I could never fathom why women were seen as lesser creatures when compared to men. In my opinion, I believe women and men possess certain qualities that should make everyone stand on the same playing field; no one is better than the other. Writer Judith E. Tucker writes in her book In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine (1998) about how today she sees Islamic tradition and authenticity as the go-to support system when the restrictive interpretation of women’s rights and social roles are called into question (Tucker 2).

In the beginning, Tucker introduces the topic of The Law, the Courts, and the Mutifs in order to establish how the Islamic texts, the Qur’an, and the hadith (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) influenced the structure of gender roles in the Islamic society (Tucker 2). Tucker goes on to explain, multiple times throughout the book, about how these texts were interpreted through “processes of selective and self-serving interpretation” (Tucker 3). Tucker mentions the work of Fatima Mernissi, a “prominent Moroccan feminist,” while performing her research because Mernissi provides in-depth reasoning as of how gender roles were constructed throughout history (Tucker 3). Tucker then proceeded to analyze the past because it became “necessary and vital” towards the understanding of how structures were and are formed (Tucker 2). In addition to researching about the past, Tucker also decided to focus on the law because there is a “rich” amount of fatwas (collections of judicial response) to analyze (Tucker 4). The analyzation focused on the way certain topics were approached and what methods were used to make decisions. Through the use of Mernissi’s research, Tucker discovered how Muhammad’s message of social equality was “modified, distorted, or completely lost as the political leaders and scholars… shaped tradition” for their own selfish reasons (Tucker 5). I believe in any academic paper or research paper, the need to explore the past is extremely needed because it outlines the events that have constructed how that particular society handles situations.

Throughout the book, when Tucker introduces a chapter, she poses it with a question and then answers it based on the information she received for that specific chapter. This technique was helpful for the reader because the reader may not have a great understanding of the Islamic tradition and laws. The question and answer technique helps to place the reader in that specific situation to set them up for what they will be focusing on in that chapter. For example, in the first chapter, Tucker gives the reader an example of a virgin being married to a man, but claims her to be already “deflowered” (Tucker 1). He would then send her back to her family because she was not a virgin; however, the story goes on to say the accusation made by the husband has no consequence on the wife because she could have been “deflowered” by jumping, through menstruation, or with age (Tucker 1). The husband went on to steal the wife’s sister (it is not specifically stated why), but he must then return the wife’s sister, after the accusation was denied, from where he abducted her and he should be imprisoned until he does so. In this particular example, I truly appreciated the understanding of a woman’s body and how a woman can be “deflowered” by performing other activities instead of zina (illicit intercourse) (Tucker 1). What actually confused me in this section was the forms of punishment the woman would have endured if she was guilty of previously being deflowered. In this situation, the man would only be imprisoned for his crime of lying and abducting, but for the woman, she would be killed or suffered hadd punishment (punishment prescribed by the Qur’an) for lying about being “deflowered” (Tucker 1). I could only ask the question, why is the woman’s punishment so much more harmful and cruel than the man’s? He committed two acts against the law, but she only committed one. Also, the woman’s punishment is based on what the Qur’an states, but the man’s punishment is not stated to be in reference of what the Qur’an says. It started to become evident that the law was in favor of the male’s perspective and benefit.

Tucker goes on to write about the struggles the conservatives have to deal with when choosing how to handle certain situations. There are two distinctively different ways a conservative is confronted in the Islamic circle. On the one hand, “Muslim jurists can and should undertake to interpret the law so as to make it a relevant and useful guide for life in the modern world” (Tucker 6). For example, Tucker quotes Fazlur Rahman, “a reformer or modernist liberal,” on interpreting the topic of a man having more superiority than the female (Tucker 6). Rahman states, “…the woman, although she can possess and even earn wealth, is not required to spend on the household, which must be solely the concern of the male, and that, therefore, the male enjoys a certain superiority” (Tucker 6). I disagree with the accusation of a male having more superiority due to the fact he pays for the house because the woman is allowed to save her money and spend it on whatever else she wants. However, Rahman goes on to view this example from a “modernist liberal” view (Tucker 7). Since the woman is allowed to become economically independent and could possibly contribute to the household, the spouses must “come to enjoy absolute equality” (Tucker 7). I agree with this point of view because both the male and female could actually support the household and be on the same level of superiority. On the other hand, the second way to deal with social situations is to also call for a return to Qur’anic principles, but without the reformist agenda (Tucker 3). This interpretation does not allow the modern world to affect the jurist’s thoughts, unlike the first confrontational position. The jurists believed that the Qur’anic verses did not need to be adjusted to the modern world. Therefore, in 1979, “Iran’s Assembly of Experts” created another constitution for the “new Islamic Republic,” regardless of people’s disapproval, particularly the women (Tucker 7).

Furthermore, I appreciated Tucker’s chapters on marriage and divorce because I have been exposed to some stories from the Islamic culture that chooses the male’s word over the female’s word; however, Tucker gives examples of how the female has an opportunity to decline a marriage, but the example that was given was based on the bride’s abduction into a forced marriage. Also, the bride’s father is the one who can annul the marriage (Tucker 37). The male, particularly the father, is seen as the one who has control over what the female does. On the contrary, I believe the woman should have an automatic right to deny marriage if she is abducted because it was done without her consent. The father should not have to dictate whether she will stay in that marriage or not. In addition to marriage, if a male cannot provide for his wife, he has two options based on God’s two commands to either maintain her well or “release her with kindness” (Tucker 78). Again, the male is the one who has to release her of this duty. Marriage is seen as a business deal and if one side is not able to provide, then the Shafi’i na’ib (assistant judge) should separate them (Tucker 78). There were contracts, whether oral or written, that united a woman and man in which the bride and groom are given an amount or mahr (indirect dowry paid by the groom to the bride) in which the groom must provide before marriage (Tucker 38). If the husband could not provide he should let her go. Nevertheless, I believe the woman should have the right to leave because she is the one who has to suffer until her husband makes a decision for her. She should have the opportunity to decide what she wants for herself instead of the male’s deciding for her because they will put their best interest ahead of hers in the end.

Overall, Tucker explains how, during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the muftis, qadis, and urban populations of Syria and Palestine “passed down… a guide for gender relations in the modern world” (Tucker 7). Majority of the Islamic word was interpreted for the “male needs and desires” (Tucker 180). There were certain flexibility with some laws that were exhibited throughout the book, particularly with marriage and divorce, which changed with social conditions (Tucker 38).  As a result, Tucker believes the need to go back and question the processes as to which the Islamic culture constructs their gender roles “cannot but enrich the debates of today” and I agree with her (Tucker 186). Going to the past and deconstructing how gender roles are created would be an important step in breaking down these walls.

 

Citations

Tucker, Judith E. In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine. Berkeley: U of California, 1998. Print.

 

     

 It’s no secret that men and women are different; whether it is the way they dress, the way they act or the appearance of their genitalia, but is there also a difference in the hardwiring of the male and female brain? Cordelia Fine’s book Delusions of Gender sets out to address this issue, and uncover if it is really hardwired into our brains that women are designed to better understand emotions and preform housework, while men are designed to be devoid of emotions and better suited to succeed in the professional world, especially of the math and science field. As a female college student I was especially drawn to Fine’s book. Are all my past and prospective academic achievements a waste of time? Where my parents wrong in telling I could do anything I set my mind to? Would my time have been better spent these past four years trying to find a husband and touching up my domestic skills rather than at Davidson?

