Gender In Flux

Papers from a Conference held at University College, Chester, November 2001.

Based on recent research and insights from political activism, the volume explores changing manifestations and articulations of gender in China.

Gale Researcher Guide for: Gender: A Verb in Flux is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

In Flux: Trans and Gender-Diverse Reflections and Imaginings is a community anthology by trans and gender-diverse (TGD) writers. Both embracing and defying familiar genres, the contributors share experiences, grapple with ideas, play with language and invent new worlds, bringing to the task their skills, humour and passion. In the context of increased TGD visibility and mainstream acceptance, In Flux is both a celebration and an intervention. Arising from collaboration, inquiry and experiment, it continues the work of trans activists in making spaces for new conversations. Spanning both small pleasures and big questions, In Flux is a bright, bold and heartfelt addition to the written history of trans and gender-diverse folks.

Frank Browning takes us into human gender geographies around the world, from gender-neutral kindergartens in Chicago and Oslo to women's masturbation classes in Shanghai, from conservative Catholics in Paris fearful of God and Nature to transsexual Mormon parents in Utah. As he shares specific and engaging human stories, he also elucidates the neuroscience that distinguishes male and female biology, shows us how all parents' brains change during the first weeks of parenthood, and finally how men's and women's responses to age differ worldwide based not on biology but on their earlier life habits. Starting with Simone de Beauvoir's world-famous observation that one is not born a woman but instead becomes a woman, Browning goes on to show equally that no one is born a man but learns how to perform as a man, and that there is no fixed way of being masculine or feminine. Increasingly, the categories of "male" and "female" and even "gay" and "straight" seem old-fashioned and reductive. Just visible on the horizon is a world of gender and sexual fluidity that will remake our world in fundamental ways. Linking science to culture and behavior, and delving into the lives of individuals challenging historic notions, Browning questions the traditional division of Nature vs. Nurture in everything from plant science to sexual expression, arguing in the end that life consists of an endless waltz between these two ancient notions.

This visionary book on gender and sexuality weaves together high theory and intimate memoir, with "spectacular" results—"and the gendered body will never be the same again" (Jack Halberstam). What constitutes a "real" man or woman in the twenty-first century? Since birth control pills, erectile dysfunction remedies, and factory-made testosterone and estrogen were developed, biology is definitely no longer destiny. In this penetrating analysis of gender, Paul B. Preciado shows the ways in which the synthesis of hormones since the 1950s has fundamentally changed how gender and sexual identity are formulated, and how the pharmaceutical and pornography industries are in the business of creating desire. This riveting continuation of Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality also includes Preciado's diaristic account of his own use of testosterone every day for one year, and its mesmerizing impact on his body as well as his imagination.

"In Gender Shock, Phyllis Burke explodes the many myths surrounding our rigid gender system of male and female by looking through three lenses of gender identity: behavior, appearance, and science. Analyzing the latest research in psychology, genetics, neurology, and sociology, Burke finds that gender (or behavior) is not the result of one's biological sex (the body itself) and that gender and sexuality are separate elements of the self. With common sense and compassion, Burke challenges the notion that men and women are from different planets by revealing how there are more variations within each sex than there are between the two."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved