Teaching gender and sex in contemporary america

Contents Part I Reframing Gender 1 Sex and Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the Social Construction of Sex.. Henderson’s “SGS: A Sensitizing Concept for Teaching Gender

Teaching Gender and Sex in Contemporary America

Kristin Haltinner • Ryanne Pilgeram

Editors

Teaching Gender and Sex

ISBN 978-3-319-30362-8 ISBN 978-3-319-30364-2 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-30364-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937499

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

This work is subject to copyright All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use

The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors

or omissions that may have been made

Printed on acid-free paper

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The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland

Moscow , Idaho , USA

Foreword

I started teaching gender and sex under what are perhaps ideal conditions In 2006

as a graduate student, I took a Feminist Pedagogy course and led a small discussion group for a Women’s and Gender Studies 101 course: Women, Power and Difference

I was then hired (as part of a four-person graduate student team) to teach the WGS

101 course and went on to do it six times Our team was hired together and spent the

fi rst term each year as teaching assistants for a large course The faculty member who taught that class served as our mentor for the year As graduate assistants, we took turns developing and delivering a communal syllabus was well as material for the large class—all while running large discussion sections Part of our mentoring involved weekly meetings to discuss the material, pedagogical theory, as well as the practical challenges of teaching this topic Practically, it meant that I was teaching a topic that I felt passionate about while sharing an offi ce with three other people who felt similarly and were teaching what I was teaching However, because we were an interdisciplinary team, we often approached the same topics from different angles

If that wasn’t perfect enough, across the hall we had a seasoned instructor who served as our mentor to reach out to when we weren’t sure how to handle a topic I also became a mother during those years and got to be part of theory in action I was encouraged to bring my infant to meetings, and my faculty mentor brought in a swing for my son after I tried to “rock” him in an offi ce chair

When I began teaching at the University of Idaho in 2010, I found myself rounded by colleagues who cared about teaching and who were eager to discuss the challenges and possibilities that teaching offers, but as the only person teaching the Sociology of Gender course, I found myself wishing I could discuss the issues that arose specifi cally around gender and sex For one thing, despite being a newly minted Ph.D in 2010, I realized how quickly the fi eld had changed and worried that

sur-my course material was dated For example, does “Women’s Reproductive Justice” still belong in a class that presumes sex is a social construction? As I mulled—well actually agonized—over these questions my department grew Dr Kristin Haltinner joined the department in Fall 2013, and the classes that I had been entirely respon-sible for became a shared load Once again I found myself discussing the challenges and possibilities for teaching on sex and gender Furthermore, because our training

happened at different institutions—Dr Haltinner earned her Ph.D at the University

of Minnesota, I at the University of Oregon—we often approached the same topic from different angles These discussions helped me reshape my syllabus, rethink some of my readings, and change my class for the better It also gave me space to talk through the issues I was having in class and become more confi dent in the deci-sions I made

As we talked more about our teaching, we realized how important these kinds of discussions were both as teachers and researchers We decided if these discussions were important to us that they would likely benefi t other instructors as well, and this anthology was born This volume is designed as both an in-depth resource for instructors developing a new course in sex and gender or as a quick reference for instructors looking to update a particular element of a course Specifi cally, this vol-

ume is divided into four sections: Part I: Reframing Gender ; Part II: Intersecting

with Systems of Power ; Part III: Creating Intentional Classroom Dynamics ; and Part

IV: Teaching About Gender and Sex in Broader Contexts

In Part I: Reframing Gender the authors provide a variety of strategies for

decon-structing the powerful belief that gender, sex, and sexuality are dichotomous and inseparable categories This section provides direction on how to frame teaching about sex and gender in ways that support student learning These chapters range from the deeply theoretical—one offers suggestions about how post-structuralism can disrupt conventional thinking on gender—to practical examples to teach com-plexities, like the chapter that uses recent controversies in international athletics about the sex of athletes to underscore the complexities of sex and gender

Part II: Intersecting with Systems of Power is organized around four themes:

Reproductive Rights, Violence, Work, and Media In this section the authors offer new ways to incorporate these traditional elements of a sex and gender course The authors offer examples from their own courses while sharing some of the pitfalls and potential forms of resistance instructors might face

The unique classroom dynamics involved in teaching sex and gender is picked up

more fully in Part III: Creating Intentional Classroom Dynamics Teaching is always

more than preparing a syllabus and picking readings, but this is particularly true when teaching about sex and gender This section is a useful reminder that the work

of teaching involves emotional labor, and the authors share some of their struggles and triumphs in this work What happens in the classroom is part of the experience

of the course, and in this section the authors offer candid and thoughtful examples about creating classrooms that are intentional: classrooms that can be both challeng-ing and relaxed, and depressing and hopeful; classrooms that accept emotional labor

as part of the work and see rage as productive

In the fi nal section of the book, Part IV: Teaching About Gender and Sex in

Broader Contexts , the authors suggest how to take the lessons from sex and gender

classrooms and apply them more broadly The fi rst two chapters suggest practices to create classroom activities and dynamics that are inclusive of LGBTQ students in sex and gender classes and other classes The second half of this section includes examples for including gender in courses not explicitly about gender and sex to demonstrate the importance of these topics to students learning outside the rigid compartmentalization that sometimes happens in coursework

Foreword

Our goal is that this volume will assist you in your teaching whether you need support with teaching a particular topic or are looking to create (or overhaul) an entire course The authors in this volume provide examples from their own teaching, suggested readings, activities, and potential pitfalls

As we’ve worked with the authors on their chapters, we have been ously working on our syllabi We’ve been re-energized in our teaching as we’ve been reminded, once again, that even if they are not across the hall, we are sur-rounded scholars who can support us in our teaching Whether you are alone in the wilderness (or perhaps alone in the cornfi elds), or teaching about sex and gender, or teaching among a group of likeminded scholars, our hope is that this volume has the same affect on you

simultane-For detailed information about each chapter, please see Alder and Adler’s thoughtful introduction

