What is Real?

I thought that Anne Fausto-Sterling did a great job of capturing the issues of our society surrounding the sexes. When she said "in most public and most scientific discussions, sex and nature are thought to be real, while gender and culture are seen as constructed" (27) I think summed up the core problem that people have when dealing with gender issues. It relates back to the issue of whether sexuality is a product of nature or nurture. Fasuto-Sterling brought up the point that the European and American way of understanding concepts is through dualism. For example: sex versus gender, real versus constructed and male versus female. It is a hard concept to grasp since we are not sure which one is more important and how to find a balance between the two. We have to understand that maybe it is acceptable to be unsure of how to take this seemingly opposite points and allow them to blend into one. Fasuto-Sterling calls us to action by informing us that "as a feminist witness and in recent years as a historian, [she] also believe[s] that what we call 'facts' about the living world are not universal truths" (7). This is her calling out to women to challenge what we know. She is stating that although there are two or sometimes three accepted gender types in society, each one does not have a rigid mold in which every person has to fit. And this point leads nicely into the message that I felt Jennifer Reid Maxey Myhre was making in "One Bad Hair Day Too Many." She is giving us a peak into what it is like to overcome gender boundaries. And she is trying to convince women that it is acceptable to act how you want and not comply to what men view as what it means to be a women. Although I understand the message that she is trying to send, I have to say that I largely disagreed with her piece. I do not think that in order to be a feminist you have to act in such an extreme way. I also found that she came across as being a bit hypocritical. When she says "We are called masculine when we act as we please, when we take control of our bodies and lives, when we speak out loud and refuse to be silenced, when we assert the dignity of our persons and our right to self-determination, when we are ambitious, courageous, sexy and proud" (88) I think that she is taking her stance as a feminist too far. Additionally, rather than becoming gender neutral, it seems more to me like she is becoming more masculine. So I am not sure why she is coming across as having such a problem doing everything she mentioned before, when she is changing her physical appearance, in a much more masculine sense, she might as well change her personality as well. However I felt that the overall message that I got from both of these readings was that until more medical research and knowledge about the biological systems in all humans are available, we just have the characteristics set in place by society, to help us understand what it means to be of a certain gender or sex.