scholarly journals ‘'Sex Changes'? Paradigm Shifts in ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’ following the Gender Recognition Act?’

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Whittle ◽  
Lewis Turner

Gender transformations are normatively understood as somatic, based on surgical reassignment, where the sexed body is aligned with the gender identity of the individual through genital surgery – hence the common lexicon ‘sex change surgery’. We suggest that the UK Gender Recognition Act 2004 challenges what constitutes a ‘sex change’ through the Act's definitions and also the conditions within which legal ‘recognition’ is permitted. The sex/gender distinction, (where sex normatively refers to the sexed body, and gender, to social identity) is demobilised both literally and legally. This paper discusses the history of medico-socio-legal definitions of sex have been developed through decision making processes when courts have been faced with people with gender variance and, in particular, the implications of the Gender Recognition Act for our contemporary legal understanding of sex. We ask, and attempt to answer, has ‘sex’ changed?

Author(s):  
Nimisha Barton

In the familiar tale of mass migration to France from 1880 onward, we know very little about the hundreds of thousands of women who formed a critical part of those migration waves. This book argues that their relative absence in the historical record hints at a larger and more problematic oversight — the role of sex and gender in shaping the experiences of migrants to France before the Second World War. This compelling history of social citizenship demonstrates how, through the routine application of social policies, state and social actors worked separately toward a shared goal: repopulating France with immigrant families. Filled with voices gleaned from census reports, municipal statistics, naturalization dossiers, court cases, police files, and social worker registers, the book shows how France welcomed foreign-born men and women — mobilizing naturalization, family law, social policy, and welfare assistance to ensure they would procreate, bearing French-assimilated children. Immigrants often embraced these policies because they, too, stood to gain from pensions, family allowances, unemployment benefits, and French nationality. By striking this bargain, they were also guaranteed safety and stability on a tumultuous continent. The book concludes that, in return for generous social provisions and refuge in dark times, immigrants joined the French nation through marriage and reproduction, breadwinning and child-rearing — in short, through families and family-making — which made them more French than even formal citizenship status could.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-79
Author(s):  
Samantha Sommer Miller ◽  
Glenn Miles ◽  
James Havey

Research on prostitution and trafficking has largely focused on the exploitation of girls and young women. This research comes out of the “Listening to the Demand” two-part study by an independent research team on the sex industry in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. “Listening to the Demand” is a series of research exploring often over-looked populations in the anti-trafficking conversation, including men and transgender people. The first of the studies was completed in 2013 and focuses on men who purchased sex with female sex workers. Interviews of 50 Cambodian and 50 foreign heterosexual and bisexual males explored the respondents’ views and use of prostituted women in Southeast Asia’s sex industry. The second part of the research was completed in 2014 and focuses on men who purchase sex with men. In this second part of the project, 51 Cambodian and 23 foreign men who have sex with men were interviewed about their views of prostitution, the individual sex worker, and their experiences of Cambodia’s sex industry. Due to its comparative nature, the research seeks to deliver information on the differences in culture between the foreign and Cambodian men who seek to pay for sexual services. Results point to the need for proper sex and gender education as well as different approaches when planning projects to reach out to men purchasing sex. In gaining a deeper knowledge of the beliefs and behaviours among the demand population, the findings suggest more holistic approaches are needed to combat the exploitation of sexual services in Cambodia.



2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 1769-1787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Kristin Bjørnnes ◽  
Monica Parry ◽  
Marit Leegaard ◽  
Ana Patricia Ayala ◽  
Erica Lenton ◽  
...  