Moscow, ID, USA

rpilgeram@uidaho.edu

Foreword

Contents

Part I Reframing Gender

1 Sex and Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the Social

Construction of Sex 3

Sumner McRae

2 The Mis-education of Lady Gaga: Confronting

Essentialist Claims in the Sex and Gender Classroom 15

Andrea D Miller

3 Performances of Pronouns: Using Feminist Post-structuralism

to Explore the Social Construction of Gender 27

Alison Happel-Parkins

4 Undoing Gender: Making the Invisible Visible 37

Lindsay Custer

5 Gender Bending in the Classroom: Teaching Gender Inequity

Without Reifying Gender Essentialism and Heteronormativity 45

Part II Intersecting with Systems of Power

8 Choosing to Abort, Alter, Adopt, or Accept: Teaching

About Abortion in the Undergraduate Classroom 75

Elroi J Windsor

9 Teaching About Gendered Violence Without

Disempowering Women 85

Jocelyn A Hollander

10 Silence, Violence, Safety and Respect: The Challenges

of Teaching About Gender and Violence 93

Nikki McGary

11 Women and Work: Teaching the Pay Gap 101

Cynthia D Anderson and Kelly Faust

12 Teaching Work and Gender in the Twenty- First Century 109

Erin K Anderson

13 An Autoethnographic Mix Tape: Deconstructing

Gender Identity Through Music That Has Meaning to Us 117

Anita Harker

14 Pulp Friction: How College Women Navigate Identity,

Sexuality and Gender Conformity in Recent

Mega-Hit Book Series 131

Suzan M Walters and Michael Kimmel

15 Doing Critical Pedagogy in an Ironically Sexist World 145

Valerie Chepp and Lester Andrist

16 Coding the Crisis of Masculinity 155

Kyle Green and Madison Van Oort

Part III Creating Intentional Classroom Dynamics

17 From Protest to Praxis or Being Real in the Classroom 165

Charlotte A Kunkel

18 They Don’t Get It: The Promise and Problem

of Using Student Resistance as a Pedagogical Tool 175

Courtney Caviness , Patti Giuffre , and Maria Wasley-Valdez

19 Learning for a Change: Rage and the Promise

of the Feminist Classroom 185

Deborah J Cohan

20 Teaching Spaces of Possibility: Cultivating Safe, Relaxed,

and Challenging Classrooms 195

Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo

21 Agency and Activism as Elements in a ‘Pedagogy of Hope’:

Moving Beyond ‘This Class Is Depressing’ 207

Maggie Rehm

Contents

Part IV Teaching About Gender and Sex in Broader Contexts

22 The Pedagogical Challenge of Teaching Privilege, Loss, and Disadvantage in Classrooms of Invisible Social Identities 217

Traci Craig

23 Critical Pedagogy: Disrupting Classroom Hegemony 229

Tre Wentling

24 Infusing Feminist Disability Studies in Our Teaching 239

Heather Albanesi , Abby Ferber , Andrea O’Reilly Herrera ,

Emily A Nusbaum , and Linda Ware

25 Teaching Gender in Other Classrooms: A View from the Outside 255

Jyoti Grewal

26 On Teaching About Sex and Gender in Each and Every Political Science Course 265

Daniel Brian Andersen

27 Making the Invisible Visible: Shining a Light on Gender and Sexuality in Courses Primarily Focused on Other Topics 273

Kelsy Burke and Alexa Trumpy Conclusion: Pedagogical and Theoretical Strategies for Teaching Sex and Gender 281

Appendix A: Classroom Activities 285

Appendix B: Examples of Syllabi 323

Index 451

Contents

Introduction to Teac hing Sex and Gender

In 2014, Patti became a member of an elite group: the tiny number of tenured faculty who have been terminated or “asked to leave” their jobs A Professor of Sociology with an international scholarly, teaching, and service reputation, she had been teach-ing the most popular class on the University of Colorado’s campus every semester for

25 years: “Deviance in U.S Society.” A classroom role-play exercise she created on the stratifi cation hierarchy of prostitution was deemed, by the Offi ce of Discrimination and Harassment (ODH), to be a “risk” to the university The Dean, in consultation with the university counsel, proffered that in the “post-Penn State environment” he could not afford the potential risk of alienating or offending students, as outlined by the ODH’s assessment: (a) the person playing the role of the “traffi cked slave” indi-cated she was from Eastern Europe (protected class: national origin), (b) the male prostitute used street vernacular to refer to his clients as “faggots” (protected class: sexual orientation), and (c) the pimp bragged about his use of emotional manipula-tion and physical violence to control his “ho’s” (protected class: women) How did this pedagogical device, about which none of the 25,000 actual students who had seen it came forward to complain, create an international ruckus (the incident was reported in media globally and within 24 h of its performance it had gone viral on social media), especially given the protection seemingly afforded by the principles of due process and academic freedom? These kinds of questions keep instructors up at

night Teaching Sex and Gender , an insightful and constructive collection of original

articles, analyses, and teaching exercises, is designed to assist instructors of sex and gender as you do the work of teaching these as well as other issues

Teaching about sex, sexuality, gender, and sexual orientation can pose a

mine-fi eld of issues Without adequate care and the proper environment (and even

some-times with them), faculty members may get caught in myriad pitfalls Issues of

political correctness surfaced in Patti’s case, where terminology, once acceptable,

used in the role-play exercise was now deemed potentially offensive Although this language has long been considered pejorative, students were given the context, by course materials, to understand and to analyze these skits Times have also shifted

in the academy, as the 2015 case of Laura Kipnis, Northwestern professor, further shows, with students claiming greater power to cast themselves as “victims” and

demand protection and recourse against the faculty from university administrators Ultimately, terms are fl uid and mutable, making it nearly impossible to eliminate the hazards of teaching in the transforming landscape of sexuality This stands as a perennial puzzle because sensitivities and language are constantly evolving For example, in the transgender community, some people favor the word “tranny” and see power in reclaiming it in the way the word “queer” has been reclaimed, while for others the word is offensive Being able to explain these differences and create a classroom that is respectful of all students including transgender students, yet does not overly privilege one perspective to the detriment of others, and helps instructors navigate potentially new terrain is important Tre Wentling’s chapter “Critical Pedagogy: Disrupting Classroom Hegemony” works to tackle this issue and pro-vides suggestions for supporting trans and intersex students

Professors teaching about sex and gender also face the challenges of multiple audiences, as standards of appropriateness and offense vary between the variety of actual students in the course, their parents, outside organizations, other members of the community, and politicians (who increasingly involve themselves in academic issues) Some community members and even university administrators may confuse sensitivities raised in teaching about sex with sexual harassment, as happened to Patti when her skit was accused of constituting sexual harassment because the sub-ject of it was sex work Sensitivities may also be invoked in teaching about sex and

gender that are intricately intertwined with the other matrices of stratifi cation and

inequality such as race and class Issues of positionality may arise in talking about

these topics from the instructor’s biographical standpoint, and students may also feel uncomfortable speaking about their own or others’ standpoints An essential component of the insights sociology has to offer lies in its ability to challenge and deconstruct positions of power and prestige that students often take for granted Valerie Chepp and Lester Andrist’s article “Doing Critical Pedagogy in an Ironically Sexist World” is useful in understanding how to unpack the norms and privileges may lead some students to feel offended, even threatened, by the idea that they rep-resent or have benefi tted, however inadvertently, from the forces of individual or institutional prejudice and discrimination in society