The sentiments I’ve expressed above are just a few of the many gender stereotypes that Fine addresses in Delusions of Gender. The general consensus for many people these days is that men and women are equal. In western society women have equal access to political rights, educational rights and social rights, or so it would appear. Fine notes that many people, assuming this is the case, begin to question with all this equality between the genders why are women not succeeding in the same fields at the same rates as men, is the reason biological rather than social? To address this over arching question Fine has reviewed numerous scientific studies that make claims to have found biological differences within the brains of men and women. Fine however claims that its not biology but rather the environments we grow up in. “When the environment makes gender salient, there is a ripple effect on the mind. We start to think of ourselves in terms of our gender, and stereotypes and social expectations become more prominent in the mind. This can change self-perception, alter interests, debilitate or enhance ability, and trigger unintentional discrimination. In other words, the social context influences who you are, how you think and what you do.” (5) Through her systematic review of numerous studies Fine reveals flaws in the methods and conclusions of each study. Instead she claims that gender stereotypes are so prevalent in modern society that it is nearly impossible to conduct accurate studies to determine the truth about whether or not gender differences are innate.

Cordelia Fine is a Canadian-born British academic psychologist. She first received her BA from Oxford in experimental psychology, followed by a M. Phil from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University College London. She has conducted psychological research at Monash University in Australia, the Australian National University and Macquire University also in Australia. Fine is currently an ARC future fellow in psychological sciences and associate professor at the Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne. Delusions of Gender is Fine’s second book, which was proceeded by A Mind of It’s Own a study of how the brain distorts and deceives. She has also written countless works that have been published in academic journals, and as chapters to scholarly books.

Delusions of Gender is broken up into three parts, the first being titled “Half Changed World’ Half Changed Mind.” In this section Fine lays out the larger arguments of her book that social and environmental factors strongly influence the mind, challenging the “biology as fallback” view. Fine first introduces notions of associative and explicit knowledge. She discusses how through influences such as the media and gender stereotypes patterns in our environments lead us to unconsciously draw conclusions that women are emotionally driven, while men are driven by rationally based decisions. She states, “close or powerful others in your life may be especially likely to act as a mirror in which you perceive your own qualities.” (10) Fine also discusses stereotype threat, the fear of certain groups fulfilling the stereotypes attributed to them, in terms of women in the work place. The pressures of stereotype threat have been shown to cause anxiety, depletion of memory, lowered expectations in oneself and general frustration. Fine attributes stereotype threat and lack of fit bias, to the lower levels of female professionals in male dominated fields rather than hardwiring of the brain.

In the second part of her book, “Neurosexism”, Fine criticizes the current available arguments and studies conducted supporting notions of sex differences in the brain. She focuses on methodical weakness, generalizations and assumptions made by the researchers in their reports of the data. One of the first theories Fine contests is Louann Brizendine’s. Brizendine claims that due to a surge of testosterone experienced in utero, for male fetuses, the left side of the male brain is affected leading to death of cells in the centers of the brain that govern communication, and instead grow cells in the area of the brain that controls sex and aggression. Brizendine states that this suppression of the left hemisphere of the brain predisposes men to preform better than women in math’s and arts. Fine quickly undermines this theory by pointing out that there has not yet been developed an accurate way to test neonatal levels of testosterone and that there is no clear evidence that this testosterone surge affects the brain at all. Fine continues to proceed in this manner debunking scientific theories that have been based on studies with methodical errors or that have been grossly overvalued, such as conclusions about the human brain that have been based on studies of primate brains. She also introduces the “file cabinet phenomenon” in which studies that are not regarding as ground breaking or not deemed interesting enough to the public are not published but rather filed away, never to bee seen again. Fine claims that this has been the fate of many scientific studies that have actually proven similarities in the brains of males and females. Finally, in this section she examines the emphasis that has been placed on PET and MRI scans. The popular belief is that such procedures are the be all end all of scientific knowledge, when in actually this technology is still in its infancy and thus is not reliant enough to base entire scientific studies on.

The final part of Delusions of Gender , “Recycling Gender”, discusses the highly gendered society in which children develop. Despite attempts of parents to “parent gender neutrally” it is nearly impossible to do so in todays society due to common conventions such as media and pre school socialization. Children have been shown to be able to acknowledge gender differences as early as one year old, and are some of the strictest gender polices. For instance Fine notes numerous studies where it is actually the peers of individual students who criticize cross gender interactions.

With all this knowledge Fine is arguing that as a society we have not yet conducted thorough enough tests to determine whether or not there truly are gendered differences within the brain. Instead the ways we are socialized regarding gender from extremely young ages transforms the malleable mind to reflect gender differences.

Through her witty language and meticulous research Fine addresses the complex question of inherent gender differences with ease. Her biting criticism of sloppily conducted studies and humorous asides make the book accessible to those without backgrounds in science or gender studies. Fine does a great job of canvasing a plethora of studies and detailing why each one should be discredited. This is evidenced through her summery of each scientific study she has researched, the reasons she gives for debunking the study and through the 81 pages of footnotes that follow the main content of her book.

Due to Fine’s mass debunking of current scientific research conducted in the area of gender differences Delusions of Gender received a large backlash from the scientific community. At times it feels as if Fine has oversimplified the issues faced in the scientific studies and does not give credit to individual aspects of each study. She belittles any information gleamed from scientific research that she does not agree with. Furthermore, when discussing gender stereotypes prevalent in children’s television shows, movies and books she makes vast generalizations stating that girls are always seen preforming stereotypically feminine roles. While this may have been true during the time Fine was writing, only 5 years ago, I feel that there has recently been a turn to diversify the messages we are sending to children through media. Finally, with the exception of one mention in part two about the work place experiences of transsexual women, Fine does not address individuals that identify as anything other than male/female or man/women. She does not allow room for discussion regarding transsexuals, pansexuals or issues of intersectionality. She also does not dedicate anytime towards considering how sexuality may affect the binary of male vs female brain.

Accepting the belief that there is something inherent within men and women that are the source of the gender binary would be the easy way out. It is much more difficult to accept that the reason for the continual inequality between men in women is societal and that to improve these inequalities we will have to completely alter societal norms. Fine presented a clear and convincing argument of exactly this issue in Delusions of Gender. The book is thought provoking as it encouraged me to question my own personal beliefs regarding the gender differences between men and women, and how such beliefs have been presented and reflected in my actions from a young age. The book also provided me with better insight of the challenges I might face as I continue on in my life as a women with high academic and professional ambitions, and as a women who hopes to one day raise children in a gender neutral setting not defined by pink and blue. One of Fines final quotations “gender difference is the product of gender inequality, and not the other way around” really resonated with me, and something that I will continue to strive to undermine.

