Sex differentiation and body fat: Local biologies and gender transgressions

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-391
Author(s):  
Petra Jonvallen
Keyword(s):  
Medical Research ◽  
Body Fat ◽  
Sex Differentiation ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Local Biologies ◽  
Monitoring Devices

This article examines how sex differentiation is invoked from body fat with a focus on how various monitoring devices participate in the construction of bodies. By using the concept of ‘local biologies’, denoting the linkage of the body to place with its local physical and social conditions, it argues against the ‘one-size-fits-all’ paradigm of modern medicine and critiques the mechanistic search for regularity in medical research. By looking at medical literature on obesity and how contemporary obesity researchers and clinicians link body fat to sex, local biologies of bodies in a Swedish obesity clinic are contrasted to the universal biologies represented in medical research. The article also provides empirical examples of how fat has the potential to undermine traditional sex and gender binaries.

scholarly journals Sex and gender differences in nutrition research: considerations with the transgender and gender nonconforming population

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Whitney Linsenmeyer ◽  
Jennifer Waters
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Nutrition Interventions ◽  
Step Method ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Nutrition Research ◽  
Surveillance Programs ◽  
And Gender

AbstractA sex- and gender-informed approach to study design, analysis and reporting has particular relevance to the transgender and gender nonconforming population (TGNC) where sex and gender identity differ. Notable research gaps persist related to dietary intake, validity and reliability of nutrition assessment methods, and nutrition interventions with TGNC populations. This is due in part to the conflation of sex and gender into one binary category (male or female) in many nutrition surveillance programs worldwide. Adoption of the Sex and Gender Equity In Research (SAGER) guidelines and the two-step method of querying sex and gender has the potential to exponentially increase the body of research related to TGNC health.

Benessere tra differenze e disuguaglianze di genere in salute

2012 ◽  
pp. 95-113
Author(s):  
Rita Biancheri
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Personal History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Life Context ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Sick Individual

Up to now, in the traditional biomedical paradigm the terms "sex" and "gender" have either been used synonymously and the insertion of gender among the determining elements of conditions of wellbeing/disease has been difficult, and obstructed by disciplinary rigidities that retarded the acceptance of an approach which had already been largely found to be valid in other areas of research. The effected simplification demonstrated its limitations in describing the theme of health; but if, on the one hand, there has been a growing awareness of a subject which can in no way be considered "neutral", on the other hand there continues to be insufficient attention, both in theoretical analysis and in empirical research, given to female differences. The article is intended to support that the sick individual is a person, with his/her genetic heritage, his/her own cultural acquisitions and personal history, and own surrounding life context; but these and similar factors have not traditionally been taken into consideration by official medicine and welfare systems, despite a hoped-for socio-health integration.

scholarly journals Idrott och genus: Kroppens materialisering

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Håkan Larsson
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Track And Field ◽  
The Other ◽  
Biological Entity ◽  
Male Body ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Male Discourse ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Cultural Effect

Håkan Larsson: Sport and gender This article concerns bodily materialisation as it occurs in youth sport. It is based on interviews with teenagers 16 to 19 years of age doing track and field athletics. The purpose of the article is to elucidate how the notion of a “natural body“ can be seen as a cultural effect of sports practice and sports discourse. On the one hand, the body is materialised as a performing body, and on the other as a beautiful body. The “performing body“ is a single-sexed biological entity. The “beautiful body“ is a double-sexed and distinctly heterosexually appealing body. As these bodies collide in teenager track and field, the female body materialises as a problematic body, a body that is at the same time the subject of the girl’s personality. The male body materialises as an unproblematic body, a body that is the object of the boy’s personality. However, the body as “(a problematic) subject“ or as “(an unproblematic) object“ is not in itself a gendered body. Rather, these are positions on a cultural grid of power-knowledge relations. A girl might position herself in a male discourse, and a boy might position himself in a female discourse, but in doing so, they seem to have to pay a certain price in order not to be seen as queer.

scholarly journals Gender, gestation and ectogenesis: self-determination for pregnant people ahead of artificial wombs

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (11) ◽  
pp. 787-788
Author(s):  
Claire Horn
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Biological Approach ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
And Gender

AbstractIn this short response, I agree with Cavaliere’s recent invitation to consider ectogenesis, the process of gestation occurring outside the body, as a political perspective and provocation to building a world in which reproductive and care labour are more justly distributed. But I argue that much of the literature Cavaliere addresses in which scholars argue that artificial wombs may produce greater gender equality has the limitation of taking a fixed, binary and biological approach to sex and gender. I argue that in taking steps toward the possibility of more just practices of caregiving and family making, we must look first not to artificial womb technologies but to addressing the ways that contemporary legal and social practices that enforce essentialising, binary ways of thinking about reproductive bodies inhibit this goal.

