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Thanks for such a great topic and discussion!

I wanted to expand upon the idea Rebecca brought up about science and research (often) soley looking at male subjects. I was recently reading a book entitled Eve's Rib about the ways in which disease is different for females as compared to males, and how detrimental it is to only study males and then try to extrapolate that information back to women. Futhermore, doctors tended to take female complaints and reply condecendingly, saying something like "I've never heard of that" instead of validating their concern. However, occasionally over time these complaints are actually studied and it turns out that this "imaginary complaint" in fact is a result of a way by which a woman's body processes a medication differently than a man.

There has also been research done suggesting that the symptoms of a stroke or heart attack are different in men and women. The "typical" heart attack signs (chest pain radiating down the left arm) often do not occur in women. Instead they frequently have "only" generalized weakness and shortness of breath that many doctors discredit. Why is it that people (researchers, doctors, the media) insist on trying to generalize illness in one way? Everyone is different (think back to our beetle in the box discussion), with different genes and cultural backgrounds, and so it seems rediculous to me that these variations are frequently not studied in a research setting, or if they are and differences are found, they are explained as "normal progression" (of middle class white males) and "abnormal progression" (everyone else).

Another issue I have thought about before, particularly on the subject of a range of sexualities and genders, is something I have seen happen at Bryn Mawr. If a person who identifies as a female dates another person who also identifies as a female, most people would say that they are homosexual. But what if that second woman actually identifies as male and is (or may not even be) planning on transitioning genders. What does that mean for his partner? Is she still a lesbian since she is "technically" in a relationship with a female? These are not questions that can be answered because gender and sexuality are not as straightforward as the questions suggest. Particularly when thinking of terms of gender as coming from a self-identification as opposed to a concrete genetic/physical category, the lines get blurred and the situations messy. I think that even identifying on arange wouldn't clarify this example, because there are so many factors (each person, their relationship to each other, society, etc) that come into play.