A sex and gender curriculum often touches on politically problematic topics

such as reproduction, including abortion, forced sterilization, and adoption For a discussion of how one might approach teaching about abortion, Elroi Windsor’s chapter, “Choosing to Abort, Alter, Adopt, or Accept: Teaching about Abortion in the Undergraduate Classroom,” is a great resource, and Heather Albanesi, Abby Ferber, Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, Emily A Nusbaum, and Linda Ware’s “Infusing Feminist Disability Studies in Our Teaching” is an excellent companion piece to this discussion Other potential political minefi elds include racial sexual politics, homosexuality, teenage sex and pregnancy, premarital sex, body issues, or anything that might invoke religious controversy and disagreement These issues don’t neces-sarily break down simply by left- and right-wing politics, but are intertwined with rural/urban, religious/secular, age, race, and class dimensions Furthermore, these topics can be particularly challenge in courses that are not explicitly focused on sex and gender A number of chapters in book offer ways to thoughtfully include discus-

Introduction to Teaching Sex and Gender

Other topics that may raise hackles include those that are personally sensitive to

given students College campuses are rife with controversy about and the quences of sexual assault, and our classrooms often become places where those play out Jocelyn A Hollander’s article “Teaching about Gendered Violence Without Disempowering Women” and Nikki McGary’s article “Silence, Violence, Safety and Respect: The Challenges of Teaching about Gender and Violence” offer resources and ideas for how to present issues of sexual assault in the classroom Given that students may have suffered fi rst hand from experiences with sexual harassment, rape, incest, eating disorders, and other issues raised in the course cur-riculum invariably when faculty members present material on these topics, it will affect some people They then often contact the instructor, putting faculty members

conse-in an advisconse-ing role for which they may not be traconse-ined Referrals to counselconse-ing vices are readily available, but students may still feel drawn to trust the person who raised the issue with them, offered the sociological insights about it, and who knows them Students may fi nd other material too graphic, such as presentations or videos about the birthing process or female circumcision This can be emotional and chal-lenging For an excellent discussion of how to deal this emotion in the classroom, see Deborah J Cohan’s “Learning for a Change: Rage and the Promise of the Feminist Classroom.”

Teaching about sex and gender should not only be viewed through the lens of problems and discomfort because there are also many reasons why this can be a

highly rewarding experience for instructors and students Although gender is often

viewed as a core stratifi cation variable or a static identity, the predominant ship in the fi eld takes a more processual, multidimensional approach Syllabi for courses on sex and gender published by the American Sociological Association (ASA) emphasize gender as a social construct Teaching the social constructionist

scholar-perspective allows faculty to challenge the orthodoxy of the objectivist view of

gen-der and introduce students Alison Happel-Parkins’ “Performances of Pronouns:

Using Feminist Post-Structuralism to Explore the Social Construction of Gender” and Linda J Henderson’s “SGS: A Sensitizing Concept for Teaching Gender Diversity” both offer helpful ways of helping students understand to the ways that gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex are shaped by social norms rather than innate Other pieces, including Traci Craig’s “The Pedagogical Challenge of Teaching Privilege, Loss, and Disadvantage in Classrooms of Invisible Social Identities” and Kristin Haltinner’s “Queering Sex and Gender” suggest thoughtful ways to do this In our classes, we often discuss this in terms of the gendered behav-ior surrounding self-injury, since we have written about that, although others use examples such as cosmetic surgery, eating disorders, sexual behavior, etc

Some have challenged the social constructionist perspective as being too micro,

so it’s important to connect it with historical and structural themes Kyle Green and

Introduction to Teaching Sex and Gender

Madison Van Oort’s chapter “Coding the Crisis of Masculinity” and Suzan

M Walters and Michael Kimmel chapter “Pulp Friction: How College Women Navigate Identity, Sexuality and Gender Conformity in Recent Mega-Hit Book Series” which are both useful pieces for tracing the evolving norms surrounding the shifting presentations of masculinity and femininity in the media offer an interest-ing approach to making this connection as society has seen sensitive 1990s men replaced by more hypermasculine men in the later 1990s and early 2000s Sensitive (Mr Mom) men re-emerged several years later as women rose up in the labor mar-ket, only to yield to Rambo types in the post 9/11 era This can show how enact-ments of masculinity may be shaped by the economy and global relations, while at the same time being raced and classed For a discussion of how to help students analyze and respond to popular gender narratives that reinforce essentialism, see Annie D Jollymore’s “Make Us Whole!: Deconstructing Gender Narratives to Build Solidarity” and Anita Harker’s chapter “An Autoethnographic Mix Tape: Deconstructing Gender Identity Through Music that has mean to ‘us.’” In addition, Cynthia D Anderson and Kelly Faust’s article “Women and Work: Teaching the Pay Gap” and Erin K Anderson’s article “Teaching Work and Gender in the 21st Century” give accounts of how the work and labor are structured by gender Even more exciting is the opportunity to challenge the orthodoxy of sex, as Sumner McRae does in her chapter, “Sex & Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the social construction of sex.” While students are quicker to talk about race and gender as social phenomena, sex often still remains inextricably affi xed to biology and fi rmly lodged in a dual opposition: male and female The sociology of sex begins by separating the concept of gender from sex and showing how the latter is

as socially constructed as the former Faculty members usually have to disengage students from their biological assumptions about physiology and hormones As authors here point out, sports and discussions of gender transgressions are a valu-able tool for teaching about the social construction of sex Presenting these facts and

as well as the frequency of intersexed births and the way these are handled by tors, parents, and society is also important Traditional ways of presenting this mate-rial may be augmented with discussions of the recent rise of the intersexed movement, where individuals are eschewing making absolutist choices about their sex and gender Certainly, the worldwide attention in 2015 paid to Caitlyn Jenner’s transition is testimony to the fascination people have with this process As instruc-tors, we can address what it means that we have new technologies to change our bodies and social media in which to circulate information and form communities and perhaps de-stigmatize people going through the process

Challenging the orthodoxy of the biological view of sexuality as Andrea D Miller

does in her chapter, “The Mis-education of Lady Gaga: Confronting Essentialist Claims in the Sex and Gender Classroom,” is also a political issue When students recognize the social and historical infl uences on sexuality, it is a powerful experi-ence As instructors, we can awaken students’ vistas on sexuality by providing them with multiple and critical perspectives to understand the choices they make Again, numerous examples of celebrities who breach this orthodoxy can be used to illus-trate that, while they deviate from society’s norms, there is a great deal of angst that

Introduction to Teaching Sex and Gender

All of this may ultimately lead to opening students ’ views about sex While

stu-dents took sex education in middle school, they mostly learned about reproduction and sexual health, not choices about or the enjoyment of sex Discussing topics such

as female sexual pleasure, female agency, male anal penetration, the frequency of male and female orgasms, variations in lovemaking, and making conscious deci-sions about sex with both strangers and long-term partners can impact students deeply and longitudinally Courtney Caviness, Patti Giuffre, and Maria Wasley- Valdez’s “They Don’t Get It: The Promise and Problem of Using Student Resistance

as a Pedagogical Tool,” Maggie Rehm’s “Agency and Activism as Elements in a

‘Pedagogy of Hope’: Moving Beyond ‘This Class is Depressing,’” Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo’s “Teaching Spaces of Possibility: Cultivating Safe, Relaxed, and Challenging Classrooms,” and Charlotte A Kunkel’s “From Protest to Praxis or Being Real in the Classroom” show how teaching about the sociology of sex and gender offers the potential to profoundly change students’ lives for the better It also offers opportunities for instructors Jyoti Grewal’s “Teaching Gender in Other Classrooms: a View from the Outside” offers a thoughtful exploration of how con-text—geographical, political, religious, national, subliminal, and metaphysical, and others—matters when teaching both for students and for instructors