Fine, Cordelia. Delusions of Gender. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

By: Marin Williams

Sex work is finding itself raging in contemporary debates – should it should be legalized, and if so, how it should be regulated. Rather than plunging into the oh so typical debate of legalization of sex work, Kim Price-Glynn takes a different angle in her ethnography, Strip Club: Gender, Power, and Sex Work, looking at the organizational structure of the institutions that house most of the United States sex work, the strip club. Sex work relates to “the exchange of sexual service, performances, or products for material compensation. It includes activities of direct physical contact between buyers and sellers as well as indirect sexual stimulation.”[1] Price-Glynn does not offer a clear definition of what she understands sex work to include other than stripping, prostitution, and pornographic films. In order to gain a better understanding of sex work and explore the issues of gender and power related to sex work, Price-Glynn took an interest in studying a strip club in Railton, a small, rural, northeastern town. For fourteen months, Price-Glynn fully emerged herself in her research by working in “The Lion’s Den” as a cocktail waitress, enabling her ability to observe, conduct research and analyze a strip club from an inside position. During her time at the club she conducted interviews and observed the organization in order to either prove or disprove her theory. Although the United States has several other institutions dealing in sex work, Price-Glynn specifically chose a strip club because she felt that there was a lot to uncover about what drives women to becoming sex workers and what attracts sex patrons to strip clubs, and that by uncovering these answers, we can gain a better understanding of the gendered, organizational, and economic benefits for strip clubs and their sex workers.

Price-Glynn situates herself in an outsider/insider approach, one that she adopts from Eleanor Miller and Wendy Chapkis. Eleanor Miller produced the study, Street Women in 1968, which studied prostitution and other forms of street hustling. Miller, an outsider, by means of a bar job, interviews, and courthouse visitations, gained access to the street women of Chicago. By connecting on a personal level, Miller was able to view the prostitutes’ lifestyles in ways more than just illegal activity. Later in 1997, Wendy Chapkis brought a new approach to researching sex work by participating as both an insider and an outsider. She collected reports and conducted interviews of multiple sex workers in the United States and abroad to shed more light on the “sex wars” debate. She later participated in a co-taught sexual massage class and even used the techniques learned on other women. By acting as both an outsider and an insider, Chapkis brought a radically different approach to sex work research. Inspired by both Chapkis and Miller, Price-Glynn acted as both an outsider and an insider in her research. As an insider she was a waitress in the strip club. As an outsider she keep a professional relationship with those she interviews and met in the club. Although her research method is adopted, Price-Glynn distinguishes herself from previous sex-work research because she looks at how the strippers are marginalized by the organizational structure of the club rather than by the work itself or by the gender inequality in the work. With her research, Price-Glynn, is opening a new door to the way sex work could be mitigated in order to benefit the workers.

Fourteen months of working at “The Lion’s Den” provided Price-Glynn with a vast amount of research and observations. Not only was she constantly observing the environment and the actions within the strip club by means of her waitressing job, she also collected information through interviews of nearly every person involved in the business: waitresses, strippers, doormen, patrons, business owner, etc. From the beginning, she had a goal of ameliorating the professional lives of sex workers saying, “it is my hope that what emerges from studying a strip club as an organization is an intimate portrait of life and work in the strip club”[2]. She planned to use this work as a platform to offer proposed changes in order to improve the work life of those involved in sex work. She found, as she had assumed, that the strip club was organized in a way that benefits male employees and patrons who visit the club. This intense masculine culture is responsible for marginalizing the strippers. Price-Glynn’s objective however is not to demonstrate that sex work contributes to the gender inequality problem in America, but rather to propose that it is actually the organizational structure of a strip club business itself that is responsible for marginalizing the strippers. This research eventually led her to the conclusion that the working environment for sex workers, specifically the strip club, must be improved. This improvement must stem from a reorganization of the strip club institution itself in order to allow women to feel empowered rather than enslaved by the work they are doing.

By immersing herself into the club scene, Price-Glynn gets about as naturalistic a view as she can get about the lives of sex workers, without actually becoming one herself. Her job as a cocktail waitress allows her to analyze and examine what truly goes on between patrons and the strippers, between the strippers and the boss, and even between strippers and other strippers. This insight allows for a more complete depiction of the strip club life, which unfortunately does not reflect positively of the current strip club life. While working there, Price-Glynn had the unpleasant task of listening to the horror stories and the emotional pain that strippers are subjected to every day and night. Some strippers told stories of how they had been digitally raped while performing on stage, others spoke of how they were expected to perform oral sex (even when touching is explicitly prohibited on the job), some even vocalized their feelings of abandonment when bouncers turned their heads when patrons touched and groped them. But one story that almost every stripper shared was their desire to keep their work life completely separate from their real life, and how complicated and tiresome the struggle was to do so. One stripper recounted that she refuses to touch or be near her partner until she showers saying, “I don’t feel clean, and I don’t feel like I want to touch him or I want him to touch me.”[3] Another described the importance of showering, describing her routine in detail…

“First, I suds up from head to toe and rinse the foreign touches, foul odors, sweat, and grime from my body. After I consider myself squeaky clean, I make the water as hot as I can stand, and rotate slowly under the shower, making the temperature hotter still. The burn is purifying.”[4]

In addition to the interviews with the strippers, Price-Glynn collected information about the strip club’s business structure such as the way things operated during the day and the way wages were calculated. She found that security and safety were compromised regularly because the success of the club was valued more than the safety of the strippers. For instance, the intense masculine culture in a strip club causes the desire for physical boundaries to be broken, and if patrons want or think that physical contact is a possibility, then the club will be more successful with more customers and customers spending more on average. The collateral damage of the club’s success is the strippers’ safety and comfort. She also discovered the way wages were divided in a strip club. The strippers do not actually receive any money other than the money that patrons placed on their bodies while performing. But not only do they not receive a fixed wage, they must pay the strip club in order to gain the “right” to perform there.

The information gathered by means of truly working and integrating into the life of an employee of a strip club immensely validates the accuracy of her research and her conclusion of the organizational structure of a strip club needing reform because it is currently an unsafe place for women. The women who work in the strip club industry are extremely susceptible to psychological, emotional, and in some cases physical harm due to the way the structure marginalizes them. In order for stripping to become a safe type of sex work for women, Price-Glynn advocates for a restructuring of the organization of all strip clubs in order to empower the women rather than continuing the suppress them.

[1] Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry, edited by Ronald Weitzer, Routledge, 2000.

[2] Price-Glynn, Kim, Strip Club: Gender, Power, and Sex Work. (New York, 2010), 3

[3] Price-Glynn, 134.

[4] Price-Glynn, 135.

 

Reconceiving the Second Sex: Men, Masculinity, and Reproduction (2009), was written by anthropologist Marcia C. Inhorn. The title alone gives an overview of what the reader should expect to see throughout the book. Men and Masculinity are understood to be the Second Sex in Inhorn’s title when the topic of reproduction occurs. The book cover consists of a female egg being fairly lager than the sperm that are surrounding it. The cover also portrays a sort of male dominance, yet at the same time, it could be interpreted as the males being left out and secondary. Inhorn writes about a variety of topics dealing with reproductionn and how men are always put on the back burner as the “The Second Sex” (Inhorn 1). She did a thorough job on observing men and their involvement during pregnancy.

