Changing Sex and Bending Gender

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).

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