Leave those kids alone: On the uses and abuses and feminist queer potential of non-binary and genderqueer (original) (raw)

Chapter 10: Gender and Sexuality, 2023 updated version

Perspectives: An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition (Revised 2023) , 2023

Anthropologists are fond of pointing out that much of what we take for granted as “natural” in our lives is actually cultural—it is not grounded in nature or in biology but invented by humans. Because culture is invented, it takes different forms in different places and changes over time. Living in the twenty-first century, we have witnessed how rapidly and dramatically culture can change, from ways of communicating to the emergence of same-sex marriage. Similarly, many of us live in culturally diverse settings and experience how varied human cultural inventions can be. We readily accept that clothing, language, and music are cultural—invented, created, and alterable—but often find it difficult to accept that gender and sexuality are not natural but deeply embedded in culture. We struggle with the idea that the division of humans into two and only two categories, “male” and “female,” is not universal. How can male and female be cultural concepts that take different forms and have different meanings cross-culturally? This chapter, newly revised for 2023, addresses these questions as it explores the anthropology of gender and sexuality. {See https://pressbooks.pub/perspectives/chapter/gender-and-sexuality/ for the online version, or download the chapter here.}

Gender and Sexuality: An Anthropological Approach

2017

1.Introduction 2. Ethnography and the Sexual Life of the Primitive 3. The Cold War and Second-Wave Feminism 4. Labor and Love: Marxism in Anthropology of Gender 5. Coloring Sex: Voices of “difference” 6. Looking At The Powerful: The Subaltern Voice 7. Identity Politics and the Emergence of the Queer Movement 8. Post-structuralism in Anthropology of Science and Feminism (1990’s) 9. Anthropology of Gender at the Present 10. A problem of Theory 11. A Political Problem: Reconstructing Racial Gender 12. Conclusion Glossary Annotated Bibliography Additional Bibliography Biographical Sketch

Introduction to Gendering and Sexualities

Gender Issues, 2021

The terrain of both gender and sexuality are complex and increasingly interrogated and deconstructed domains. I have deliberately used the word ‘gendering’ rather than gender in the title because of the way in which gender is and continues to be constructed and re-constructed by individuals, couples, families and communities. Gendering and Sexuality are constantly being mediated and “constructed through and within other relations of power such a class, ‘race’/ethnicity or imperialism/colonialism” and ongoing coloniality [1]. Assumptions about sex, heteronormativity, gender binaries are increasingly being contested, re-articulated and re-imagined.

Sex/gender identity: Moving beyond fixed and “natural” categories

Studies in Culture and Society 15(8), pp. 995–1016.

Despite feminist understandings of the socially constructed nature of sex and gender and anthropological studies of alternative constructions, western societies tend to understand sex and gender in terms of mutually-exclusive hierarchical categories. We analyze the process by which a heteronormative sex-gender-sexuality system is constructed and legitimized to the exclusion of those whose physiology and/or behaviors do not conform to it. We provide some insights into ways in which the extraordinary diversity of sex-gender can be recognized and valued on various social planes, through activism, the production and critique of popular culture, and education.

Theorizing Intersectionality and Sexuality

2010

The study of gender and sexuality has developed dramatically over recent years, with a changing theoretical landscape that has seen innovative work emerge on identity, the body and embodiment, queer theory, technology, space, and the concept of gender itself. There has been an increasing focus on sexuality and new theorizing on masculinities. This exciting series will take account of these developments, emphasizing new, original work that engages both theoretically and empirically with the themes of gender, sexuality, and, crucially, their intersections, to set a new, vibrant and contemporary international agenda for research in this area.