Description
Book Synopsis Anthropologists and historians have shown us that 'male' and 'female' are variously defined historically and cross-culturally. The contributions to this volume focus on the voluntary and involuntary, temporary or permanent transformation of gender identity. Overall, this volume provides powerful and compelling illustrations of how, across a wide range of cultures, processes of gender transformation are shaped within, and ultimately constrained by, social and political context. From medical responses to biological ambiguity, legal responses to cases brought by transsexuals, the historical role of the eunuch in Byzantium, the social transformation of gender in Northern Albania and in the Southern Philippines, to North American 'drag' shows, English pantomime and Japanese kabuki theatre, this volume offers revealing insights into the ambiguities and limitations of gender transformation.
Trade Review “Overall, the book is a marvellous example of cross-discipline contributions to one topical subject - sex and gender - and anyone curious, or concerned, about historical and cultural constructions of sex and gender should pick it up. As the first in the Social Identities Series, this reviewer will be interested in future volumes and contributions to the subject.” • Third Space: A Journal of Feminist & Film Culture
“…texts such as Changing Sex and Bending Gender are so necessary. An engaging and interesting text, this book should appeal to a wide audience – from those now to the topic to those who have explored this gendered path before.” • Anthropological Forum
Table of Contents List of illustrations
Preface
Shirley Ardener
Chapter 1. Changing sex and bending gender: an introduction
Alison Shaw
- Defining sex and gender
- Changing bodily sex
- Long-term gender transformations
- Women in transformed gender roles
- Women disguised as men
- Women with ‘manly’ attributes, and the issue of sexuality
- Men in transformed gender roles
- Temporary gender transformations
- Women playing men on the stage
- Men playing women on the stage
- Conclusion
Chapter 2. Is it a boy, or a girl? The challenges of genital ambiguity
Alison Shaw
- Intersex conditions
- Reactions to intersex births
- Botched pots, unnatural horrors and supernatural blessings
- ‘Correcting’ intersex infants
- Lessons from the Dominican Republic
- Conclusions and implications
Chapter 3. Why should biological sex be decisive? Transsexualism before the European Court of Human Rights
Marie-Bénédicte Dembour
- The Convention
- The cases
- Typical facts
- The Court’s reasoning in transsexual cases
- Judge Martens’ critique of ‘Biological Sex is Decisive’
- A false positive
- The denial of legal fatherhood
- A tightening majority
- Victory at last
- The ‘normalisation’ of transsexual human rights issues
- Conclusion
Chapter 4. Two views on the gender identity of Byzantine eunuchs
Shaun Tougher
- Eunuchs
- Eunuchs in Byzantium
- The Image of eunuchs
- The texts: Claudian and Theophylact
- The negative view: Claudian’s In Eutropium (I and II)
- The positive answer: Theophylact’s In Defence of Eunuchs
- A comparison
- Conclusion
Chapter 5. The third sex in Albania: an ethnographic note
Roland Littlewood and Antonia Young
- The historical setting
- ‘A woman is a sack made to endure’: gender and the customary law
- Sworn virgins
- Three into two
Chapter 6. Living like men, loving like women: tomboi in the Southern Philippines
Mark Johnson
- The locality
- Ethnographic encounters with tomboi in the Southern Philippines
- Living ‘like men’
- Loving ‘like women’
- ‘Women who do bad things’: hegemonic masculinity and compulsory heterogender/sexuality
- The question of tomboi likeness and being
Chapter 7. One of the gals who’s one of the guys: men, masculinity and drag performance in North America
Fiona Moore
- Drag as an expression of masculinity
- Dragged up on deck: the setting
- More man than you’ll ever be: drag as gay male art form
- Rocky Horror? Straight men and drag
- Passing women: the views of performers
- Masculinity, sexuality and liminality: discussion and conclusion
Chapter 8. Male dames and female boys: cross-dressing in the English pantomime
Shirley Ardener
- English vulgar comedy
- A potted history of pantomime
- Story lines
- Dames
- Dress and make-up
- Women, drag and female impersonators
- Principal Boys
- Commentary
Chapter 9. Cross-dressing on the Japanese stage
Brian Powell
- Female actors
- Male actors
- Two contrasting onnagata
- Takarazuka
- Emergence of the actress in Japanese theatre culture
- Change and changelessness
Notes on contributors
Index