By providing chapters in Teaching Sex and Gender in Contemporary America

that speak to the tribulations and joys of sex and gender, Ryanne Pilgeram and Kristin Haltinner have brought together a variety of teacher-scholars who have had direct experience in the classroom educating students about these often controver-sial topics By reading about how others have dealt with the issues of teaching sex and gender, future professors can have the benefi ts to see what works and what doesn’t Thus, this volume serves as an important reference for anyone who might

be walking along these rapidly shifting sands while trying to provide a bridge to alternative ways of thinking

Boulder, CO, USA

adler@colorado.edu

Denver, CO, USA

socyprof@hotmail.com

Introduction to Teaching Sex and Gender

Part I

Reframing Gender

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

K Haltinner, R Pilgeram (eds.), Teaching Gender and Sex

in Contemporary America, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-30364-2_1

Chapter 1

Sex and Gender in International Sports:

Athletes and the Social Construction of Sex

This chapter accomplishes two tasks in assisting instructors who seek to teach their students that sex is neither an essentialist nor dichotomous category First, it examines how sports can be used to challenge common perceptions that “men are like this” and “women are like this.” Second, it demonstrates how instructors can use public debates regarding “who is female enough to participate in women’s sports” to highlight the fl uid nature of sex categories and teach students about the ways that sex and gender are both socially produced

1.2 Sex as a Faulty Dichotomy

Many instructors fi nd it tempting to defi ne male and female sex categories as logical fact in contrast to gender, which is more easily recognized as socially con-structed While use of such a framework to teach about gender can help students

S McRae ( * )

Washington, DC , USA

e-mail: sumner.mcrae@gmail.com

gain a clear understanding of the ways in which the categories “men” and “women” and associated notions of masculinity and femininity are socially produced, it rein-forces the common perception that biological sex is binary and that the line between male and female is clear and immutable Instructors aiming to disrupt the notion that masculinity and femininity are a “natural” part of being male or female may inadvertently reify gender and sex essentialism by implying that the biological cat-egories “male” and “female” are themselves natural and fi xed, when in reality, human bodies are not exclusively sexually dimorphic We know that physical fea-tures vary signifi cantly within and across sex categories and while there is some evidence that men’s and women’s brains have limited measurable differences, emerging research indicates that even these differences between males and females, such as responses to emotional stimuli, are not “hardwired,” but are in fact shaped

by childhood socialization, just like many other parts of the brain (Fine 2010 ) Still, even those who understand the extent to which gender is a cultural construct and that infants and children are socialized to conform to the norms of their assigned gender category have trouble letting go of the notion that some gender differences are biologically ingrained

A discussion of athletes whose bodies disrupt accepted sex categories does not fully illuminate the ways in which many of the sex differences we perceive may in fact be the result of our early experiences, but does allow students an opportunity to think critically about biological “facts,” the use of science to justify gender confor-mity, and the ways in which the notion of a fi xed sex binary limits the full range of human physical and social expression

1.3 Bodies Under Scrutiny

The supposed divide between male and female is especially rigidly enforced in most competitive sports, from the youth level to international competition In interna-tional athletics, as elsewhere in the sports world, sex boundaries are strictly enforced

in part out of fear that athletes who have physical characteristics that do not fall within the prescribed traits of their stated sex will compete in “wrong” category 1 The strict boundary between sexes is typically justifi ed as a means to ensure fairness

in women’s competition, based on the widely-accepted stereotype that women are slower and weaker than men and thus would be unable to prevail in gender inte-grated contests

1 Recently in the United States, there have been some attempts to soften such boundaries, mostly at the high school level, the goal being to relieve stress experienced by transgender people and others whose identities or bodies do not conform to binary gender or sex These attempts have provoked tremendous anxiety and fear from other community members – particularly that boys or men will try to compete in girls’ and women’s sports in an effort to gain a physical advantage or displace girls and women in line for college scholarships

S McRae

Athletes competing in female sports are thus under particular pressure to form to categorical benchmarks for female bodies set by international athletics authorities (Karkazis et al 2012 ) However, strict lines between the sexes in athlet-ics often represents an arbitrary boundary around femaleness that overlooks the extent to which human sex characteristics, in addition to male and female sports performance, can overlap (Karkazis et al 2012 ) This boundary is sometimes defi ned by outward physical markers assumed to indicate “male” and “female,” but the medical line between the sexes is often determined by testosterone All human beings produce testosterone, but science has determined a “normal” testosterone range for males and another for females, while also acknowledging that some pro-portion of the population fi ts into neither range (the ranges do not overlap) (Karkazis

con-et al 2012 ) Testosterone levels, particularly in people medically identifi ed as female, are dependent on a variety of factors, including time of the month, or even day, and it is also not clear that testosterone produces the same effects in every per-son (Karkazis et al 2012 )

Over the past 100 years of Olympic track competition, for instance, both male and female sprint times have improved, but female athletes have sped up at a faster rate than men, leading to speculation that they may someday outpace men even in sprint events (Tatem et al 2004 ) Female runners are already beating male athletes in ultra-marathons – most notably, Rory Bosio, a female ultra-marathoner who placed sev-enth in the 2013 Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB), the fi rst woman ever to fi nish

in the top 10 of the event In just 10 years, female ultra-marathoners in the UTMB have gone from posting a collective average time of 10 h slower than the men to an average of 4 h slower in 2013 (Brown 2013 ) In addition, as Bosio herself has pointed out, women tend to place disproportionately high in such races, despite the fact that the vast majority of their competitors are male (Brown 2013 ) As a result, when look-ing at runners as an entire group, there are many examples of women who are faster than men both within and across events of varying distance, though the stereotype persists that men, by nature, are stronger and faster than women

Sweeping generalizations such as “men are faster than women” or “women are weaker than men” become problematic when they inform sports policy Recent debates within the sphere of international athletics provide an opportunity to chal-lenge students’ perceptions of sex, based on a set of mutually exclusive physical attributes, as strictly dichotomous The idea that females, by defi nition, are slower

or less muscular than males is an important piece for students to understand because this idea is at the root of the scrutiny applied to “masculine” female athletes sus-pected of wrongly competing in women’s sports Enforcement of the sex binary in sports places a limit on how fast a woman can be before she is “too fast” or how quickly she might improve her performance before her improvement becomes sus-picious In many cases, including those of sprinters Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand, discussed at length below, physical appearance also plays a role Both Semenya and Chand were the subject of complaints lodged by their competitors that the runners were “too muscular” and surely must not be women, further reinforcing the stereotype that women who are not “attractive enough” or “feminine enough” according to social norms might not really be women

