Changing Sex and Bending Gender (eBook)

Alison Shaw is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Department of Public Health. Her research interests include medical anthropology, ethnicity, kinship and social aspects of genetics. Her publications include Kinship and Continuity: Pakistani families in Britain (Harwood/Routledge 2000); A Pakistani Community in Britain (Oxford: Blackwell 1888) and Get by in Hindi and Urdu (1989 BBC Books).

Shirley Ardener is a Senior Associate of Queen Elizabeth House, the University of Oxford's International Development Centre. She was the Founding Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women, now known as the International Gender Studies Centre, whose programme was recognised by her OBE, and of which she is an active honorary member. She has edited and contributed to many books on gender and is the editor of Berghahn's series Cameroon Studies.

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