Sex Gender Becoming

Don: Centre for Human Rights, Pretoria.

When Sex Became Gender is a study of post-World War II feminist theory from the viewpoint of intellectual history. The key theme is that ideas about the social construction of gender have its origins in the feminist theorists of the postwar period, and that these early ideas about gender became a key foundational paradigm for both second and third wave feminist thought. These conceptual foundations were created by a cohort of extraordinarily imaginative and bold academic women. While discussing the famous feminist scholars—Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Mead—the book also hinges on the work of scholars who are lesser known to American audiences—Mirra Komarovsky, Viola Klein, and Ruth Herschberger, The postwar years have been an overlooked period in the development of feminist theory and philosophy and Tarrant makes a compelling case for this era being the turning point in the study of gender.

"International sex researcher, neuroscientist, and frequent contributor to The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Debra Soh [discusses what she sees as] gender myths in this ... examination of the many facets of gender identity"--

The classic manifesto of the liberated woman, this book explores every facet of a woman's life.

Shortlisted for The Green Carnation Prize 2014 'This is not a fairytale. This is a story about how sex and money and power police our dreams.' Clear-eyed, witty and irreverent, Laurie Penny is as ruthless in her dissection of modern feminism and class politics as she is in discussing her own experiences in journalism, activism and underground culture. This is a book about poverty and prejudice, online dating and eating disorders, riots in the streets and lies on the television. The backlash is on against sexual freedom for men and women and social justice – and feminism needs to get braver. Penny speaks for a new feminism that takes no prisoners, a feminism that is about justice and equality, but also about freedom for all. It's about the freedom to be who we are, to love who we choose, to invent new gender roles, and to speak out fiercely against those who would deny us those rights. It is a book that gives the silenced a voice – a voice that speaks of unspeakable things.

This book presents a poignant account of the current policy approaches to self-determining sex and gender in the UK and beyond, showing how legal, medical and pedagogical policy developments are interconnected, and how policy is affected by transgender and diverse gender experiences and activism.

This book investigates the relationship between sex and gender under international human rights law, and how this influences the formation of individual subjects. Combining feminist, queer, and psychoanalytical perspectives, the author scrutinises the sexed/gendered human rights discourse, starting from the assumptions underpinning interpretations of sex, gender, and the related notions of gender identity, sex characteristics, and sexual orientation. Human rights law has so far offered only a limited account of the diversity of sexed/ gendered subjectivities, being based on a series of simplistic assumptions. Namely, that there are only two sexes and two genders; sex is a natural fact and gender is a social construct; gender is the metonymic signifier for women; and gender power relations take the asymmetrical shape of male domination versus female oppression. Against these assumptions, dominative and subordinate postures interchangeably attach to femininities and masculinities, depending on the subjects’ roles, their positionalities, and the situational meanings of their acts. The limits of an approach to gender which is based on rigid binaries are evident in two case studies, on the UN human rights treaty bodies’ vocabulary on medically unnecessary interventions upon intersex children and on the European Court of Human Rights’ narrative on sadomasochism. This examination of the impact of human rights on gendered subjectivities will be of interest to scholars, students, and researchers in international law, gender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, critical race theory, and psychoanalysis.

Since its initial publication in 1990, this book has become a key work of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where the author began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices. Overall, this book offers a powerful critique of heteronormativity and of the function of gender in the modern world.