1 Sex and Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the Social Construction of Sex

1.4 Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand

In August 2009, South African track athlete Caster Semenya, at the time only 18 years old, made international news after winning gold in the 800 m run in 1:55:45

at the track and fi eld World Championships Earlier the same month, Semenya posted a time of 4:08:01 in the 1500 m Semenya’s 800 m time, while extraordi-narily fast – it still stands as her personal best in the event – did not break world records and it was by no means outside of the abilities of her contemporaries For example, during the calendar year 2008, just 1 year prior to Semenya’s phenomenal Worlds success, Kenyan runner Pamela Jelimo ran the 800 m faster than 1:56 no less than eight times What caught offi cial attention was not Semenya’s time itself, but how quickly she had improved over a short period of time Less than a year prior

to the 2009 Worlds, Semenya had competed in the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games, where she posted an 800 m time just over 8 s slower than her 2009 gold medal-winning run Eight seconds is an eternity in middle distance racing, one that athletes can rarely conquer in the 800 m within the space of a year Normally, such

a dramatic improvement over a relatively short period of time can be an indicator for substance abuse, but while Semenya was fl agged for drug tests (which came back negative), the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the gov-erning body for international track and fi eld competition, focused their concern on Semenya’s status as female Semenya’s peers were similarly fi xated on her sex rather than suspicion of performance enhancing drugs At least one of Semenya’s competitors at the 2009 Worlds suggested that she looked male and complained that she should have been banned from the women's competition

In fact, the IAAF had begun an investigation into Semenya’s sex characteristics

prior to the 2009 Worlds competition One IAAF offi cial confi rmed to a New Yorker

journalist that the initial scrutiny of Semenya was due in part to suspicion from some South African sports media outlets that Semenya was, in their words, a “her-maphrodite” (Levy 2009 ) Prior to the Worlds event, South African athletic offi cials were advised to withdraw Semenya from the competition She was not withdrawn,

of course, and after her victory underwent tests to determine if she had used mance enhancing drugs and to confi rm that she was female Neither the IAAF nor Semenya released the test results publicly, but several media outlets, whether via leaked information, rumor, or pure speculation began reporting that the tests showed that Semenya had “elevated” levels of testosterone in her body and both male and female physical characteristics-specifi cally that she did not have a uterus or ovaries and that she had undescended testes Reportedly, the “elevated” testosterone was naturally produced by her body, but was outside of the “normal” range for females The IAAF informed Semenya that she would need to receive treatment for her high testosterone in order to maintain eligibility for international competition

Although she has never spoken publicly about whether, or what, “treatment” she underwent for her testosterone levels, the IAAF cleared her to run and Semenya returned to international track competition in July 2010 While she has done well since then, including winning silver in the 800 m at the 2012 Olympics in London,

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800 m, “At 18 years old, she became the 13th-fastest woman ever to run the tance, and she did it in an un-paced championship She was well on her way to becoming her sport’s greatest mid-distance woman ever… [Her] decline is as important as what came before, particularly if it emerges that she’d been forced to undergo hormone therapy as a condition of returning to her sport Just consider that for a second – consider the very real possibility that to make Semenya more of a

dis-‘woman,’ the sport decided to make her less of an athlete.” (Gugala 2014 )

It is diffi cult to imagine a male athlete achieving a dramatic improvement in performance and then, cleared of any doping suspicion, being stripped of his right

to compete in his event as male as a result of an unfair natural “advantage” provided him by his body relative to other competitors For instance, swimmer Michael Phelps has a number of physical features associated with a condition known as Marfan Syndrome, in which patients typically have wingspans longer than their height, long torsos, and long fi ngers and toes with fl exible joints While Phelps has not been diagnosed with the disease, it is obvious that his physical features give him

an advantage in his sport such that he won an unprecedented eight gold medals and set seven world records at the 2008 Olympics Despite Phelps’ staggering success,

no international sports authorities have suggested that if Phelps’ physique and advantage is due in part to a medical condition that he and all others with such a condition should be tested and potentially banned from competing There are cer-tainly male athletes who are shorter, less muscular, thinner, or more graceful than some female athletes, but even in a situation in which this might convey an advan-tage to a male athlete, like in wrestling, singles fi gure skating, certain gymnastics events, or coxswains in men’s rowing, a male athlete with such an advantage would not likely come under suspicion of being female, nor would the advantage necessar-ily be characterized as “unfair.”

Unfortunately, Semenya’s case has not led to greater acceptance of women letes whose physical characteristics fall outside the norms of femininity If any-thing, the rules governing female athletes have become even more strict Three years after Semenya’s struggle began, Indian sprinter Dutee Chand was also forced into a battle to regain international eligibility after learning that her body produces

ath-“excess” androgens Chand’s trajectory was not unlike Semenya’s In 2013, at the age of 18, Chand won a bronze medal in the 200 m at the Asian Games At the World Youth Championships in July 2013, she became the fi rst athlete from India

to make it to a fi nal heat in a sprint event, where she placed sixth in the 100 m The following year, in June of 2014, she took two gold medals at the Asian Junior Athletics Championships In July, she was slated to represent India at the

1 Sex and Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the Social Construction of Sex

In a departure from Semenya’s approach before her, Chand refused to submit to

“treatment.” She argued she ought to be able to compete as a woman, as she always had, without being forced to alter her natural body in any way After garnering the attention of international supporters (she has been the subject of a Change.org peti-tion and a #letduteerun hashtag campaign on Twitter) and the aid of the Sports Authority of India, Chand appealed her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport ( CAS), an independent body used to resolve legal disputes in international athletics While CAS has yet to announce its fi nal decision in her case, as of April 2015, CAS approved Chand’s eligibility to compete in the 2015 Asian Championships Chand has also continued her sprinting career at the state and national level in India where she was the national champion in the 100 m dash in 2015

The issue of sex and international athletics also provides students with nities to identify and discuss how sex, race, and class intersect on a global level The racial and colonial elements in the cases of Semenya, Chand, and four anonymous women banned from the 2012 Olympics due to elevated androgen (discussed in greater depth below) provide students further context for understanding the ways in which scientifi c fact is culturally informed and produced in the same manner as social categories such as gender These racial and colonial elements are evident both

opportu-in the scrutopportu-iny and coerced manipulation of the bodies of female athletes of color, who largely come from “developing” nations, and in the imposition of rigid Western notions of sex and gender categories on athletes from around the globe Semenya,

of course, grew up in an area of rural South Africa that lacked almost any resource available to elite athletes from wealthy backgrounds Chand, from India, also grew

up in poverty and as a teenager partly supported her parents with prize money she earned winning track competitions All four women subjected to gender testing dur-ing the 2012 Olympics were also from rural areas of developing countries (Fenichel

et al 2013 )