Symptom recognition and self-management is instrumental in reducing the number of deaths related to coronary artery disease (CAD) in women. The purpose of this study was to synthesize qualitative research evidence on the self-management of cardiac pain and associated symptoms in women. Seven databases were systematically searched, and the concepts of the Individual and Family Self-Management Theory were used as the framework for data extraction and analysis. Search strategies yielded 22,402 citations, from which 35 qualitative studies were included in a final meta-summary, comprising data from 769 participants, including 437 (57%) women. The available literature focused cardiac pain self-management from a binary sex and gender perspective. Ethnicity was indicated in 19 (54%) studies. Results support individualized intervention strategies that promote goal setting and action planning, management of physical and emotional responses, and social facilitation provided through social support.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-411
Author(s):  
Lena Holzer

ABSTRACT This article explores the definition of ‘sportswoman’ as put forward in the Caster Semenya case (2019) and the Dutee Chand case (2015) before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It analyses the structural and discursive factors that made it possible for the CAS to endorse a definition that reduces sex and gender to a matter concerning testosterone. By relying on the concept of intersectionality and analytical sensibilities from Critical Legal Studies, the article shows that framing the cases as a matter of scientific dispute, instead of as concerning human rights, significantly influenced the CAS decisions. Moreover, structural elements of international sports law, such as the lack of knowledge of human rights among CAS arbitrators and a history of institutionalising gendered and racialised body norms through sporting regulations, further aided the affirmation of the ‘testosterone rules’.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
H Lorraine Radtke

Theory is an important preoccupation of articles published in Feminism & Psychology. This Virtual Special Issue includes 10 of those published since the journal’s inception that have a primary focus on theoretical issues related to two related topics – differences and the biological. The concern with differences includes the socially constructed categories sex and gender, as well as sexuality and social class. Those articles addressing the biological represent critical scholarship that is working to negotiate a place for the biology within feminist psychology and entails moving away from the view that the biological is natural and innate. This introductory article addresses how theory fits within feminist psychology and offers a brief history of debates concerning differences and the biological before offering summaries and observations related to each selected article. The featured articles can be located on the Feminism & Psychology website and are listed in Appendix 1 at the end of this article.


2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Surya Monro

This paper provides a cross-cultural account of gender diversity which explores the territory that is opened up when sex, gender, and sexual orientation, binaries are disrupted or displaced. Whilst many people who identify as trans or intersex see themselves as male or female, others identify in ways which destabilize sex/gender and sexual orientation binaries. The paper provides a typology of ways in which sex/gender diversity can be conceptualized, and draws out the implications for theorizing gender. It discusses the contributions made by the new wave of authors working in the field of transgender studies; authors who draw on and inform the sociology of sex and gender, feminisms, and poststructuralist theory. It based on empirical material from research carried out in India and the UK.


Author(s):  
Rosemary L. Hopcroft

This chapter provides an overview of The Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, and Society. Chapters in the first part of this book address the history of the use of method and theory from biology in the social sciences; the second part includes chapters on evolutionary approaches to social psychology; the third part includes chapters describing research on the interaction of genes (and other biochemicals such as hormones) and environmental contexts on a variety of outcomes of sociological interest; and the fourth part includes chapters that apply evolutionary theory to areas of traditional concern to sociologists—including the family, fertility, sex and gender, religion, crime, and race and ethnic relations. The last part of the book presents two chapters on cultural evolution.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-64
Author(s):  
Erin Bartram

ABSTRACTIn the wake of the Civil War, Father Isaac Hecker launched several publishing ventures to advance his dream of a Catholic America, but he and his partners soon found themselves embroiled in a debate with other American Catholics, notably his friend and fellow convert Orestes Brownson, over the “use and abuse of reading.” Although the debate was certainly part of a contemporary conversation about the compatibility of Catholicism and American culture, this essay argues that it was equally rooted in a moment of American anxiety over a shifting social order, a moment when antebellum faith in the individual was being tested by the rights claims of women and Americans of color. Tacitly accepting and internalizing historical claims of intrinsic and through-going Catholic “difference,” claims offered both by American Protestants and American Catholics like Brownson, scholars often presume that debates within American Catholicism reflect “Catholic” concerns first and foremost, qualifying their utility as sources of “American” cultural history. By examining American Catholic discussions of reading, individual liberty, social order, and gender in the 1860s and 1870s, this essay argues that Brownson's arguments against the compatibility of American and Catholic life were in fact far more representative of ascendant ideas in American culture than Hecker's hopeful visions of a Catholic American future made manifest through the power of reading. In doing so, it demonstrates the ways that American Catholicism can be a valuable and complex site for studying the broader history of religion and culture in the United States.


