I'm tired of the generalities already!

For me, it is refreshing to read Anne Fausto-Sterling compared to the way I feel when I read Ogaddam. While reading Ogaddam, I continually find my self being irritated by their generalities in the way they describe men and women and particularly the way they hold romance novels as being the reality and truth for heterosexual female desire. It is even more frustrating because they rarely (if ever) differentiate between homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual or any other sexuality. By making such generalities their tone is "all-knowing" and makes human desire seem very simple.
I do go back and forth from their "note" page in the back in order to reference where they are getting their information and if they include any thing additional. Usually it simply marks where they received their information, but sometimes they do have a summary of the information they derived their generality from. One generality I found to be curious and then disheartening when I read their note about it was about a survey that asked, '"Would you date someone who didn't know how to drive a car?" Most women answered yes. Most men answered no' (Ogaddam, 103). The generality I want to point out is their use of the term most. Flip forward to the notes page for page 103 and the percentages are presented. In the case of men their generality is correct and but for women they are way off. For straight males that answered YES: 79% and Answered NO: 11.72%. Keep in mind that this is only straight males that they take their numbers from. When it comes to women the numbers are taken from bisexual women as well as straight women. However, they do no state this specifically on page 103. More importantly, their statement is actually false on page 103 because according to the percentages they give in their notes, MORE women said YES they would date someone that did not know how to drive a car. By the use of such a general term as most they are able to make this claim and will be believed if the numbers are never seen.

When I read Sexing the Body I do not feel this sense of generality but instead I read specifics as well as case by case basis. Anne Fausto-Sterling does not use an all knowing tone as if everything she is stating is universal and specifically states how things have changed throughout time as well as culture. This is an important difference from A Billion Wicked Thoughts because as they do talk about other cultures they only do in a way they fits their discourse. Their discourse as I see it is to prove that all women desire the same things in the same way and all men desire the same things in the same way. Anne Fausto-Sterling's discourse is much more complicated and trying to show while some things are similar, much is also different and sees an importance in pointing out these differences in order to create a better understanding and wider knowledge.

While some may feel reassured by the amount of statistics Ogaddam uses in their book, it only makes me that more skeptical in who and where they are getting their information from, as well as the groups of people that are being studied. For me, Fausto-Sterling is more reassuring for me because they takes views from many sides and does not simply focus on one type of people. In contrast she recognizes differences and creates an understanding of how important the recognition of those differences are. As the title of her first chapter is Dualing Dualisms, she certainly is working towards a way to see sexuality in a non-dualistic way which I find extremely important and worth while.