Folks:
It is that time of the year when students are working on major projects. Just the other day, I sent a flare up soliciting your suggestions for a student working on gendered, especially masculine, spaces and the military.
I have another student working on gender. Her project description is already pretty substantive. She has already read Christine Delphy's "Rethinking Sex and Gender" and Feinberg's "Transgender Liberation." Here is her own project description. She mentions the future paper in order to bracket the current paper, only, and doesn't need resources for that. She does need resources for the current paper project. Note the ontological/philosophy-of-language bent.
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I will focus on sex and gender identity, since they are preconditions to sexual orientation and gender expression. Since sexual orientation and gender expression depend upon (conventional) understanding of these terms 'sex' and 'gender identity', I want to analyze these foundational terms first. If we change our understanding of sex and gender identity, it will change how we apply them to or define sexual orientation and gender expression - it may even eliminate these terms if we ultimately eliminate the terms 'sex' and 'gender identity'.
Current Paper Project: I want to examine common beliefs about gender, specifically in reference to transgender individuals. I am concerned with studying variations from the gender binary norms of mainstream culture, but also variations existing within transgender subculture itself. I would like to address issues within trans theories and terminology. In the way that dominant ideals of society exclude trans concepts, I believe dominant trans theories exclude some members of trans subculture. I wonder if this should lead to new definitions of sex and gender identity, or possibly the addition of new terms. However, I am worried this aim to encompass everyone adequately would lead to a never-ending task requiring infinite terms. I want to explore the possibility of viewing gender (and sex) as an arbitrary classification, and imagine elimination of the terms altogether, which would also invoke the scrutiny of sex as classification (below).
Future Paper: I am also interested in scrutinizing the dominant presumption that sex is a dichotomous biological category. Rarely is sex identity mentioned, let alone analyzed. We have many physical traits, however, sex endures as the dominant way to categorize individuals. Just as there are variations among internal gender identities and their relation to external sex, there are also variations among external sex itself (intersex etc.). I will only be able to mention this; it would make my scope too broad, and it deserves it's own paper entirely.
I am also interested in problems with the dominant structure of a sex and gender dichotomy pervading mainstream society. However, I may only mention this issue, since it is enough for another paper as well. I will focus on internal identities within trans subculture before applying them to the external world in another project.
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Thanks for all your help with this. Please send suggestions off-list to [log in to unmask]
Best,
Alison
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Alison Reiheld
Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy
Director, Women's Studies Program
College of Arts and Sciences
Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville
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https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__siue.academia.edu_AlisonReiheld&d=BQIFAw&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=Oo4TCJF8pXcsWPDC7Sy8bdP2IJ6ZbST0v2xdYtuNH80&m=sKSA2JWBAfsElsgOnHJ-3wpG2mUfHxa1XmRh_zeAYvc&s=o9twgeYhp0IYxJx4mXVWeeQlsM10EG6C9LFNz_3mJQM&e=
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