Inhorn’s book has four different sections: Masculinity and Reproduction, Fertility and Family Planning, Infertility and Assisted Reproduction, and finally, Childbirth and Fatherhood. The chapter that conveyed her book as a whole, and what I would like to focus my analysis on is chapter 11 in the Childbirth and Fatherhood section. This chapter resonated with me as Inhorn analyzed the male role in reproduction and gave me a focus on male gender roles during pregnancy.

More recently, there has been conversations in the scientific field that men are becoming more involved during pregnancy. They are more likely to accompany women during doctor visits (especially ultrasound screenings), major decision making (such as amniocentesis), and even birthing courses. But pregnancy is still not fully equal amongst men and women. Inhorn questions the man’s involvement during pregnancy by explaining how she observed the cover of a Hebrew textbook on gynecology. The cover has a pregnant woman and her gynecologist physically touching while the woman’s partner is standing on the side. Inhorn questions the view of the male perspective on his female partner by asking “how does she look from his perspective” (Inhorn 281)? Through the lens of an anthropologists, Inhorn shifts her focus onto Israeli men in chapter 11 to “add a culturally situated account of men’s involvement in pregnancy” (Inhorn 282).

In chapter 11, “We are pregnant”: Israeli Men and the Paradoxes of Sharing, Inhorn immersed herself in the Israeli culture in 2003 as well as 2006 (287). She observed 39 couples, most of whom were married except for one. Most of the couples were first time parents with different social statuses, different ages, and different religious backgrounds (288). Inhorn conducted her work through an anthropological perspective which I appreciated because it allowed for in depth research. Since she was there once, she could observe changes during her return and analyze the differences between her 3 year gap. Inhorn refers to anthropologist and feminist writers that mention “various tensions, paradoxes, and contradictions” when men were involved during pregnancy (283).

During Inhorn’s analysis, she viewed the couples without interrupting their natural thinking process. Instead of conducting interviews, she sat in on birthing courses to hear couples speak. For these birthing courses, the brochures provided had images of men physically involved with the woman unlike Inhorn’s observation of the Hebrew textbook on gynecology. One of the brochures had the name of “Giving birth together” in hopes to make men feel included (285). These courses were all about establishing equality and were more academic rather than relaxing. Inhorn observed American birthing classes as more relaxing techniques and a “rite of passage” (286). On the other hand, Israeli birthing classes were more academic, but not strictly medical (300). Having larger groups rather than having just the woman, her doctor, and her partner, allowed for a more social atmosphere, as Inhorn noticed while attending these birthing courses.

Furthermore, Inhorn’s research provided some interesting topics that I agreed with. A gender role that is usually accepted throughout pregnancy is the woman researching and gaining knowledge about giving birth while the man is only expected to participate once the woman goes into labor. In the course of her observations, Inhorn became aware of the many tensions that occurred while getting men involved. For instance, a couple named Yoni and Tali presented a central tension which usually deals with a “shared pregnancy” problem (298). The couples issue has to deal with the fact that the pregnancy takes place in the woman, not the man, so how can it be shared? These tensions happen frequently, but they are usually resolved later on. Inhorn goes on to describe an experienced midwife’s “interesting” birthing courses that gives the couples a tour of the “birthing room” that would be in a hospital with medical equipment. However, Ruth was being stereotypical because she saw men as observing the monitors on the medical equipment instead of using the massage techniques she taught them.

Nevertheless, there were a few instances I did not agree with during one of Inhorn’s observations. Inhorn viewed men being accommodated during the birthing courses. On the day of the World Cup soccer tournament, the couples decided to come to the birthing courses regardless of the hoopla that surrounded the soccer game. At the beginning of the course, the instructor goes on to say “They must love you a lot, girls, you should appreciate them” to affirm the men and their bravery for missing the World Cup (289). I disagreed with this appreciation of men because if they wanted to be a part of the pregnancy they had to be willing to be there and it was not a “special effort” to miss a soccer game (289). In addition to the male accommodation, some Israeli men felt that there was too much fuss about pregnancy and that the women are being “spoiled” with all of this attention (296). The men saw some pregnancies where women gave birth and continued working right after. What they fail to understand is that every birth is different. Some births can be smooth and within a few hours while other births can be tedious and long. The accusation of the Israeli woman being “spoiled” was constructed from both genders because they both view Third World countries as people who can go through these experiences with less focus or fuss about them (296). Furthermore, when the Israeli men tried to understand pregnancy, they compared it to physical work they have done. One main example men try to compare pregnancy to is their work in the army. They undermine the importance of woman’s pregnancy by trying to make it seem easy because they went through something similar (293-4).

Overall, Inhorn did a great job providing in depth research about male participation during pregnancy. This was a well informing book for those who did not about male involvement during pregnancy. However, I wish Inhorn would have answered the question as to whether men should or shouldn’t be involved in pregnancy, but from her information that was given, and my personal observances of male involvement during pregnancy, it is a tricky question to answer. Many women believe that pregnancy is a woman’s field and no matter how much people try to involve the male partner, there will never be a true understanding of each other. A man cannot understand the physical demands that a woman’s body goes through. A woman cannot understand the loss of connection a male has during pregnancy, but they can be equal in other ways. The road to equality should be to start the journey of pregnancy together. Learning and growing at the same time would help cut down on the misunderstandings they have between each other.

Works Cited

Inhorn, Marcia Claire. <i>Reconceiving the Second Sex: Men, Masculinity, and Reproduction</i>. New York: Berghahn, 2009. Print.

Continue reading “Is There True Equality During Pregnancy?” →

As a child, flying on a plane is a terrifying endeavor. On my first trip to Orlando, Florida to see the attractions, there was a toddler, probably around the same age as my brother (two years old). I remember my brother smiling as he slept, the toddler in the other row screaming at the top of his lungs. My earplugs could not fit in my ears so I listened to him wail instead, culminating in the harsh whisper of his mother, “Why can’t you just act normal”. In this case, ‘normal’ seems to be fairly cut and dry; the mother wanted her son to be normal, which to her meant quient, well-behaved. Such ideas of normalcy are ingrained in us from an even earlier age as this, wehre non-normal means different, means troublesome. Michael Warner’s book, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life, he examines this idea of “normalcy” by focusing it with a lens of queer theory, and as he proceeds through his work he continues to narrow that lens, focusing it down on a narrative and demographic similar to his own. He begins by addressing sexual stigma in broad terms, each subsequent chapter moving from the idea of ‘normality’ in general to a narrowed focus on gay, lesbian, and queer individuals.