Though Semenya has been the subject of criticism from within her home try, a number of South African offi cials, including President Jacob Zuma, have pub-

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licly defended Semenya and denounced the IAAF’s approach to sex verifi cation The South African minister for sports accused the IAAF of violating Semenya’s human rights by subjecting her to invasive testing (Smith 2009a ) Other South African observers found the scrutiny of Semenya’s body uncomfortably similar to that of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoi Khoi woman from South Africa who was taken to Europe in the early nineteenth century and made the subject of a humiliating exhibi-tion in which she was put on display as the “Hottentot Venus.” (Smith 2009b )

In Chand’s case, after facing international pressure to support her right to race as

a woman without undergoing any surgery, hormone therapy or other treatment, the Sports Authority of India decided to assist Chand with her appeal to CAS Chand and her supporters hope CAS will overrule the IAAF’s decision and reinstate her eligibility to compete in women’s events Chand has continued to compete at the state and national level as a woman In March of 2015, a month after winning a national title in the 100 m, Chand traveled to Switzerland to make her case before CAS Chand won a small victory when CAS approved her eligibility to compete at the 2015 Asian Championships, pending further decision

Both Chand and Semenya come from working class backgrounds in formerly colonized nations Both athletes came under scrutiny in part due to their quick rate

of improvement once they began participating in international competition While their eligibility as female athletes has hinged on their high testosterone levels and the possible effects of “excess” androgen in their bodies, it seems that no one in the IAAF has considered the possibility that Semenya and Chand got better simply because as elite athletes, they had access to better facilities, food, and training than

they might have had before Chand herself alludes to this idea in a New York Times

piece featuring her struggle She explains, “‘If you make an elephant run, can that elephant run fast, even though he has a lot of strength?… Not necessarily It’s all about training.’” (Macur 2014 ) It is also possible that physical sex characteristics are medicalized to a greater degree in Western countries, such that athletes from those countries whose bodies do not conform to the sex binary might have been

“caught” long before they began competing on an international stage

Despite the existence of other potential factors in the performance of athletes like Semenya and Chand, physical sex characteristics – particularly testosterone – have remained central to the discussion Since men are believed to be better athletes than women, and men typically have higher levels of testosterone than women (though this is not always the case), international sports governing bodies have largely arrived at the conclusion that testosterone is primarily responsible for athletic per-formance, even though the evidence in favor of such a conclusion is mixed

1.5 Sex Verifi cation and Hyperandrogenism

in International Sports

Universal sex-testing of female athletes in international competition was place from the 1940s into the 1990s, though over the course of its entire history in international athletics, sex “verifi cation” testing has only revealed two known

common-1 Sex and Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the Social Construction of Sex

instances of men attempting to enter women’s events (Karkazis et al 2012 ) As of recently, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), which gov-erns international track and fi eld, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) , which governs Olympic competition, have abandoned the language of “sex verifi ca-tion” in favor of guidelines regarding the participation of female athletes with hyperandrogenism in women’s sports Clinicians defi ne hyperandrogenism as the presence of “excess” androgens (such as testosterone) in individuals assigned female at birth Hyperandrogenism and intersex are not necessarily the same, though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably High levels of androgens in female- bodied people can have a variety of physical effects, including larger than average genital features, or facial hair growth The IAAF and IOC are primarily concerned with the supposed effects of high testosterone in female athletes

In 2011, in the wake of criticism of its poor handling of Caster Semenya’s tion, the IAAF released a new policy on hyperandrogenism The IOC followed suit

situa-in 2012, just prior to the summer Olympics The IAAF and the IOC claim to have developed the guidelines as a means of better protecting athletes’ privacy and health (IAAF 2011 ) However, the policies primarily serve to identify female athletes with hyperandrogenism and ensure that they do not compete unless they fi rst undergo treatment, though in the case of the IOC guidelines, there appears to be no option to pursue “treatment.” Under the IOC policy, athletes who had previously competed as females but who are then determined to have hyperandrogenism may compete in men’s events if they can qualify If they cannot qualify, which would likely have been the case for sprinters Semenya and Chand (Semenya’s personal best 1:55 in the 800 m was still roughly 10 s slower than the qualifi cation standard met by South African men for the 2012 Olympics), they may be effectively left without the oppor-tunity to continue competing at an elite level There are exceptions in both policies for athletes whose hyperandrogenism does not bestow an “advantage,” which is not uncommon For example, if an athlete with hyperandrogenism also has androgen resistance, which renders the effects of high testosterone dormant, they may con-tinue to compete without undergoing treatment, but at least under the IAAF policy, the burden of proving androgen resistance is on the athlete Female athletes who cannot prove androgen resistance are ineligible for competition as women if their testosterone levels are above the lower limit of the male “normal range ”

The effect of the IAAF and IOC hyperandrogenism policies were immediate At the 2012 London Olympics, offi cials removed four female athletes from competi-tion and subjected them to physical examinations The clinicians who conducted the exams and later produced a report on the results described the athletes as “tall slim, muscular women.” (Fenichel et al 2013 ) While the names of the four women were kept confi dential, the report reveals the excruciating degree to which the doctors examined and documented each athlete’s genitals The report describes in detail their pubic hair growth patterns, labial appearance, clitoris size, and vaginal open-ing The report also states that the women were amenorrheic (do not menstruate) and “lacked breast development” as further signs of their “male” sex characteristics, despite the fact that both amenorrhea and lack of breast development are relatively common in young, elite female athletes (Fenichel et al 2013 ) The clinicians who

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authored the report seemed surprised that the athletes wished to keep their female identities, stating that there is generally a “tendency to request gender change.” (Fenichel et al 2013 ) The four athletes were informed that they would need to have surgery to remove their testes in order to continue to compete as women (Macur

2014 ) The examiners openly state that while “male gonads” pose no health concern

in any of these cases and that gonadectomies would “likely decrease their mance level,” each of the four athletes was still told that if she did not agree to the gonadectomy, she would not be eligible to compete in the female category Since none of the four identifi ed as male, or desired to adopt a male identity, they would effectively be banned from any international sport competition All four agreed to the procedure The report also states that the four athletes underwent partial clitori-dectomies and “feminizing vaginoplasties.” (Fenichel et al 2013 ) The clinicians do not provide any medical rationale for the clitoridectomy or vaginoplasty procedures

perfor-It is not clear if the athletes were told they must also agree to these procedures in order to compete as women, or if the athletes themselves requested the procedures, though it is not diffi cult to imagine the tremendous pressure and likely isolation these individuals must have felt, both socially and in terms of their athletic careers, upon learning that despite living their entire lives as women, in order to continue competing as women, they must submit to surgery After their surgeries, all four women also began estrogen replacement therapy and were eligible to return to com-petition as females 1 year later, though it is unclear whether any of them did (Fenichel et al 2013 )

