AM I A WOMAN? A Skeptic's Guide to Gender  Cynthia Eller, Author
Cynthia Eller, Author . Beacon $24 (146p) ISBN 978-0-8070-7508-1
Reviewed on: 05/19/2003 Release date: 07/01/2003  After 121
pages of Eller mining her life for examples of how she is or
isn't a "real" woman, she finally concludes, "It doesn't matter.
Because whether gender is biological or socially constructed,
absolutely determinative or a barely self-consistent fiction,
it's reasonable to both want and expect social change where sex
inequality is concerned." What begins as a self-focused,
slightly academic look at the truth about gender eventually
evolves into one more book by a feminist scholar trying to prove
that we still have work to do. Boiled down, Eller argues that
human sexual dimorphism (the belief that anatomy defines women
and men) is law, but that all the nasty little rules that go
along with the labels "man" and "woman" are limiting. Women may
have the right to cast a vote and grow old and disgruntled in a
boardroom, but they stil