In the realm of the sexes.

In a bold new book, biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling challenges science on its prejudices about gender

We've come a long way from believing that sugar and spice, snails and puppy dog tails separate little girls from little boys. But according to Anne Fausto-Sterling--professor of biology at Brown University, historian of science, social theorist, and life partner of playwright Paula Vogel--we still have a long way to go.

In her just released Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the construction of Sexuality, Fausto-Sterling takes a long, hard look at how science, stuck in the mire of gender stereotypes, replicates these biases in its research. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde's famous maxim about truth: Science is never pure and rarely simple.

"Science can't be `pure,'" Fausto-Sterling declares. "It is a particular kind of cultural activity; it is not neutral. And I want to understand how the world we live in influences and becomes part of the science we do. Certainly history is filled with examples of women, people of color, and gay people losing out because of uncritically accepted `science.'"

Fausto-Sterling may have a world-class academic rep, but she emphatically does not live the ivorytower life. Outspoken and irreverent, she's an expert at generating controversy. Seven years ago she made headlines--and enemies--when she suggested in The New York Times, with some humor, that there are not, two sexes but five. "I was attacked by everyone from the conservative Catholic League, who took an ad out in the Times refuting me, to transsexual expert Dr. John Money," she remembers with a rueful laugh.

What started Fausto-Sterling on her quest for scientific honesty? "In the 1970s," she remembers, "I would be attending meetings where the issue of feminism would come up. And other scientists would say, `What about rats? We know male rats are more aggressive,' and I'd think, Well, what about rats? Do we really know this about male rats?" Fausto-Sterling analyzed rat behavioral studies and showed--surprise!--that scientists brought their own gender prejudices to the maze.

Since then Fausto-Sterling has brought a wide range of scientific studies under her intellectual microscope--genes, brain physiology, the history of "sex hormone" research--and detailed her findings in the now-classic 1986 book Myths of Gender. But her most recent work in Sexing the Body examines the incredible variations that exist in human biology life, and experience. Questioning the idea that there are two clearly defined sexes, Fausto-Sterling ponders the lives of intersexual people--formerly labeled hermaphrodites--born with amazing varieties of male and female chromosomal, hormonal, and, genital characteristics.

Shifting from science to activism once again, Fausto-Sterling strongly advocates--against now-accepted medical opinion--that children born with multiple or ambiguous genitals not be "assigned" to a "correct" gender through surgery. "This science is at such a rudimentary level that you don't go cutting things out until we know more about the bodies and lives of intersexed people," she says.

Fausto-Sterling's amazing intellect and interests are matched by those of Vogel, her partner of 11 years and winner of a 1996 Pulitzer Prize for How I Learned to Drive. "Paula and I are working on the same intellectual and social issues about gender, sex, and Politics," Fausto-Sterling explains. "She does it onstage and with literature; I do it through testing and evaluating how science works. Gender is constructed, and where better than on a stage can you show that? In the Mineola Twins, Paula literally overlaps and explodes 'gender' as the characters transform from male to female. It's like seeing the theories take life onstage."

Fausto-Sterling too sees her work evolving on a larger stage. "There's a lot of resistance, even hostility, to transgender people in the gay and lesbian movement now because movements tend to be mainstream--acceptable to a wide range of straight people," she observes. "Transgender people and intersexed people don't fit into easy categories; they don't make straight people comfortable. But no matter what categories we want to put people in--gender, sexual orientation, sex--there is always a larger cultural and biological variability than we admit now. I think the gay and lesbian movement has to be all-embracing--of everyone."

RELATED ARTICLE: The five sexes according to Anne Fausto-Sterling

Quick--what sex are you? The answer may not be as easy as you think, Many individuals do not conform to strict anatomic and genetic definitions of male and female, Sometimes chromosomes do not "match" genitalia, and 4% of births are "intersexual"--both male and female organs are present in some variety of developmental state.

Traditionally, "reconstructive" genital surgery is performed on such infants--often leading to extensive scarring, additional operations, and, ultimately, loss of orgasmic potential, How much better, intersex activists argue, to leave the body alone.

Anne Fausto-Sterling suggests that instead of conforming to the draconian rule of two genders, we now play with a full deck of five.

--Michael Bronski

A variety of lives

Male and female labels are too rigid, says Fausto-Sterling,

Herms

(True hermaphrodites) Defined by having one ovary, one testis, and either a clitoris, penis, or a combination of the two, which is called a cliteropenis or penoclitoris depending on which predominates

Females

Defined by a clitoris and ovaries 

Ferms (Pseudohermaphrodites)

Defined by having ovaries and a penis or a similar manifestation of external male genitalia

Males

Defined by having a penis and testes 

Merms (Pseudohermaphrodites)

Defined by having testes and a clitoris or a similar manifestation of external female genitalia

Bronski won a 1999 Stonewall Award for his contributions to the quality of gay and lesbian life in America.