Synopses & Reviews
What is gender diversity? Doesn’t diversity often mean a focus on people who vary from typically gendered people, like intersex people and drag queens? What would it mean to talk about gender diversities? What does it mean to argue that all forms of gender, from the usual to the unusual, are socially constructed? How is gender developed, experienced, and presented by the range of persons who “do” or perform gender (namely, all of us)?
This reader demonstrates the multiple ways in which the universe of gender is socially, culturally, and historically constructed. The complexity of our gendered lives can be confusing. This anthology focuses on gender itself—how gender operates socioculturally, exists, functions, and is presented in micro and macro interactions. In order to avoid balkanization, the authors examine the various ways in which culture intersects with individuals to produce the range of presentations of self that we call “gender,” from people born male who become adult men to lesbian women to transmen, and everyone else on the diverse gender spectrum. This cutting-edge book focuses on both hegemonic and transgressive gender development, roles, identities, and practices.
Review
Plante and Maurer have brought together a collection that recognizes and wrestles with the diversity that characterizes contemporary gender studies, identity, and expression.
Doing Gender Diversity is a well-considered text that promises to advance students theoretical and empirical understandings of gender, race, class, and sexuality.”
Jessica Fields, San Francisco State University
In Doing Gender Diversity, Plante and Maurer have assembled an outstanding collection of readings that explore the cultural construction and personal negotiation of gender by looking at diversity in practices and performances. Avoiding the trap of presenting gender diversity as freaks on parade, they compile works examining normative and non-normative ways of embodying gender in the context of hegemonic ideologies of gender. While US-focused, this reader incorporates a diverse selection of classic theoretical works, contemporary empirical analyses, and first-person narratives and provides an excellent foundation for undergraduate explorations of the diverse ways of doing gender.”
Erin Calhoun Davis, Cornell College
Finally, the quintessential collection of gender and sexuality studies readings. Plante and Maurer have brought together an interdisciplinary reader that spans the breadth of the field
A fundamental addition to anyones library.”
Lisa Jean Moore, Purchase College, State University of New York
Plante and Maurers Doing Gender Diversity is a highly innovative anthology that critically examines unexplored and taken for granted aspects of gender normalcy and gender privilege. This reader is a comprehensive collection of classical and contemporary works that is a must-read for a diversity of gender scholars across multiple fields.”
Sharon E. Preves, Hamline University
"This deeply thought-provoking collection of new and classic essays is a must for students of gender and genders in all their complexities."
Peggy J. Kleinplatz, University of Ottawa
This is an excellent anthology that will encourage undergraduate students to think critically about gender diversity. It will be useful for faculty members teaching social science courses about gender or women's studies and who want to have a rich collection of readings about gender in micro- and macro-contexts. Students will enjoy and learn from the readings in this new anthology."
Teaching Sociology
The timing is apt for a collection of this nature to emerge in feminist studies
By combining theory with real-life explorations, students are able to see the applied nature of some concepts that could otherwise seem diffuse and daunting to the academician in training. Doing Gender Diversity: Readings in Theory and Real-World Experience seems to embody the zeitgeist regarding recent feminist texts.”
Sex Roles
The interdisciplinary collection provides valuable resources for challenging students in women and gender studies, sociology, and psychology courses to think more critically about gender variations.”
Psychology of Women Quarterly
Synopsis
A cutting-edge reader that tackles the entire spectrum of gender diversity issues and provides both classic theory and current real-world examples.
Synopsis
This cutting-edge reader demonstrates the multiple ways in which the universe of gender is socially, culturally, and historically constructed. The selections focus on gender itselfhow gender operates socioculturally, exists, functions, and is presented in micro and macro interactions. In order to avoid balkanization, the authors examine the various ways in which culture intersects with individuals to produce the range of presentations of self that we call gender,” from people born male who become adult men to lesbian women to transmen, and everyone else on the diverse gender spectrum.
About the Author
Rebecca F. Plante is associate professor of sociology at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. Plante has written
Sexualities in Context: A Social Perspective (Westview, 2006) and coedited (with Michael S. Kimmel)
Sexualities: Identities, Behaviors, and Society (Oxford, 2004).
Lis M. Maurer is the founding coordinator of The Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Education, Outreach, and Services at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. Maurer has been a sexuality educator, consultant, and trainer for more than twenty years.
Table of Contents
* Classic
# Culture
@ Web
+ POV
%Empirical
~Theory
Section I The Basics of Gender
CHAPTER 1 GENDER DIVERSITY AND THE BINARY
?~ 1 Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman
Doing Gender
?~ 2 Judith Lorber
Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender
?~ 3 Patricia Hill Collins
Toward a New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection
@ 4 Jesse Walker
The Death of David Reimer: A Tale of Sex, Science, and Abuse
@# 5 Zachary I. Nataf
Whatever I Feel . . .
% 6 Suzanne J. Kessler
Defining and Producing Genitals
+ 7 Catherine Lord