Blind to Sameness

Sexpectations and the Social Construction of Male and Female Bodies

Friedman Asia

What is the role of the senses in how we understand the world? Cognitive sociology has long addressed the way we perceive or imagine boundaries in our ordinary lives, but Asia Friedman pushes this question further still. How, she asks, did we come to blind ourselves to sex sameness? Drawing on more than sixty interviews with two decidedly different populations – the blind and the transgendered – "Blind to Sameness" answers provocative questions about the relationships between sex differences, biology, and visual perception. Both groups speak from unique perspectives that magnify the social construction of dominant visual conceptions of sex, allowing Friedman to examine the visual construction of the sexed body and highlighting the processes of social perception underlying our everyday experience of male and female bodies. The result is a notable contribution to the sociologies of gender, culture, and cognition that will revolutionize the way we think about sex.

About the Author

Asia Friedman is assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware.

Reviews

"'Blind to Sameness' is a remarkable and highly original book. For theorists and empiricists alike this is a masterful empirical work in the social construction of reality and a fine example to show that theorist and researcher need not be mentally separated" – Wayne H. Brekhus, author of "Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs"

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