User:Taylorbc/sandbox

My Contributions
Nov. 21 --- I added this quote by Anne Fausto-Sterling to the Intersex Wikipedia page, "“Our conceptions of the nature of gender difference shape, even as they reflect, the ways we structure our social system and polity, they also shape and reflect our understanding of our physical bodies.”

Nov. 25 --- I added a small summary on "Sexing the Body" to the Intersex Wikipedia page, In "Sexing the body', Sterling describes the grueling process of transforming an intersexual into the desired sex and the appearance of a "densely scarred and immobile penis" or "extensive suturing [or] skin transplants in such a way that it seems difficult for anyone to endure (Sterling 62). Although today people are told certain medical decisions should be made by strictly the parents without any coercion or influence presented by the doctor, back then it was ultimately the "physicians who decide how to manage intersexuality" (Sterling 48). No matter how impartial they attempt to be, physicians simply "act out of, an perpetuate, deeply held beliefs about male and female sexuality, gender roles, and the (im)proper place of homosexuality in normal development" when necessary surgery for the chosen gender (ibid.)

Nov. 29 --- I added to the section entitled "Exclusion from the Standard Model of Sex and Gender" on the Intersex Wikipedia page, In Of Gender and Genitals, Anne Fausto-Sterling illustrates how the standard model of the difference between sex and gender can be at times damaging and how it necessitates that doctors’ uphold to certain protocol in order to maintain it. She informs the reader that the extensive surgeries intersex children undergo soon after birth are both “unnecessary and sexually damaging” (Fausto-Sterling 62). The tiniest of humans, if born intersex, are subjected to a number of considerable surgeries as soon as they are born merely to uphold to society’s standard model. If society’s view changed to that of a gender-sex spectrum, these babies would be given the freedom to choose their own gender when they become of age. Unfortunately back then, that was not the case. Instead, for example, intersex babies, who were chosen to function as a male, experienced multiple surgeries “on the[ir] penis[es] during the first couple of years of [their] li[ves]”(Fausto-Sterling 62). When dealing with the parents of intersexual children, doctors must follow certain guidelines so as not to dishearten the parents’ of their children’s normality. Fausto-Sterling specifically references some doctors’ endeavor towards “discouraging any feeling of sexual ambiguity” for their children (Fausto-Sterling 64). While Anne Fausto-Sterling believed doctors took questionable measures in order to determine how the intersexual children would live, Bonnie Spanier, felt that scientists were completely off in their attempt to depict the standard model. In her short article, Spanier addresses the scientists’ unacceptable scientific tactics. The most important claim she makes against the scientists of her time concerning the standard model is that they “conflate the issue of sexual orientation with gender identity” (Spanier 367). She explains how these scientists describe a gay man as being “more female” than a heterosexual man and the same with lesbian women being “more male”. An individual’s sexual preference is not necessarily included in the delineation of the gender identity. While these two things are somewhat associated, they are not associated enough where they can be placed in the masculine/feminine bins present in today’s society.

Nov. 29 --- I added a section entitled "Intersexuality and its Sexual Ambiguity" to the Intersex Wikipedia page, "In “Of Gender and Genitals”, Anne Fausto-Sterling underscores the standard protocol many doctors adhered to in order to decrease the amount of hysteria in the hospital room. When facing the parents of an intersex newborn, doctors’ main goal was to keep the parents as calm as possible even if that meant leaving out information deemed unimportant. Currently, doctors are expected to to relay all known knowledge to patients so that they are fully informed when making decisions concerning their health, but this was not the case years ago. Doctors’ main method used when attempting to define and describe the many processes and functions of the male and female anatomy was to reveal the findings and data collected from their biological research and inform, or convince, the public that that was what nature told them or that that was how men and women were meant to live. When it came to the question of what exactly nature was trying to accomplish by giving them anatomical qualities of both genders, doctors were confounded. They had in their possession no solid, definitive evidence or scientific findings that could point them in the right direction concerning the intersexual’s “true” gender, or the gender of which he or she was intended to embody. During earlier times, the choice of what gender the child would be given the ability to emulate was ultimately up to the doctors, not the parents. The doctors’ ability to determine what gender the child would grow up to be seen as was in direct relation to the dichotomy of nature versus nurture. At this time, doctors believed that the gender they were assigning the intersexual child was the gender “nature” intended for the child to have, and that it was ultimately up to the parents to “nurture” the child in such a way that they would behave like that gender. There exists at least one example of a gender assignment that went wrong even though the parents “nurtured” exactly as they should, the John-Joan case study. This example was exactly what some scientists and researchers were looking for when aiming to disenchant the public’s belief in doctors’ having an understanding of nature to the point where they can determine what it is that nature wants.

Nov. 29 --- I added to the section entitled "Social Effects" on the Women in science Wikipedia page, Chapter Three of Has Feminism Changed Science? by Londa Schiebinger is entitled “The Pipeline”. In this chapter, Schiebinger sheds light on a very interesting theory as to why it has been so arduous for women to excel in ways similar to men in the professional world of science. It is difficult to understand why women have yet to hold significant relevance in the scientific world when women and men start off in the same kindergarten classes and go on to be accepted to the same colleges and universities. A child’s environment is the ultimate mechanism in determining what type of adult a child will grow up to be because fundamentally, a human is the product of their environment. In this chapter, Schiebinger introduces the belief in the existence of a pipeline within education that children, both boys and girls, enter at the start of their education careers. Unfortunately, at certain breaks in the pipeline, girls starts to trickle out more and more until the large majority of people in the professional scientific world are males, with very few being successful women. The lack of focus and encouragement given to girls to pursue careers that require more than knowing how to teach children addition and subtraction as a teacher, or how to sew up a cut in someone’s arm as a nurse, is the main reason for the girls’ slow dissolving out of the pipeline. If more girls were taught that they are fully capable of accomplishing all of the same things that their male classmates can achieve, then less and less women would fall through the system due to a lack in confidence.

Peer Reviews
Wikipedia Project Peer Review, Reviewer: Danielle Pool

Brandi’s Sandbox: Brandi’s sandbox is nicely organized. I like how she dated and arranged everything so that the viewer could easily see the progress/postings she made. It would help if she linked the reader to the actual pages that she added to by hyper-linking and coded using the brackets(i.e. typing intersex would allow the reader to click on the word “intersex” and lead them to the Wikipedia page). It would also help if she included references to texts at the bottom of her sandbox so the reader could easily see where she is pulling her information from. As far as content, Brandi uses correct phrasing by saying “Anne Fausto-Sterling illustrates”, “In Of Gender and Genitals”, etc. This helps her in keeping her postings unbiased. She avoids inserting opinions and remains fairly neutral. Her final posting on the “Social Effects” page is a little bit on the opinionated side, and might cause it to be removed due to wording choice. Also, her November 25th posting on “Sexing the Body” includes one debatable statement: “Although the decision should be made by strictly the parents without any coercion or influence presented by the doctor,” She might want to rephrase this statement to make it less opinionated. All in, great job!

Wikipedia Project Peer Review, Reviewer: Anam Malik

Brandi’s Sandbox: Brandi's sandbox was very well organized. I especially liked how she organized it by date, so we can see her progress. Also, it was so much easier to be able to click on the blue words instead of copying and pasting the links into my web bar. You can see how Brandi progressed from writing very short experts, to becoming more confident and writing more. The only thing I would suggest is if Brandi briefly talked about the John-Joan case study. Other than that, everything looked perfect and flowed flawlessly.