Fausto-Sterling - Sexing the Body

254 S EXING THE B ODY
FIGURE 9.4: The organism as represented by a system of Russian stacking
dolls. (Source: Erica Warp, for the author)
analysts of popular culture, literary critics, anthropologists, and some sociologists
tell us about our current culture (the second largest doll). They analyze
our aggregate behaviors, think about how individuals and institutions interact,
and chronicle social change. Other sociologists and psychologists think
about individual relationships and individual development (the third largest
doll), while some psychologists write about the mind or psyche (the fourth
doll in). As the location (or, as some would prefer, activity) that links events
that occur outside the body to those that occur inside the organism (the second
smallest doll), 92 the mind plays an important and peculiar function. The
brain is a key organ in the transfer of information from outside the body in
and back again, and neuroscientists of many stripes try not only to understand
how the brain works as an integrated organ but also how its individual cells
function. Indeed, cells make the final, tiny doll found within the organism. 93
In different organs, cells specialize for a variety of functions. They also work
as systems, their history and immediate surroundings stimulating signals for
particular genes—to contribute (or not) to cellular activities.
Using Russian nesting dolls as a framework suggests that history, culture,
relationships, psyche, organism, and cell are each appropriate locations from
which to study the formation and meanings of sexuality and gender. Developmental
systems theory, whether applied to the assembled doll or to its subunits,
provides the scaffolding for thought and experiment. Assembling the
smaller dolls into a single large one requires the integration of knowledge
derived from very different levels of biological and social organization. The