‘Your true and proper gender’: the Barr body as a good enough science of sex

In the late 1940s, a microanatomist from London Ontario, Murray Barr, discovered a mark of sex chromosome status in bodily tissues, what came to be known as the ‘Barr body’. This discovery offered an important diagnostic technology to the burgeoning clinical science community engaged with the medica...

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Veröffentlicht in:Studies in history and philosophy of science. Part C, Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences, 2006-09, Vol.37 (3), p.459-483
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description In the late 1940s, a microanatomist from London Ontario, Murray Barr, discovered a mark of sex chromosome status in bodily tissues, what came to be known as the ‘Barr body’. This discovery offered an important diagnostic technology to the burgeoning clinical science community engaged with the medical interpretation and management of sexual anomalies. It seemed to offer a way to identify the true, underlying sex in those whose bodies or lives were sexually anomalous (intersexuals, homosexuals and transsexuals). The hypothesis that allowed the Barr body to stand in for ‘chromosomal’ or ‘genetic’ sex was provisional, but it supported the expectation that genetic information established one’s primary identity, and the conviction that the animal world could be neatly divided into two, and only two, sexes. Ultimately, this provisional hypothesis, and its status as an unambiguous arbiter of true sex, was overturned. But during much of the 1950s, Barr’s thesis about the identity of the Barr body was consistent with a coherent set of theories and evidence explaining sexual development and sexual pathology. Though provisional, the scientific status of the sex chromatin within this system of knowledge was good enough to support a flourishing research enterprise in the clinical sciences.
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identifier ISSN: 1369-8486
ispartof Studies in history and philosophy of science. Part C, Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences, 2006-09, Vol.37 (3), p.459-483
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subjects Animals
Barr body
Disorders of Sex Development - genetics
Female
Genetic Research
Gonadal Dysgenesis - genetics
Good enough science
Hermaphrodite
Homosexuality
Humans
Intersex
Male
Sex chromatin
Sex Chromatin - genetics
Sex Chromosomes
Sex determination
Sex Determination Processes
Transsexualism
Transvestism
title ‘Your true and proper gender’: the Barr body as a good enough science of sex
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