scholarly journals Assessment of body image in preschoolers: Perception of parents and children / Valoración de la imagen corporal en preescolares: Percepción de padres e hijos

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-220
Author(s):  
Rosalia Vazquez-Arevalo ◽  
Alberto Rodríguez Nabor ◽  
Xochitl López Aguilar ◽  
Juan Manuel Mancilla-Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Body Mass Index ◽  
Body Image ◽  
Body Mass ◽  
Small Proportion ◽  
Normal Weight ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Perception ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One

Abstract The objective of this research was to determine the body perception (BP) of preschoolers and compare it with the one reported by their parents. A total of 48 preschoolers participated (Mage = 5 years, SD = 0.5), 21 boys, 27 girls, and their parents (47 fathers and 48 mothers). The children were weighed and measured, also they answered the instrument Seven Figures of Collins (SFC) and seven questions about food, beauty and health. The parents answered the Body Image Questionnaire, the Stunkard Figures, as well as the SFCs to identify the real (RF) and ideal figure(IF) of their children. When children described themselves, they mostly referred the normal figure, coinciding with their parents. A very small proportion of preschoolers perceived themselves with obesity (around 29-30%); while any parent identified their children with obesity. 50% of preschoolers chose thinner silhouettes than their body mass index (BMI), but not emaciated. For RF, most parents chose normal weight for boys and light overweight for girls; for IF parents chose, for both sexes, the one with light overweight. In conclusion, the preschool BP disagreed between reality and perception, regardless of their BMI and gender. The parents also did not have an adequate BP for their children. Resumen El objetivo de esta investigación fue conocer la percepción corporal (PC) de preescolares y compararla con la que sus padres tienen de ellos. Participaron 48 preescolares (Medad = 5 años, DE = 0.5), 21 niños y 27 niñas, y sus padres (47 papás y 48 mamás). Los niños fueron pesados y medidos, contestaron el instrumento Siete Figuras de Collins (SFC) y, con relación a éste, siete preguntas sobre alimentación, belleza y salud. A los padres se les aplicó el Cuestionario de Imagen Corporal, las Figuras de Stunkard, además de las SFC para que identificaran la figura real (FR) e ideal (FI) de sus hijos. Para describirse, los preescolares refirieron mayormente la figura normopeso, coincidiendo con sus padres. Fue mínima la proporción de preescolares que se percibieron con obesidad (presente en 29-30%); mientras que ningún padre la identificó en sus hijos. El 50% de los preescolares eligió siluetas más delgadas a su índice de masa corporal (IMC), pero no emaciadas. Como FR, la mayoría de los padres eligió la normopeso para los niños y con sobrepeso ligero para las niñas; como FI eligieron, para ambos sexos, aquélla con sobrepeso ligero. En conclusión, la PC del preescolar discrepó entre la real y la percibida, independientemente de su IMC y sexo. Los padres tampoco tuvieron una adecuada PC de sus hijos.

Expertise and Non-binary Bodies: Sex, Gender and the Case of Dutee Chand

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Pape
Keyword(s):  
Women Athletes ◽  
Athletic Performance ◽  
Female Athlete ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Biological Difference ◽  
And Gender

How do institutions respond to expert contests over epistemologies of sex and gender? In this article, I consider how epistemological ascendancy in debates over the regulation of women athletes with high testosterone is established within a legal setting. Approaching regulation as an institutional act that defines forms of embodied difference, the legitimacy of which may be called into question, I show how sexed bodies are enacted through and as part of determinations of expertise. I focus on proceedings from 2015 when the Court of Arbitration for Sport was asked to decide whether an Indian sprinter, Dutee Chand, could compete as a female athlete. Despite acknowledging that sexed bodies are unruly, the court ultimately endorsed the use of testosterone as seemingly essential to women’s athletic performance, thereby reasserting a two-category model of biological difference. The legitimacy of these regulatory efforts was established through the concurrent narrowing of expertise and the body, a process that is also revealed to be gendered.

scholarly journals Men of Parts: Masculine Embodiment and the Male Leg in Eighteenth-Century England