Part of the brilliance and also the complexity of Warner’s argument is that there is no one such argument. Throughout The Trouble with Normal, we see complete shifts not only from topic to topic, but also from argument to argument. However, I take Warner’s argument to be one of politics, or the application of normalcy which he brings up strongly as a theme in every one of his chapters. In his chapter “What’s Wrong with Normal?” I believe Warner’s clearest argument presents itself, “the politics I advocate” Warner says, “—a frank embrace of queer sex in all its apparent indignity, together with a frank challenge to the damaging hierarchies of respectability—” (Warner, 74). Warner’s ‘solution’ of sorts does not mess with the concept of integration, but rather the ‘embrace’ he mentions is one of understanding and a moral acceptance, rather than a physical acceptance into currently policy, structures, and politics. This semi-utopic ideal that he presents also comes with a more confrontational aspect, a ‘challenge’ to the way that respectability is perceived and its exclusion of queers and queer culture. For the purposes of this review, I will use the term ‘queer’ as Warner himself uniquely defines it, saying, “the term “queer” is used in a deliberately capacious way in this book, as it is much in queer theory, in order to suggest how many people can find themselves at odds with straight culture,” (38). Warner is using the word queer as a defining term to separate, in a way, those that have been eclipsed by straight culture in social and political matters. He then goes on to suggest that using the phrase ‘homophobia’ and ‘gays and lesbians’ are not sufficient, as it “blinds itself both to the subtlety of the oppressive culture and to the breadth of possible resistances,” (39). It is clear that Warner’s definition of the world queer hints to the subject of his main argument, the differentiation and potential intersection of two groups: straight culture, and queer culture.         Currently a professor of English at Yale university, Warner has published several seminal works in queer studies, particularly the essay “Sex in Public,” co-authored with Lauren Berlant, and Fear of a Queer Planet. The Trouble with Normal was among many of Warner’s foundational works in queer theory. His social criticisms are heard through many periodicals in addition to his monographs. on Yale’s English department page, Warner lists his many interests, but then unifies them, saying, “One common thread across these fields is the way different social worlds are built up out of different circulating media and ways of reading or hearing” (English.yale.edu). His comment upon differing social worlds is particularly interesting, as Warner is an outspoken voice against marriage equality being the forefront of the ‘queer agenda’, believing it has negative implications, and that these moves towards normalcy “are bad not just for gays but for everyone,” instead calling for “a vision of true sexual autonomy”.

The main method employed by Warner in his analysis and progress of thought is engaging with other voices from queer theory, as well as publicized media events such as the Clinton impeachment. The diversity of resources he draws from not only extends the understanding of a mere layperson, but also brings back his theories to concrete social events that the reader knows about and might have experienced. As I stated earlier, Warner’s book is written in an editorial style a constantly evolving persuasion of his audience. He moves from one topic to the next without lingering long in one area. Structurally, it is divided into five main parts: “The Ethics of Sexual Shame”, “What’s Wrong with Normal?”, “Beyond Gay Marriage”, “Zoning Out Sex”, and “The Politics of Shame and HIV Prevention”. Material wise, he begins in a broad stroke with sexual shame, the politics of moral panic, hierarchies of shame, and he finally settles on the the ethics of queer life in preparing for the focusing of part two, discussing the idea of what “normal” is, gay and lesbian movement involvement and the ambivalence of identity, and the “normalized movement”. Focusing even deeper, his third chapter narrows to just gay marriage, explaining his reasons against it, and delving into the idea of “marriage without cost”. Chapter four narrows further into zoning out sex, the private and the public aspects of sexual acts as well as who becomes political targets. The conclusion of his work ends with the most focused aspect and demographic of all, those infected with HIV.

Warner’s writing can be dense, giving him the space to hit all of these issues, but as an overarching theme it is clear that the narrowing of his scope brings his topic from the general public, down to people of his own demographic, with similar narratives. Rather than describing and unwrapping all of Warner’s thoughts, I intend to focus on what I believe to be his greatest strength, as well as his main point (as indicated by his title)—normalcy.

Fittingly, the part of Warner’s monograph that I found the most persuasive was his second chapter, “What’s Wrong with Normal?”. Essentially, Warner associates humans’ obsession with the idea of what is ‘normal’ with the rise of statistics in the 19^th century. Until this point, nobody had been concerned with what was normal, only with their normative ideas about right and wrong. In assessing the validity of a lust for normalcy, Warner cites Mary Poovey, who leads him to wonder “why anyone would want to be normal”, alter saying “It is not normal to be a genius, die a virgin, or be well endowed. That [normalcy], again, tells us nothing about what one should want,” (54). Such a statement has the power to throw any reader back into their memories, searching for moments they disproved or accepted the idea that normal was, indeed better; it’s strength lies in its universal application. Focusing this down to the linguistic element, Warner continues, tracing the word normal back to the true English meaning: “meeting a set of normative standards,” (56). He asserts that in a language such a French, the world normal has retained more of its original connotation, “refer[ring] to the whole process of training, testing, and authorizing people as full members of society,” (56). Here, we see Warner backing up his claims about normalcy by taking things back; normal wasn’t even intended to mean what we think it means!

Warner offers us a clear definition of the term “queer”, that he uses, attempting to use it in a particularly “capacious way”—all encompassing and inclusive. That being said, I found that Warner’s argument tended to fall into the trap of writing and speaking into the gay and lesbian categories that he made it his goal to undermine. He originally speaks from this perspective of an upheaval and destabilizing of the societal norms we have put into practice. Even towards the beginning, though, it is clear that Warner doesn’t always focus on the queer movement as a whole, but attempts to encapsulate it all by referring to homosexuality. Page 72 shows us a clear example of this, “pragmatism in gay politics requires some sense of principle, and some accountability to gays and lesbians.” What is interesting about this is his isolation of gay and lesbian terminology, continuing on to state that an issue with the hugeness of the marriage equality movement is it’s blindsiding certain groups (trans* people, gender non-conforming, etc.) Other areas of the book include brief mention of these groups, but the lack of consistency on Warner’s part seems to undermine his argument against gay marriage.

Warner’s book, The Trouble with Normal, does an amazing job of covering a variety of topics from the ubiquity of sexual stigma to the prevalence and more focused stigma of having HIV/AIDS. Warner is able to successfully balance a variety of academic sources and their research with contemporary examples that everyone is familiar with, giving him the ability to speak topic-wise to a larger audience. However, due to the level of nuance and complex theories discussed by Warner, I would say that the ideal audience consists of those aware of the marriage equality movement, with some familiarity with the idea of stigma and how it pertains to queer theory. While he introduces his topics well enough for most anyone to read and understand, I believe the most understanding will come from a place of prior knowledge of the subject.

 

 

 

Warner, Michael. Michael Warner: Seymour H. Knox Professor of English, Professor of American Studies. Yale U. Web. 23 Feb 2016.

 

Warner, Michael. The Trouble with Normal. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Print.

Anne Balay, in her book Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers, challenges prevailing notions of queerness, particularly that queer means male, wealthy, educated, and most likely monogamous. While in recent years, the United States has seen a newfound acceptance for gays, such acceptance is limited to those who fit this stereotype. Steel Closets is one of the few academic works to engage with working-class queers, specifically steelworkers. Balay investigates how the environment of their workspace influences not only how LGBT people interact with others, but also themselves with regards to sexuality—that is, if they come out or stay closeted and why, as well as conceptions of their own sexuality. Such a discussion quickly becomes complex, as it must take into account the mills as physical places, gender stereotypes, class differences, and many other things. Anne Balay does all of this through the voices of steelworkers themselves, since this work is built off of forty interviews, which ultimately makes this piece genuine, powerful, and meaningful.

