Sex Change Social Change

Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism provides readers with an authoritative introduction to contemporary transsexual politics in Canadian and Québécois contexts. Through different case studies relating to the law, human rights, health care, and prostitution, Dr. Namaste exposes readers to the complex issues involved in how transsexual politics and feminism interrelate. Written in accessible language, and including interviews, essays, and political speeches, Sex Change, Social Change will appeal to academics and to activists in the community, as well as to the general reader. The second edition has been thoroughly updated with five new chapters and includes new commentary on the readings from the first edition. All royalties from the sale of this book go to PASAN (Prisoners' HIV/AIDS Support Action Network), in particular their emergency fund that provides modest amounts of money to prisoners upon their release. These funds enable people to secure housing, go to a job interview, and/or replace their identity documents.

Redoing Gender demonstrates how difficult it is to be anything other than a man or a woman in a society that selectively acknowledges those two genders. Gender nonbinary people—who identify as other genders besides simply “man” or “woman”—have begun to disrupt this binary system, but the limited progress they have made has required significant everyday labor. Through interviews with 47 nonbinary people, this book offers rich description of these forms of labor, including “rethinking sex and gender,” “resignifying gender,” “redoing relationships,” and “resisting erasure.” The final chapter interrogates the lasting impact of this labor through follow-up interviews with participants four years later. Although nonbinary people are finally managing to achieve some recognition, it is clear that this change has not happened without a fight that continues to this day. The diverse experiences of nonbinary people in this book will help cisgender people relate to gender minorities with more compassion, and may also appeal to those questioning their own gender. This text will also be of keen interest to academics across Sociology and Gender Studies.

Sexual attitudes and behaviour have changed radically in Britain between the Victorian era and the twenty-first century. However, Lesley A. Hall reveals how slow and halting the processes of change have been, and how many continuities have persisted under a façade of modernity. Thoroughly revised, updated and expanded, the second edition of this established text: • explores a wide range of relevant topics including marriage, homosexuality, commercial sex, media representations, censorship, sexually transmitted diseases and sex education • features an entirely new last chapter which brings the narrative right up to the present day • provides fresh insights by bringing together further original research and recent scholarship in the area. Lively and authoritative, this is an essential volume for anyone studying the history of sexual culture in Britain during a period of rapid social change.

This edited collection provides a forum for rigorous analysis of the necessity for both legal and social change with regard to regulation of same-sex relationships and rainbow families, the status of civil partnership as a concept and the lived reality of equality for LGBTQ+ persons. Twenty-eight jurisdictions worldwide have now legalised same-sex marriage and many others some level of civil partnership. In contrast other jurisdictions refuse to recognise or even criminalise same-sex relationships. At a Council of Europe level, there is no requirement for contracting states to legalise same-sex marriage. Whilst the Court of Justice of the European Union now requires contracting states to recognise same-sex marriages for the purpose of free movement and residency rights, unlike the US Supreme Court, it does not require EU Member States to legalise same-sex marriage. Law and Sociology scholars from five key jurisdictions (England and Wales, Italy, Australia, Canada, and the Republic of Ireland) examine the role of the Council of Europe, European Union and further international regimes. A balanced approach between the competing views of critically analytical rights based theorists and queer and feminist theorists interrogates the current international consensus in this fast moving area. The incrementalist theory whilst offering a methodology for future advances continues to be critiqued. All contributions from differing perspectives expose that even for those jurisdictions who have legalised same-sex marriage, still further and continuous work needs to be done. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of human rights, family and marriage law and gender studies.

These topics are not dealt with in isolation, but are shown to be part of dense and historically specific networks of ideas and attitudes which went to make up sexual culture in Britain during a period of rapid social change."--Jacket.

Activist Identity Development of Transgender Social Justice Activists and Educators introduces a new field to education for social change. It explores how dominant power structures in society shape life experiences of trans and gender non-conforming people and their activist identity development.

This lively and controversial collection of essays sets out to theorize and practice a ‘materialist-feminist’ criticism of literature and culture. Such a criticism is based on the view that the material conditions in which men and women live are central to an understanding of culture and society. It emphasises the relation of gender to other categories of analysis, such as class and race, and considers the connection between ideology and cultural practice, and the ways in which all relations of power change with changing social and economic conditions. By presenting a wide range of work by major feminist scholars, this anthology in effect defines as well as illustrates the materialist-feminist tendency in current literary criticism. The essays in the first part of the book examine race, ideology, and the literary canon and explore the ways in which other critical discourse, such as those of deconstruction and French feminism, might be useful to a feminist and materialist criticism. The second part of the book contains examples of such criticism in practice, with studies of individual works, writers and ideas. An introduction by the editors situates the collected essays in relation both to one another and to a shared materialist/feminist project. Feminist Criticism and Social Change demonstrates the important contribution of materialist-feminist criticism to our understanding of literature and society, and fulfils a crucial need among those concerned with gender and its relation to criticism.