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-821 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
The Body ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis essay explores changes in eighteenth-century male clothing in the context of the history of sexual difference, gender roles, and masculinity. The essay contributes to a history of dress by reconstructing a range of meanings and social practices through which men's clothing was understood by its consumers. Furthermore, critically engaging with work on the “great male renunciation,” the essay argues that the public authority that accrued to men through their clothing was based not on a new image of a rational disembodied man but instead on an emphasis on the male anatomy and masculinity as intrinsically embodied. Drawing on findings from the material objects of eighteenth-century clothing, visual representations, and evidence from the archival records of male consumers, the essay adopts an interdisciplinary approach that allows historians to study sex and gender as embodied, rather than simply performed. In so doing, the essay not only treats “embodiment” as an historical category but also responds to recent shifts in the historical discipline and the wider academy towards a more corporealist approach to the body.

scholarly journals Agnizing Sarcopenia and Coherent Variable Optimization of Body Fat Percentage using Genetic Algorithms and Regression

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1357-1360
Keyword(s):  
Body Fat ◽  
Impedance Analysis ◽  
The Body ◽  
Impedance Method ◽  
Body Fat Percentage ◽  
Electric Impedance ◽  
Fat Percentage ◽  
Institutional Ethics ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Madras Medical College

Obesity is a malady which poses wide threats across the world with its augmented inflation. A domineering determinant to most pandemic diseases in the human body is the agglomeration of body fat. Therefore, an apposite anatomization of body fat estimation for every individual is incumbent. The previous work aberrates and pioneered the implementation of attributes from the lipid profile and Bio-Electric Impedance Analysis (BIA) method of a person, from the conventional use of attributes such as BMI, age and gender to obtain the value of body fat percentage. But the proposed analysis meliorates the accuracy of body fat percentage and resuscitated the gamut of health gremlins it vanguards to. This paper also delineates the variable optimization using regression and genetic algorithm for the attributes incorporated to procure the body fat percentage. Thereby corroborating and revamping the veracity of the novel body fat percentage derived using lipids and the BIA method. The study has further helped in diagnosing a disease known as sarcopenia. The samples from the blood tests and Bio-Electric Impedance method have been procured from the Institute of Bio-Chemistry, after obtaining the consent from the Institutional Ethics Committee, Madras Medical College, Chennai. The simulations are carried out in MATLAB GUI and the results have been successfully obtained.

scholarly journals Kønsmarkører som strategier i studerendes positioneringskampe

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerd Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Group Leader ◽  
Female Students ◽  
The Other ◽  
Male Students ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Project Groups ◽  
Poor Group ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Group Workers ◽  
The One

Gender markings as strategies in the students struggle for positioning. References to sex and gender can be employed in order to distribute legitimacy among participants in various situations. Through analyses of four stories, this article shows how this can be practiced among university students at project-oriented educations. On the one hand, the female students are referred to as talkative and often bursting into tears. Both conducts are considered as problematic in the project groups because they take time and focus from the work on the project. Thus, the consequence of the stories is a devaluation of the female students. The male students are on the other hand told as either poor group workers because of their preferences for playing or are having to navigate between the attractiveness of being the group leader and the illegitimate position of dominating their fellow students in the group. The conclusion of the analyses states that the stories are not only told in order to distribute legitimacy among the students, but are negotiations and reformulations of the norms of the contexts.

scholarly journals Why Individuals Respond To COVID-19 Differently: A Battle of Sexes?

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 459-466
Author(s):  
Olagunju Abdulrahmon A. ◽  
Amanah Lewis-Wade
Keyword(s):  
Gene Networks ◽  
Research Area ◽  
The Body ◽  
Future Perspective ◽  
Cytokine Storm ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Clinical Indicators ◽  
Severe Infections ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

Several factors including genetic variations, cytokine storm (CS), macrophage activated syndrome (MAS), and lymphopenia have been recently discovered to influence the severity of COVID-19. Many studies have exclusively studied the pathogenesis of this disease, which includes the entry of the virus into the body, multiplication and spread, the progression of tissue damage, and the production of an immune response. However, questions like what makes some people more vulnerable than others to SARS-CoV-2 - the causative agent of the coronavirus disease; the role of gene networks in determining or influencing the efficiency of infection or the severity of COVID-19 symptoms are still in the valley of obscurity. What makes some SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals extremely sensitive to the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) while others are asymptomatic remains to be understood. Herein, we review the impact of a genetic variant in susceptibility and severity among sex and gender disparities, the significance of this variation in cases of severity and immune responses. Furthermore, we address major characteristics in severe  COVID-19 cases, such as biochemical and homeostatic effects. For example, lymphocyte count and concentrations of inflammatory mediators within patients. Also, this paper identifies key clinical indicators of severe infections in the presence of cytokine storm and lymphopenia. Moreover, it takes into account predisposing factors that induce the severity of symptoms and underline the differences between mild and severe infections. Lastly, we explained the benefits of using bioinformatics to accelerate the progress made in COVID-19 research and future perspective in this research area.

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