Constructing Gender from the Inside Out: Sex-Selection Practices in the United States

Abstract

In July 2010 issue of Atlantic, Hanna Rosin published a provoca tive article proclaiming the of men. Among evidence provided increased rates of female employment and their higher levels of education? Rosin highlights girl preference data stemming from U.S. sex selection practices. Her unambiguous proof of a significant cultural transformation, which she purports has left boys and men in dust, is that a majority (75 percent) of those participating in a clinical trial of one new sexselection method known as MicroSort sought girls.1 Rosin neglects to mention that MicroSort is technologically more effective at raising a couple's chances of producing a girl rather than a boy, because its sperm-sorting technique produces purer samples of Xrather than Y chromosome-bearing sperm. It would follow, then, that couples prefer ring boys would less likely utilize this method, but would turn instead to a second, also new, sex-selection method?preimplantation genetic diagno sis (PGD)? that, unlike MicroSort, does not carry a technical bias toward production of girls over boys. Rosin, however, provides no data from clinics offering PGD. And yet, in spite of these oversights, I will be arguing in this article that recent sex-selection practices involving new technolo gies in United States do mark a significant socio-cultural-technical shift that feminists should be paying attention to?even if they do not portend hyperbolic end of men.

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