As a queer woman with experience in blue-collar work herself, this book hit a particularly personal note. Many of her own experiences seep into the narrative—but only to benefit the overall work. With a background as an English professor at both the University of Illinois and Indiana University Northwest, she decided to investigate, from an academic vantage point, a world to which she could relate. First and foremost, her personal experiences shaped the initial questions she set out to answer. In her introduction, she says “I was immediately intrigued…I’m a lesbian, and I had previously worked as a car mechanic, so I had the experience as a woman in a traditionally male occupation—one that offers more dirt and danger than respect—which increased my interest in what interviews with steelworkers might revel” (20-21). But her personal experiences also shaped process. In fact, being a lesbian with experience in blue-collar work gave her a certain level of access, which enabled her to gather the information she needed. She admits, “often I got people to talk by sharing experiences I had had as a mechanic, and I encouraged them to continue by flirting, and by caring” (19). In essence, the type of access she had determined her ultimate method.

Since little scholarly work about working-class queers existed at the time she was writing, Balay had to go retrieve information herself. Steel Closets is built on forty interviews, and thus personal stories. In describing her methodology, she explains that her background in English in many ways shaped her approach. She explains, “I’m a listener, but also a reader” (19). After conducting these interviews, she went back and “sought out patterns, recurring themes, and significant words, phases, or images…I combed through the transcripts like a literary scholar searching for meaning” (19). Usually, she let the steelworkers take the initiative since she “didn’t want to sensationalize their experiences or shut down some stories by fishing for others” (19). She describes the steelworkers as “consummate storytellers who use narrative to construct and understand their lives…they are narratives that provide the tellers with agency, voice, and opportunity to understand themselves in the context of their worlds” (19). So, in some ways, her subjects made the collection of information easier. But finding gay steelworkers was in itself difficult. Balay says that initially she imagined “a snowball sampling,” where one queer steelworker would lead her to another (22). However, queer steelworkers were too closeted for even that. This led her on quite the escapade to find gays—frequenting bars, reaching out to gay and regional media, using newspaper columns, among other things.

The crux of her book focuses on the pattern of abuse of LGBT workers. Steelworkers “blame this hostility to gay people on two factors: the physical isolation of the mills and the hazardous and communal nature of the work” (15). In essence, these two factors shape how gay steelworkers interact with other workers and shape their opinions of their own sexuality. Hence, the first chapter sets the scene, illustrating the steel mill as “isolated, slow to change, stable” (41). She explores “what it is about the steel mills—the work, location, the people, the history—that makes them so inhospitable to queers” (34). The next chapter analyzes the separation, or lack of separation, of work and home life. Balay claims, “issues of personal and home life saturate the steel mill’s work culture, and how its presence affects the work, and the workers” (64). This openness has a particular impact on non-straight workers, since “being openly gay is discouraged, but taking steps to hide it is punished as well” (71). This in turn just further isolates many gay workers. Next, Balay more closely investigates why so many steelworkers are closeted and the consequences of remaining closeted. In the subsequent sections, she discusses male and female masculinity. In what is often called “a man’s world,” the expression of masculinity plays a huge role determining the overall experience of a particular worker. This very fact speaks to why the experiences of gay men and gay women are not necessarily parallel. Balay then goes on to further describe the dangers of the mills—very much a reality for all the individuals she interviewed. And in her final chapter, Balay discusses Unions and labor movements and some of the problems that exist—another vital part of these individuals’ experience as workers. As specific and small as this topic might seem, this book clearly has a broad scope.

 Steel Closets is a powerful and meaningful piece concerning a topic often left out, even in academia. Anne Balay is careful in her analysis—trying not to make broad assumptions, being specific, and giving her informants agency in explaining their own experiences. But the greatest strength of this piece is how genuine it is. By giving her interviewees agency and letting the reader hear their voices as they “share their lives and stories” (13). Steel Closets becomes a candid account of a group of people who are too often left out of the narrative.

While Steel Closets has so many strengths, it is important to mention some of its weaknesses. Its greatest point of weakness is the small number of interviewees. Such a small pool begs the question of accuracy. Anne Balay does a great job of noting the experience of these forty individuals, but can one be confident in the consistency of this narrative across mills in the United States? The pool of interviewees also lacks diversity—particularly racial diversity. While she is upfront about this fact, the lack of different voices certainly hinders the work as a whole.

Overall, in her book Steel Closets, Anne Balay artfully provides us with an honest, accessible account of a voice historically ignored and passed over. This work is vitally important—even beyond the world of academia. While it is a piece of scholarly literature concerning a topic rarely investigated, it challenges our conceptions of queerness, specifically what it means to be queer. And it reminds us to always take into account the intersectionality of experience based on race, gender, class, and sexuality.

Works Cited

Balay, Anne. Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers. Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Print.

Acting Wilde: Victorian Sexuality, Theatre, and Oscar Wilde

Given the modern perceptions of Victorian-era society as one which held strict views on issues of gender and sexuality, it’s no surprise that a writer like Oscar Wilde has created such a lasting legacy. Kerry Powell, a Professor of English at Miami University, studies Oscar Wilde through the lens of Victorian sexuality in his book, Acting Wilde: Victorian Sexuality, Theatre, and Oscar Wilde. Wilde, an Irish playwright, novelist, and poet, was one of the most popular yet controversial writers of the 1980s, known especially for his society comedies. Much of the controversy over Wilde was rooted in the fact that he was quite open about sexuality in his works, and even alluded to homosexuality, which was an extremely taboo topic during the time period. For instance, one of his most famous works, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was heavily criticized for its homo-eroticism. However, the infamous trials that led to Wilde’s downfall were perhaps the most controversial aspects of his life and legacy. As a consequence of these trials, his literature, and his wild persona during his lifetime, Wilde became an iconic gay figure, remaining so today. According to Powell, whose research interests include not only Victorian literature, but also gender and performance studies, “Wilde was among the first to discern that life is a continuum of performance, and everyone an actor” (1). The objective of Powell’s book is to examine Wilde’s ideas of gendered and sexual identity, and analyze them through the framework of Victorian ideas of concepts such as masculinity and homosexuality. Powell claims that “Wilde’s revolutionary contribution was not only to conceive of gender, personal identity, and life itself as ‘performed,’ but to welcome this recognition with open arms and adopt, in both theory and practice, a calculate strategy of self-fashioning” (5).

Powell organizes his book into six different chapters in order to discuss various aspects of Oscar Wilde’s life and legacy, and how it tied into Victorian society during the time period. The first chapter, “Posing and dis-posing: Oscar Wilde in America and beyond” discusses Wilde’s ideas of self-enactment and how he presented himself through art. It also examines various representations of Wilde in Victorian society and popular culture, such as photographs and portraits, many of which were satire. The satirical nature of these representations were largely due to how Wilde was thought to have acted and styled himself in gender-non-conforming ways, particularly ways that were not considered masculine by contemporary ideals. Newspaper publications tended to focus on Wilde’s physical appearance, often describing him in meticulous detail. For example, The Daily Tribune wrote, “His nether garments did not extend to his ankles, as those of modest men ought to do, but stopped at his knees” (16). It also commented on how his “‘femininely disposed hair’ and ‘redundancy of collar and cravat’ made him look like ‘a great homely girl – one of those girls whose brother is sure to be good looking, ,and who would be good looking herself had she been born a boy” (17). Such descriptions demonstrate how important style of dress can be as a form of self-expression, both artistic and gendered, indicating how the rigidity of Victorian gender roles extended to clothing. Likewise, various magazines featured satirical comic-like images of Wilde depicted in “feminine” poses surrounded by clichéd images of “femininity,” like flowers. Interestingly, although people laughed at the way he dressed and found humor in these images, Wilde did not seem to take offense to such caricatures but instead found them rather entertaining. Wilde’s disregard for adhering to societal gender norms was a bold statement in more than one way – Wilde considered self-portraits to be forms in which he could “realize himself artistically and sexually, for art is a ‘mode of acting,’ and attempt by the artist to perform and develop his own personality” (33).

