Evolution's Rainbow

I am really enjoying the "Evolution's Rainbow" book. Joan Roughgarden (http://www.stanford.edu/group/roughlab/) (a biologist/ecologist) is quite critical of science for it's heterocentric/male bias, and she presents new ways of looking at scientific data studying sex and gender. The first section of the book deals with diversity in nature (animals) quite extensively -- diversity in gender, sex, sexual orientation, social structure, etc. The second section, which I have just begun to read, looks at diversity in humans (physiologically/biologically). The third section deals more with the social/cultural element to sex and gender.

Something I found very interesting reading this book is that, biologically, the only universal differentiation between male and female is gamate size (egg vs sperm). Pratically every other distinction (including XX, XY genetics) has enough exceptions that they probably shouldn't be called exceptions at all, only diversity. A possible implication of this is that our definition of human sex, beyond gamate size, is not biologically sensical ... but muchly social. In order to support this, one would need to look at the 'exceptions to the rules' in humans -- those with gamates determining one sex, but characteristics typical of the other sex.

Overall, Roughgarden looks at a lot of scientific data from a more feminist perspective to assert that evolution is not diversity reducing, but actually diversity affirming. Diversity is benificial for a species.

More about this when I'm done the book :).

- mekyla.