Synopses & Reviews
Designed for undergraduate students,
Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives, Second Edition, is a concise textbook/reader that provides a critical and multifaceted approach to the study of gendered bodies. Acclaimed scholars Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore analyze the construction of gendered bodies in different contexts. Exploring a broad range of both long-established and more cutting-edge topics in feminist studies, Lorber and Moore present scholarly research, offer information on relevant laws and political events, and point to directions for social change.
Gendered Bodies, Second Edition, focuses on key themes that reveal how gendered relations, ideologies, and practices shape human bodies. At the same time, it shows how human bodies are linked to other significant axes of inequality based on racial ethnic group, disability, sexuality, class, culture, religion, age, and nation. Thoroughly updated throughout, the second edition incorporates sixteen new selections--including non-Western perspectives--on such fascinating topics as evolution and motherhood; breastfeeding; breast cancer; the effects of height on men; job discrimination and transgendered people; world champion runner Caster Semenya and sex verification; disability, gender, and embodiment; and Palestinian female suicide bombers. It also adds new references and a concluding chapter, "Social Bodies in an Interconnected World."
Gendered Bodies, Second Edition, is ideal for courses on the body, feminist theory, women and health, and the sociology of gender. Each chapter includes a list of key concepts, three readings, and suggested readings. The book also includes an appendix of class exercises.
Review
"Gendered Bodies provides an accessible introduction to feminist perspectives on gender and the body and a wealth of resources for exploring this domain of inquiry. The authors are clearly committed to intersectional analyses, and make every effort to consider these issues vis-
Synopsis
For centuries the biological sciences have dissected, measured, and probed the human body as a product of nature. But from a feminist perspective, the human body is a social production. Human bodies are shaped and controlled by the norms and expectations of gendered social orders, and intersected by racial, class, religious, and age norms and expectations. The result is a gendered body produced for a gendered social world.
In this concise text with readings, designed for undergraduate students, Judith Lorber and Lisa Jean Moore present feminist contributions to social and cultural studies of the human body, examining the construction of gendered bodies in different contexts. They argue that the ideology of the perfect body is a powerful means of social control for girls and boys, as well as for women and men. The authors show how children's bodies are gendered through games and sports--and shaped and modified throughout adulthood to meet social expectations.
Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives covers a broad range of topics, such as men's bodies and masculinity norms, third-wave feminist menstrual activism, transgender and intersex issues, the male pill, the controversies over male circumcision and ritual genital cutting of girls, disabilities, war wounds in Iraq, torture, and suicide bombers.
Each chapter includes a list of key concepts, three readings, recommended books and articles, and Internet sources. For the instructor, the book includes class exercises and a list of films with relevant themes.
About the Author
Judith Lorber is Professor Emerita of Sociology and Women's Studies at The Graduate Center and Brooklyn College of The City University of New York.
Lisa Jean Moore is Coordinator of Gender Studies and Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Purchase College, State University of New York.
Table of Contents
*=New to this Edition About the Authors
Acknowledgements