2020 ◽  
pp. medhum-2019-011842
Author(s):  
Sarah Chaney

The word ‘compassion’ is ubiquitous in modern healthcare. Yet few writers agree on what the term means, and what makes it an essential trait in nursing. In this article, I take a historical approach to the problem of understanding compassion. Although many modern writers have assumed that compassion is a universal and unchanging trait, my research reveals that the term is extremely new to healthcare, only becoming widely used in 2009. Of course, even if compassion is a new term in nursing, the concept could have previously existed under another name. I thus consider the emotional qualities associated with the ideal nurse during the interwar period in the UK. While compassion was not mentioned in nursing guidance in this era another term, ‘sympathy’, made frequent appearance. The interwar concept of sympathy, however, differs significantly from the modern one of compassion. Sympathy was not an isolated concept. In the interwar era, it was most often linked to the nurse’s tact or diplomacy. A closer investigation of this link highlights the emphasis laid on patient management in nursing in this period, and the way class differentials in emotion between nurse and patient were considered essential to the efficient running of hospitals. This model of sympathy is very different from the way the modern ‘compassion’ is associated with patient satisfaction or choice. Although contemporary healthcare policy assumes ‘compassion’ to be a timeless, personal characteristic rooted in the individual behaviours and choices of the nurse, this article concludes that compassionate nursing is a recent construct. Moreover, the performance of compassion relies on conditions and resources that often lie outside of the nurse’s personal control. Compassion in nursing—in theory and in practice—is inseparable from its specific contemporary contexts, just as sympathy was in the interwar period.


Author(s):  
Gláucia De Oliveira Assis

No final do século XX, a recente emigração de brasileiros para o exterior inseriu o Brasil nos novos fluxos da população mundial. Uma das características desses fluxos é o crescimento da participação feminina. Pesquisas recentes têm demonstrado a importância das mulheres nos fluxos migratórios contemporâneos como articuladoras de redes sociais na migração. Essas redes familiares e de parentesco são fundamentais tanto para aqueles que pretendem empreender a ‘aventura’ de migrar quanto para auxiliar nos momentos da chegada ao local de destino. Este artigo pretende demonstrar que a migração não é resultado apenas de uma escolha ‘racional’, mas de estratégias familiares nas quais homens e mulheres estão inseridos. Para percorrer a trajetória dos emigrantes o trabalho de campo se realizou em dois lugares: a cidade de Criciúma (SC) e a região de Boston, nos Estados Unidos. Os dados coletados a partir de entrevistas e de observação participante têm revelado que as mulheres não apenas esperam por seus maridos ou filhos, mas participam efetivamente do processo, integrando e articulando redes de migração. Os dados também sugerem que a migração provoca rearranjos familiares e de gênero ao longo do processo. Abstract The recent emigration of Brazilians, in late XXth century, has inserted Brazil into the new worldwide population flow. One characteristic of these flows is the growth of women in international migration. In the migration literature women participation in international flows has long been analyzed as subordinated to man, but recent research has illustrated the importance of women in migration flows. This paper intends to demonstrate that migratory process is resulted not only the individual choice, but also social networks (family, kingship, friendship), in which men and women are inserted. The work discusses data from fieldwork in Criciúma (SC) and in the Boston area, in United States. The data emerged from the interviews and participant observation showing that women not only wait for their husbands or children, but also participate in the process integrating and articulating migration networks. The data also made evident the changes in the family and gender relationships, suggesting that the migratory process rearticulate these relationships. This study therefore evidences that other factors, along with the ones of economics nature, contribute for the decision of migrating and make the history of this flow.


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