Nevertheless, although Powell presents some insightful information in Chapter 1, I believe Powell missed an opportunity to delve deeper into what these representations meant on a larger scale. He could have included greater discussion on Victorian ideas of gender and sexuality, Victorian constructions of gender normativity, and how Wilde threatened these gender norms. Instead, Powell mainly focuses on the representations themselves, and not as much on why Wilde was presented that way, or how those conceptions of him came to be. Meanwhile, chapters two, three, and four of Powell’s book examine Wilde’s works, including: Lady Windermere’s Fan, Salomé, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest. These chapters analyze how these literary works challenged common perceptions of gender and sexuality during the time period. However, the bulk of the analysis involves close readings of the texts, and is therefore primarily aimed at audiences familiar with Wilde’s works. As a result, these chapters do not pertain to the larger scholarly discourse in gender and sexuality studies to the same extent as the other chapters in the book. Perhaps the most important takeaway from these chapters is the claim that “Wilde’s greatest plays of the 1890s are the acting out of the author’s conflict and to a high degree his compromise with an increasingly powerful variety of late-Victorian feminism – rigid in its insistence that the ‘law of purity’ be applied to men and women alike” (41). This “law of purity,” in other words, refers to the double standard regarding chastity in men and women in Victorian society, a concern which Wilde addresses in his plays. Skipping over to the sixth and final chapter, in “Prison performativity,” Powell discusses Oscar Wilde’s experience during his two years in prison and how it connects to his performed identity. While the chapter analyzes Wilde’s letter from prison, De Profundis, which documents his personal experiences, much of Powell’s emphasis is on Wilde’s identity in his artistry rather than in his sexuality.

On the other hand, the fifth chapter of Powell’s book, “The ‘lost’ transcript, sexual acting, and the meaning of Wilde’s trials,” which focuses on the infamous trials that led to Oscar Wilde’s demise, contains perhaps the most significant contribution to other scholarship on gender and sexuality studies. Powell initially points out, “Although the trials in Wilde’s retrospective view were an irredeemably coarse drama – not metaphorically, but really – they have come to be seen more positively in our own time as a painful yet valuable crisis of transition between the Victorian world and what came after” (11). However, Powell’s research is more concerned with the meaning of these trials during Wilde’s lifetime as opposed to its meaning for modern society. In the course of doing research for his book, Powell examined the recently recovered transcript of Wilde’s first courtroom trial – a transcript he describes as “one of the top-security items in the British Library” and having only “been seen first-hand by very few people” (131). During the time period of Wilde’s trials, any case involving homosexual activity would have been heavily censored in written accounts, and this censorship also applies to the Wilde transcript. This erasure of detail in the transcript reflects how homosexuality was an unspeakable, taboo topic in Victorian society. Powell suggests, “The Victorian code of silence on this matter, therefore, hardly means that homosexuality did not exist before Wilde – and the fact that so many scholars today believe that Wilde was the “first Homosexual” is testimony to the power of a social policy of silence whose entire point and purpose was to erase all traces of the existence of homosexuality even while policing it” (139). This Victorian silence also pertains to the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, the law which Wilde was persecuted for violating. This law forbade “any male, in public or private, committing any act of gross indecency with another male” (135). Interestingly, the law fails to specify what exactly constitutes “gross indecency,” making the reference to homosexual activity very vague. Furthermore, the law only refers to males, not females, demonstrating the double standard in Victorian society that Wilde wrote about in relation to the “law of purity.” The exclusion of females also relates to the Victorian controversy over what it means to be a man, or what it means to be masculine. Although Powell only touches on these points, he clearly articulates in this chapter how “Part of the inestimably great value of the lost and now recovered transcript of Wilde’s first trial is that it breaks through [the] veil of silence and allows us a glimpse of homosexual culture” (139). Ultimately, as a comprehensive piece, Kerry Powell’s Acting Wilde: Victorian Sexuality, Theatre, and Oscar Wilde offers an insightful glimpse of not just Victorian homosexuality, but gender and sexuality in general. Powell’s book successfully presents the audience with a more realistic, rather than romanticized, portrayal of Oscar Wilde’s life that stays true to the historical and social circumstances of the time period.

 

Work Cited:

Powell, Kerry. Acting Wilde: Victorian Sexuality, Theatre, and Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.

In the Grey’s Anatomy episode “Begin the Begin” Bex, a fourteen-year-old, comes in for a biopsy on an enlargement of a pelvic lymph node. In the process, it is discovered that Bex has a benign tumor compressing, not an ovary, but a testicle: Bex is intersex. Her parents, in light of this discovery, request that the doctors remove her intersex trait without telling Bex. Appalled, the doctors refuse, forcing Bex’s parents to tell her the truth (see appendix for clips from the episode). In “Begin the Begin” the medical professionals are painted as the heroic advocates for intersex individuals while the parents appear insensitive and selfish. Contesting Intersex, the scholarly monograph by Georgiann Davis, offers a different view. In Contesting Intersex, Davis argues “that medical professionals have replaced intersex language with disorder of sex development nomenclature, a linguistic move designed to reclaim their authority and jurisdiction over the intersex body.”[1] Far from being the heroes we see in “Begin the Begin,” in her monograph, Davis paints the medical professionals as antagonists to intersexuality and those it affects.

Davis is uniquely qualified to author such a text in that she herself is an intersex individual who has experienced firsthand the negative impacts the medical field can have on intersexuality and those who experience it. When Davis was thirteen, she was diagnosed with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS). Worried that knowledge of her condition would stunt her developmental trajectory, her parents and doctors concealed her diagnosis: “the doctors told me that I had underdeveloped ovaries that had a very high risk of being cancerous and would need to be surgically removed before my eighteenth birthday […] The purported ovaries were actually undescended testes […] and when I was seventeen, I had surgery to remove the supposedly dangerous organs.”[2] It was not until she requested a copy of her medical records when she was nineteen that Davis discovered the truth. Almost a decade later, liberated by her feminist studies in her sociology doctoral program, Davis felt empowered enough to have her first experience with the intersex community at a meeting of the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome Support-Group- USA in Chicago. It was there that Davis decided she wanted to “pursue a sociological analysis of intersex in contemporary U.S. society”[3] and the idea behind Contesting Intersex was born.

