of sex and gender have developed, and the echoes of which shape our contemporary concepts; a grasp of the decisive feminist critique of the science of sex and gender over the last half century, but one that goes beyond the disclosure of bias to survey comprehensively the influence of ideas about gender on science; and a proper understanding of the revolutionary developments in genomic science that have occurred in the last twenty years. This book provides all of these things with skill, sensitivity, and elegance. It will provide a definitive starting point for future discussions of this vital set of issues.

John Dupré

Sex Itself is a provocative book that sits at the intersection of history, philosophy, and social studies of science and gender, and is well worth picking up.

Journal of the History of Biology - Erika Lorraine Milam

"Accessible, beautifully written, and compelling (plus, the illustrations are excellent).  I could hardly put the book down. . . . Sex Itself is not only valuable as a model of feminist empiricist work, but it is also courageous. Richardson takes the science seriously and follows its implications, even if it conflicts with trends in feminist theory; she takes feminist work seriously and applies its methods to critique scientific research. . . . An important contribution to feminist scholarship."

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy - Sally Haslanger

Erudite and well-balanced. . . . Richardson takes issue with the perpetual reductionist view on sex differences. Perplexed by the suggestion made in 2005 that genetic differences between men and women are larger than those between humans and chimpanzees, she meticulously demonstrates how the genetics of sex has been modeled on alleged and often rehearsed gender distinctions between men and women. But she does more. Richardson skillfully demonstrates how instrumental sex differences have been in the development of genetics. . . . Not simply an account of the effect of gender on genetics, [Sex Itself] provides us with tools to think of the possibility of a gender-critical genetics.

Science - Amade M'charek

Sex Itself presents an excellent study of the role of gender in human genomics. With this work, Sarah S. Richardson fills a perplexing—and crucial—gap in the literature of gender and science.

Evelyn Fox Keller

"In Sex Itself, Richardson takes gender criticism to a new level — the genomic one.
Richardson compellingly argues that gender is central to our understandings of chromosomal sex, and advocates for the acknowledgement of the interplay between sex and gender so that we may recognize how gender acts not only as a source of bias, but as a productive force driving genetic research. Her impressively clear writing, and the clever illustrations judiciously sprinkled throughout the text, help her less scientifically inclined readers quickly develop requisite familiarity with core biological and genetic concepts. This is an excellent addition to the feminist science studies literature, which should enjoy a wide readership across disciplines."

Somatosphere

An understanding of the biology of sex and its relation to the complexities of human gender adequate to the postgenomic era is an urgently needed but dauntingly difficult task. It requires tracing the history from which scientific ideas of sex and gender have developed, and the echoes of which shape our contemporary concepts; a grasp of the decisive feminist critique of the science of sex and gender over the last half century, but one that goes beyond the disclosure of bias to survey comprehensively the influence of ideas about gender on science; and a proper understanding of the revolutionary developments in genomic science that have occurred in the last twenty years. This book provides all of these things with skill, sensitivity, and elegance. It will provide a definitive starting point for future discussions of this vital set of issues.”

John Dupre