The effects of the IOC hyperandrogenism guidelines on the four women who underwent sex testing during the 2012 Olympics bring up a number of issues for students to unpack At the core of the issue is that people tend to associate testoster-one with men and maleness, despite the fact that the hormone is found in all human beings This leads to two faulty conclusions: First, there is an assumption that because testosterone is a “male” hormone, it is possible for women to have “too much” of it Second, in terms of sports, since men are assumed to be athletically superior to women and testosterone is considered a “male” characteristic, the inter-national sports authorities, along with much of the general population, have bought into the notion that testosterone causes improved athletic ability (Karkazis et al

2012 :8) In fact, human responses to testosterone vary “dramatically.” Research shows that “testosterone is just one element in a complex neuroendocrine feedback system, which is just as likely to be affected by athletic performance” as it is to cause it (Karkazis et al 2012 : 8) Further, while elite male sprint times, for instance, are on average faster than elite female sprint times, it is not fully clear that typically

“male” physical characteristics or higher levels of testosterone are the cause Some scholars have pointed out that one reason female athletes may be closing the gap with male athletes is that historically across the globe, relatively few women have had the opportunity to compete in offi cial athletic events (Tatum et al 2004 ) As more women become involved in athletics, the landscape of sports and notions of what male and female athletes are capable of may change dramatically

Instructors can also pose the question of whether sex is the most appropriate means of segregating people for the purpose of sports Students can consider other

1 Sex and Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the Social Construction of Sex

factors that provide athletes with “advantages” relative to their peers and question whether the sex binary actually makes sense in the context of sports, given the wide variation within, and overlap between, the supposedly fi xed categories of “male” and “female.” A close examination and discussion of athletes like Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand, whose bodies do not conform to offi cially ordained standards of physical femininity can help students understand that the categories “male” and

“female,” like “man” and “woman” are not only socially constructed, but atic in their application to actual people For instance, neither Semenya nor Chand identifi es as intersex and the IAAF and IOC guidelines focus on the perceived effects of hyperandrogenism, but instructors may also want to explore with students what the sex binary means for intersex athletes, both those who openly identify as intersex or who are defi ned as such by clinicians in terms of opportunities to com-pete in elite sports

As a fi nal note, it can be diffi cult to engage in this discussion without tently using language that reinforces sex stereotypes and notions of fi xed gender and sex categories Even when instructors initiate classroom conversations about the social and medical construction of sex, instructors and students alike may fi nd themselves trapped by language that forces us to describe both people and human physical attributes as “male” or “female.” Still, acknowledging the limitations of language in this context may open further discussion of the problems that arise when binary sex is the basis for categorizing not just elite athletes, but people in many other spheres of life as well Students can extend these questions beyond ath-letics, drawing parallels between the challenges facing athletes in a rigid sex binary and individuals facing similar challenges in areas of life outside of sports

References

Brown, M (2013, September 12) Beating the boys Outside Online

Fenichel, P., Paris, F., Philibert, P., Hieronimus, S., Gaspari, L., Kurzenne, J., et al (2013) Molecular diagnosis of 5a-reductase defi ciency in 4 elite young female athletes through hor-

monal screening for hyperandrogenism The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism,

98 (6), E1055 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1210/jc.2012-3893

Fine, C (2010) Delusions of gender: How our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference

(Vol 208, pp 158–167) New York: Norton

Gugala, J (2014, May 12) What happened to Caster Semenya? Fittish

IAAF (2011) IAAF regulations governing eligibility of females with hyperandrogenism to

com-pete in women’s competition International Association of Athletics Federations http://www iaaf.org/about-iaaf/documents/medical Accessed 20 Mar 2015; IOC (2012) IOC Regulations

on female hyperandrogenism: Games of the XXX Olympiad in London, 2012 International

Olympic Committee http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Commissions_PDFfi les/Medical_ commission/2012-06-22-IOC-Regulations-on-Female-Hyperandrogenism-eng.pdf Accessed

20 Mar 2015

Karkazis, K., Jordan-Young, R., Davis, G., & Camporesi, S (2012) Out of bounds? A critique of

the new policies on hyperandrogenism in elite female athletes The American Journal of

Bioethics, 12 (7)

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Koshie, N., Selvaraj, J., & Mohanty, D (2014, September 29) I am who I am: Dutee Chand Indian

Express

Levy, A (2009, November 30) Either/Or The New Yorker

Macur, J (2014, October 6) Fighting for the body she was born with The New York Times

Smith, D (2009a, September 11) South Africa’s government renews attacks on IAAF over Caster

Semenya The Guardian

Smith, D (2009b, August 27) Caster Semenya is a hero – But in South Africa being different can

be deadly for a woman The Guardian

Tatem, A., Guerra, C., Atkinson, P., & Hay, S (2004) Momentous sprint at the 2156 Olympics?

Nature, 431 (7008), 525 doi: 10.1038/431525a

Thomas, J (2012, August 11) Did Caster Semenya lose the women’s 800 meters on purpose?

Slate ; Ornstein, D (2012, August 11) Caster Semenya loses out on 800m gold to Mariya Sarinova BBC Sport

1 Sex and Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the Social Construction of Sex

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

K Haltinner, R Pilgeram (eds.), Teaching Gender and Sex

in Contemporary America, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-30364-2_2

is something that exists naturally in the U.S population (Blank 2012 , p 152) The understandings students take away regarding the social impact on gender slips away

as they attempt to confront sexual identity categories in the United States that have long believed homosexuality to be natural or instinctual, even though most of what our bodies actually do is social Even when students accept that the categories them-selves (e.g “gay” or “straight”) have been socially constructed they are not willing

to extend this line of thought to what actual bodies do or desire Indeed, many dents fear that if they acknowledge their gender or sexual identity as a social con-struction, and not something solely rooted in biology, then their identity is simply a matter of choice with no real social consequences

My challenge at the start of the semester is to posit the discourse of sexuality as social, much like I do with any explanations of sex and gender This idea can be off-putting because mass media content and general student education presumes a

“born this way” trope The “born this way” trope popularized (at least in my

A D Miller ( * )

Department of Anthropology and Sociology , Webster University , Webster Groves , MO , USA e-mail: andreamiller31@webster.edu

students’ minds) by pop singer Lady Gaga acts as a nascent starting point in my endeavor to uncover the origin stories of sexuality as purely “natural” or “biologi-cal” that have been passed along to us By using Lady Gaga’s song as an exemplar students more easily permit themselves (and me) to investigate the rich intersec-tions of gender and sexuality that no doubt play a role in how individuals see them-selves as sexual beings From my perspective as the “classroom navigator,” waiting

to see whether sexual identity is the product of biological essentialism or social constructionism seems unproductive Like most social phenomena, I want my stu-dents to consider that it is likely a combination of both

