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I'd be up for Shon Faye's book. Apparently it's quite readable.

I haven't yet recovered from Jules Gill-Peterson last year, so I think Judith Butler might have me wailing and screaming and leaping off the nearest cliff.

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Having read Faye, I can't promise it will be entirely free of wailing/screaming/cliffleaping.... But yes, it is very readable and very skillfully executed... One of those where almost every sentence contains a misrepresentation or half-truth that would require several hundred words and a lot of background knowledge to rebut.

Do we have a date for the next one yet? I have lost control of my emails somewhat...

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not scheduled yet - probably early June?

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"Ostertag situates this history alongside the story of an increasingly visible and political lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population. He persuasively argues that scholarship on the development of sex hormone chemicals does not take into account LGBT history and activism, nor has work in LGBT history fully considered the scientific research that has long attempted to declare a chemical essence of gender. In combining these histories, Ostertag reveals the complex motivations behind hormone research over generations and expresses concern about the growing profits from estrogen and testosterone, which now are marketed with savvy ad campaigns to increase their use across multiple demographics."

It's disappointing that Ostertag is one of those lumpers who drags gay men into discussions where they do not belong through his careless use of the unhelpful and confusing term "LGBT."

Except insofar as the intriguing idea that exposure to hormones in utero might influence the person's sexual orientation is concerned, the topic of hormones is of little interest or relevance to gay men. It's the "T" people, the ones who suffer from what I call gender sickness, who are the market for gender pharmaceuticals. Yes, there's was an idea a while ago that men who suffer (?) from testosterone deficiency should take testosterone, but it did not distinguish between gay and straight men. In any case, it appears to have been debunked.

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Reading sex, science, self at the moment. The history of sex hormones and discoveries of biology around how sex develops are a big part of how trans has come about I believe.

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