The author considers the way contemporary genetics employs the notion of the gene. She studies its history and contemporary senses, being especially interested in how genetics defines sex. She presents the history of seeking for genetically defined masculinity pointing out how it has established oversimplified model of the phenomenon of biological sex. She underlines the role of feminist critiques in developing less narrow-minded views of sex in biology.
The author shows that biology and especially genetics has promised to resolve doubts concerning human nature and the nature of sexes. Making this kind of promises can be interpreted as a special way of dealing with human fears which have appeared together with development of contemporary science and modern technologies and its impact on the world. It concerns especially fears of the interventions in natural environment and applications of the results of the research in genetics to medicine, both of which change the society and its values. When genetics has promised to find causal correlations between given genes and organisms’ properties, it was supposed to explain the source of diseases or even human personalities or specific social relations. Unequivocal explanations were needed to calm us down, to reduce fears, to allow us to state that this is how we are „by nature” made. As it turned out genetics was not able to fulfilled these promises for as the author is going to show, its objects of studies are more complex and complicated than the genetics have assumed.
