April 25, 2016
In this wide-ranging sociological and cultural survey, Browning (The Monk and the Skeptic), a former NPR correspondent, raises questions about what gender means in the Western world today (though he includes many references to non-Western cultures). Notions of gender have become “ever more complex” and “how we comprehend what it means to be male or female, or both or neither, appear more and more to be infinitely fluid,” he writes. As Browning touches upon sexuality, family, gender roles, and politics, it often feels like he’s stringing together numerous unrelated threads in order to address an impossibly complex constellation of topics. It’s clear from his experiences and personal anecdotes that he’s struggling to make sense of a fast-changing world, and that he’s searching for answers as much as anyone else. He addresses physiology (excluding intersex traits), the mental and emotional aspects of gender, and the blurred lines that have become more prominent in the West in recent years, but although he’s good at putting the pieces together, the book seems oddly lacking in confidence. As he points out, “Gender is rather experiencing an unprecedented proliferation of meanings, forms, and expression.” This may not be the most authoritative work on gender issues, but Browning certainly touches on and opens up a number of interesting discussions for general audiences. Agent: Jennifer Lyons, Jennifer Lyons Literary.
April 1, 2016
The title of former National Public Radio science reporter Browning's (The Monk and the Skeptic) new work may suggest a forward-looking study, but the majority of the book tends more toward current gender issues and controversies. As a result, it touches on a wide range of subjects including the varied forms of sexuality and relationships, surrogate births, gender issues in the workplace and the work/home balance, and the ways humanity is developing, teaching, and expressing the concepts of "feminine" and "masculine." Browning has a talent for relating complex topics accessibly, though the breadth of material included means that some facets are explored briefly. It's a shame, for example, that transgender concerns occupy only a single chapter. VERDICT Although the author sacrifices depth for range, this account provides a solid overview of the shifting landscape of gender issues today.--Kathleen McCallister, Tulane Univ., New Orleans
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 15, 2016
A journalist and cultural critic investigates the "shifting terrain of gender."Former NPR science reporter Browning (The Monk and the Skeptic: Dialogues on Sex, Faith, and Religion, 2013, etc.) offers a probing, wide-ranging, and illuminating look at society's current "gender conundrum." How, he asks, are masculinity and femininity defined, biologically determined, and socially conditioned? He believes that Margaret Sanger's early-20th-century "crusade to separate sex from reproduction" changed both behavior and attitudes. Once sex was not tied to making babies, "the terms of what constituted sex were turned upside down, left to the torpor of the erotic imagination." Browning explores that erotic imagination, asking "whether activities of tongues, fingers...sundry inanimate toys," and twerking qualify as "sex." To research sex and gender, the author draws on interviews with and published research by biologists, neurologists, psychologists, physicians, parents, teachers, counselors, therapists, and many individuals who define themselves as "gender variant." The nurture vs. nature debate, he finds, has not been settled; nor have assumptions about comparative intellectual ability among males and females. In the tech world, Browning finds gender imbalance caused partly by the "male buddy culture" and partly, one researcher concludes, because of "ingrained cultural teaching and training." In Norway, kindergarten teachers look at differences in the ways they reinforce stereotypes in their responses to boys and girls. The author profiles gay couples who use surrogates to bear their children; transsexuals who undergo hormone treatment or surgery; and transvestites. Gendered stereotypes, he was told repeatedly, prevail in the culture, but attention to "trans issues," he believes, has the potential to inspire acknowledgment of "masculine and feminine fluidities" rather than sharply defined categories. "We all exist on what is called a gender spectrum," writes the author, "carrying both 'masculine' and 'feminine' traits whether we lust for the opposite sex, our own sex--or no sex." A timely, thoughtful contribution to a much-debated issue.
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February 1, 2016
Former NPR science reporter Browning, author of the best-selling The Culture of Desire, takes us from gender-neutral kindergartens to transsexual Mormon parents to show us that there is no reductively simple way of being masculine or feminine. Perhaps terms such as male and female, straight and gay will no longer apply. With a 60,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.