Anne Fausto-Sterling

Born: 1944

Country of Birth: USA

Nationality: USA

Ethnicity: White

University of Wisconsin-Madison BA Zoology 1965; Brown University PhD Developmental Genetics 1970

"''When people say 'it's nurture' or 'it's nature' in making us male or female, I take the middle ground and say that it's a combination of both,'' she said. ''That's not a popular position to take in today's academic environment, but it is the one that makes the most sense.'' (nytimes..com); "My point is that there's greater human variation than supposed. My political point is that we can afford to lighten up about what it means to be male or female. We should definitely lighten up on those who fall in between because there are a lot of them." (nytimes.com); "In 1993 I published a modest proposal suggesting that we replace our two-sex system with a five-sex one. In addition to males and females, I argued, we should also accept the categories herms (named after "true" hermaphrodites), merms (named after male "pseudohermaphrodites"), and ferms (named after female "pseudohermaphrodites")." (pbs.org); "You can’t partition nature from nurture. They are a developmental unit." (footnote.co); "Gender is not a thing, it’s a process." (footnote.co); "

— Anne Fausto-Sterling

Field of Study: Sexology

Institution/Corporation: Brown University

Degrees & Memberships: Member: American Association for the Advancement of Science (1990); Fellow, Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, MIT (1997-98); Fellow, American Council of Learned Societies (1997-98); International Association for Sex Research; History of Science Society; International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology;

Awards: 1995 The Women of Distinction Award, Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York; 1999 RI Association for Women in Psychology Vision to Action Award; 2005 Margaret Brent Award, St. Mary’s College, Maryland; 2005 2005 Harriet W. Sheridan Award for Distinguished Contribution to Teaching and Learning at Brown University; 2008 The President’s Award for Excellence, Brown University; 2009 Honored by Women’s Fund of Rhode Island;

Achievements: sexologist who has written extensively on the social construction of gender, sexual identity, gender identity, gender roles, and intersexuality; a leading expert in biology and gender development; founder and former director of the Science & Technology Studies Program at Brown University; asserts that Dynamic Systems Theory permits us to understand how cultural difference becomes bodily difference; has written two books intended for a general audience. the first "Myths of Gender" was first published in 1985 & second book "Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality" published in 2000; past laboratory work has included studies of the genetics of development in fruit flies and the developmental ecology of flatworms;