Formally, Contesting Intersex resembles Anne Balay’s Steel Closets, parts of which we read in class. Like Balay, Davis compiled a collection of interviews to compose an oral history on the subject of intersexuality. Davis interviewed sixty-five individuals: thirty-six adults with intersex traits, seventeen parents of children with intersex traits, ten medical experts on intersexuality and two social movement organization board members. To preserve their anonymity, participants chose a pseudonym at the beginning of the interview and Davis assigned medical professionals letters, A through J. Davis then used what the interviewees told her to explore a host of issues surrounding intersexuality in an attempt “to understand the complexities of living outside sex, gender, and sexual binaries”[4] and “to elucidate how those binaries constrain all of us, whatever our genitalia.”[5] Davis’s argument is focused on three facets of intersexuality: Nikolas Rose and Carlos Novas’s theory of digital biocitizenship, sociologist Barbara Risman’s gender structure theory, and the shift from intersex language to the terminology of disorders of sexual development (DSD) as a result of the 2006 “Consensus statement on the Management of Intersex Disorders.”

Before we can understand how gender theory and the theory of biocitizenship (both of which later serve as lenses through which Davis does much of her analysis) intersect Davis’s argument, we must first understand DSD terminology and the tensions it has created within the intersex community. In 2006, the medical community switched from defining those with intersex traits as intersex to defining them as individuals with disorders of sexual development. Davis argues that “DSD terminology has heightened tension within the intersex community. Some individuals born with intersex traits are embracing the new nomenclature; others resist it, citing the pathologization that underlines the term disorder.”[6] Furthermore, from her interviews, Davis determined that those who embrace intersex language, rather than DSD, have more positive self-identities or ideas about themselves but, have troubled relationships with medical professionals and parents while those who embraced DSD nomenclature tend to report positive relationships with doctors and parents but have less positive views of themselves. Davis argues that this is because “Disorder of Sexual development implies that the sex binary system is natural”[7] and, thus, portrays intersex as a negative deviation or mutation from the “natural” system.

Davis uses Nikolas Rose and Carlos Novas’s idea of digital biocitizenship and sociologist Barbara Risman’s gender structure theory to explore how DSD terminology, and by extension the medical community, is detrimental to the intersex community. Digital biocitizenship (a term Davis uses interchangeably with biological citizenship) is the electronic connection of an individual to a specific community via “a support group website or email listserv.”[8] This is significant because Davis argues that “for intersex people, biological citizenship is accessible only to those willing to engage with DSD nomenclature.”[9]

While biocitizenship demonstrates the issues with DSD on one level, Davis uses Risman’s theory to show the pervasive detriments of DSD on all levels of society. Davis explains that the theory “conceptualizes gender as deeply embedded as a basis for stratification not just in our personalities, our cultural rules or institutions but in all these, and in complicated ways.”[10] By looking at intersexuality through this lens (that is, the idea that gender and sexuality affect three levels of society: the individual, the institutional, and the interactional) Davis is able to analyze her interviews for “the consequences of meanings of intersex at the institutional, individual, and interactional levels.”[11] This, then, is what the majority of her book is dedicated to: the exploration of intersexuality and the consequences of DSD terminology on all three levels. She concludes the text by highlighting “the possibility for social change in the form of practical actions that intersex activists and allies can take to decrease intersex stigma and the shame and secrecy that surround it”[12] and the need for “medical allies”[13] to the intersex community to help said change come about.

When evaluating Contesting Intersex, it is important to consider not just the strength of the book’s argument (which is well supported by a plethora of anecdotes and, further, compelling analysis of those anecdotes) but also its value in the greater context of queer theory. Because of the unique authorship of Contesting Intersex, it is more important to highlight the overall generic value of the text rather than a specific strength within the text itself. What makes Contesting Intersex remarkable in intersex scholarship, and queer theory in general, is that it is written by a member of the intersex community. Throughout the text, Davis highlights her unique perspective and how her “personal experience with intersexuality provided an inroad into the field and community.”[14]  Because she was an “insider” her interviewees trusted her and were willing to share, perhaps more willing than they would have been with someone approaching the same issue from the outside. As Peggy –on of the intersex individuals Davis interviewed- said to Davis: “I feel that you’re going to be on my side. You’re not like someone at the zoo saying, ‘well I’m a human being and I’m taking notes on monkeys.’ You’re the monkey in the cage with me.”[15] Contesting Intersex contains many very personal delicate anecdotes that offer eye-opening insight into intersexuality and it’s possible that these valuable contributions would have been censored, altered, or kept secret if the interviewees hadn’t felt that they could share with Davis because of their common struggle. Thus, a strength of Contesting Intersex is that it offers its readership valuable and obscure understanding of something most of us cannot experience firsthand and may not have access to secondhand.

In a somewhat paradoxical notion, the greatest strength of Contesting Intersex and the greatest limitation concern the same aspect of the text. Contesting Intersex is valuable and strong because it provides important, new, and normally inaccessible information to queer theory and the public in the form of its interviews but, just as the book is strengthened by the interviews, it is also limited. Davis contained her research to four intersex support organizations and, in doing so, homogenized the pool from which she was gathering information. In her own words: “because my recruitment was limited to the four organizations […] it was difficult to locate participants who did not have a formal higher education.”[16] Although the pool contained individuals of racial and ethnic diversity, there was very little diversity with regards to the education levels of the interviewees, which may have lead to a lessening in the diversity of experiences Davis, and by extension her readership, were privy to. “Given that the racial and ethnic minorities in my sample had completed at least some college and most held college degrees, it seems likely that the absence of racial/ethnic differences has more to do with common education backgrounds than with any potential claim that racial and ethnic minorities at large experience intersexuality in a similar way to white individuals.”[17]  Davis admitted in her introduction that, for the most part, those who attend support groups and actively seek out the intersex community have achieved a certain level of education. I felt that by not limiting her research to the support groups Davis would have been better able to see how diversity affects intersex individuals and come to some conclusions regarding the intersection of race, class, ethnicity and intersexuality.

I was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes when I was two years old and it was my wonderful medical team that got myself and my family through the tough diagnosis and the subsequent years (to this day, in fact, I am still heavily dependent on a multitude of medical professionals). Because of this, I have always idealized medical experts and seen them as everyday superheroes without the capes. Thus, the premise of Contesting Intersex was, for me at least, radically eye-opening and slightly horrifying. That being said, I value it for its bold exposé of the darker side of the medical world. Well-supported and convincing, Davis’s argument demonstrating modern medicine’s use of DSD terminology to commandeer intersex agency is engaging and well written and is a text that anyone looking to holistically understand today’s medical institutions (or the general challenges intersex individuals face in today’s society) should absolutely check out.

Appendix

Bibliography

Georgiann Davis. Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. New York: New York

University Press, 2015.

 Footnotes

[1] Georgiann Davis. Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis. New York: New York University Press, 2015, 2.

[2] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 4.

[3] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 5.

[4] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 7.

[5] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 7.

[6] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 2.

[7] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 89.

[8] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 3.

[9] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 21.

[10] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 8.

[11] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 9.

[12] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 24.

[13] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 144.

[14] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 5.

[15] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 5.

[16] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 12.

[17] Davis, Contesting Intersex, 14.