What Is Gender?

What has become of the sex/gender distinction today? Did it ever make its way into everyday life? What does it mean to be ‘gendered’ (male, female or trans) and how is this related to the gendering of commodities?

The explosion of feminist activism in the 1960s and 1970s was accompanied by the development of feminist theory across a range of intellectual disciplines. The distinction between sex and gender was central to much of this theory, allowing theorists to distinguish between the cultural demands of masculinity and femininity – which could be analysed, criticised and changed – and the seeming biological reality of sex. Now behaviours and roles that had previously been thought to be ‘natural’ for men and women could be revealed as contingent and socially determined impositions that could be challenged in the name of freedom and equality.

What has become of the sex/gender distinction today? Did it ever make its way into everyday life? What does it mean to be ‘gendered’ (male, female or trans) and how is this related to the gendering of commodities?

Stella Sandford is Reader in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, and a member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective.

Register to tell a friend about this lecture.

Comments

If you would like to comment about this lecture, please register here.

©2003-2006 Niminim Limited. Created by

Any ad revenue is entirely reinvested into the Lecture List's operating fund