In this essay I discuss various class strategies I have found successful to confront this biological or “born this way” trope with regard to sexual identity One of the most successful strategies I employ with students is to help them trace the current sexuo-political landscape in U.S society Since this landscape is usually rooted in the idea of nature or the natural, I use this as my starting point As Lenore Tiefer ( 2004 ) writes on the topic of human sexuality, “… by reducing sexuality to the biological, I think we’ve got the cart before the horse…” (p 3) And so my role as educator is to at least dissemble the cart (human sexuality) before we even think about fi nding a horse to pull it To be sure, discussions on human sexuality as some-

thing that is not instinctual or a biological given is no easy task—but it can be

accomplished by reminding our students that what is done with whom and why is mostly an aspect of the social world, and has very little to do with biology It is pertinent that we remind students that while categories are powerful, they are also socially constructed and thus, can be socially dismantled Like Tiefer ( 2004 ), Halberstam ( 2012 ) also tells us that there are no “essential sets of traits, desires, or indications” that defi ne gender—today available gender categories are inadequate (p 71) This is the discourse we can use in the classroom to counter essentialist theories of sex and gender

To counter this essentialist (biological) discourse, I introduce the concept of

“choice” in relation to social constructionism in an attempt to critically engage meaning-making systems In other words, if we want to describe the sexual identity

“bisexual” we might fi ll this category with social understandings of what we think

a bisexual person is Because these ideologies are the result of social processes and not a process of say, neuroscience or genetics, students come to think about catego-ries as rooted in social meanings that may or may not include biological compo-nents More specifi cally, if my students believe that sexuality is unchangeable, fated, or predetermined then they will develop little insight into how sexual identi-ties are largely predicated on heteronormativity; and heteronormativity remains unexamined Further, because heterosexuality is not viewed as a “choice,” non- straights (les/bi/gay) who attempt to describe their identity by using “choice” lan-guage are considered abject in a society that emphasizes heterosexuality as naturally occurring and normative

A.D Miller

2.2 “Born This Way” Anthem

Since its release on February 11, 2011 , the “Born this Way” (Lady Gaga) album and song acted as the premier anthem to many lesbian/gay/bisexual/transsexual youth and adults Selling over one million copies in the fi rst week, and six million world-wide ( www.billboard.com ), this feel-good anthem of empowerment and identity recognition is no doubt powerful as told in the following lyrics:

A different lover is not a sin

Believe capital H-I-M (hey, hey, hey)

I love my life, I love this record and

Mi amore vole fe yah (love needs faith)

I’m beautiful in my way

‘Cause God makes no mistakes

I’m on the right track, baby

I was born this way

Don’t hide yourself in regret

Just love yourself and you’re set

I’m on the right track, baby

I was born this way

From this cursory read of some of Gaga’s lyrics—which refl ect a discourse in broader society—it is clear why students might challenge my insistence that sexual-ity is social If, as Gaga so aptly puts it, “‘Cause God makes no mistakes,” then how can the social environment and social structure play a role in one’s sexual identity?

In other words, Lady Gaga’s lyrics exemplify the reductive, essentialist paradigm that sociologists have worked tirelessly to avoid Conventional knowledge about sexuality, which Gaga’s song works off of, tends to locate one’s “true” sexual iden-tity as being rooted in the “natural” or the “biological,” and thus authentic Biological propositions are also a form of essentialism Essentialist theories hold that: (1) one’s sexual identity is based on absolute “truths”; (2) sexual categories are based on the

“natural” and are therefore fi xed and unchanging; and (3) biological givens mine one’s “true” sexual identity (Seidman 2009 ) These essentialist conditions are not only prevalent in Gaga’s lyrics but in the minds of many undergraduate stu-dents In order to contradict this ready script of essentialism the “Born this Way” anthem provokes, I point to social theorists like J Jack Halberstam ( 2012 ) who sees Lady Gaga as combatting essentialist stereotypes Halberstam reminds us that while Lady Gaga’s politics do not always debunk the status quo, her personae does Halberstam posits something called “gaga feminism,” or a “hypothetical form of feminism” that resides in the crevices of the “what” and the “if” (p 8) So while the

deter-“Born this Way” anthem may be politics as usual, Halberstam encourages questions that disrupt the neat binaries of sex and gender, much like Lady Gaga herself Gaga feminists might ask, “What if we gendered people according to their behavior” or

“What if gender shifted over the course of a lifetime” (Halberstam 2012 , p 8) Using the “Born this Way” anthem to extoll essentialist claims, the task is then

to move students to a different frame, or at least a frame that allows for a social interpretation of sexual identity This is the work of the sociologist Largely leaving

2 The Mis-education of Lady Gaga: Confronting Essentialist Claims in the Sex…

behind biological and reductionist paradigms, sociologists tend to look for tives to essentialist claims by turning to the lens of social constructionism A social constructionist approach emphasizes the idea that sexual identity is infl uenced by beliefs and ideologies that come from broader social structures In the next section

alterna-I turn to how students might view sexuality as a social project (and not only a logical one) to uncover the social structures and meaning-making systems that infl uence sexualities

bio-2.3 Sexuality and Social Constructionism

While biological arguments should not be entirely dismissed, these explanations are largely inconsistent with how people come to understand their sexual identity, espe-cially when one’s sexual identity is examined within the two-and-only-two sex/gender/sexuality matrix that I explain next Even though lived experience informs

us that sexual (and gendered) lives are rarely so static, but are usually dynamic, these irregularities and inconsistencies are ignored Instead they are summed up and assumed under binary, dichotomous, and “either/or” categories (Ault 1996 ; Butler

1993 ; Hemmings 2002 ; Lorber 1994 , 1996 ) The intersection of gender and ity shows that these categories are insuffi cient

Much of the current sociological research on sexuality calls into question the either/or dualism of sex, gender and sexuality or what is commonly referred to as a “two-and-only-two” system of gender stratifi cation (Garfi nkel 1967 ; Rubin 1975 ; Kessler and McKenna 1978 ; Lorber 1994 , 1996 ) that renders gender as systemati-cally and inherently related to one’s sex and sexuality For example, if one’s bio-logical sex is male, one’s gender is assumed to be masculine and women are understood to be the focus of one’s sexual desire This concept works similarly for

a biological female, as she learns that her femininity is associated with having ual relationships exclusively with men Hence, some logical (i.e., natural) connec-tion between gender and sexuality is assumed to exist These assumed connections between individual’s sex, gender, and sexuality is called the heterosexual matrix The heterosexual matrix, at fi rst glance, seems to work easily enough: if your bio-logical sex category is male, for example, then the heterosexual matrix predicts your gender presentation as masculine, and as a result you should be attracted to women The matrix works similarly for biological females whose gender presenta-tion is feminine and will thus be attracted to men The heterosexual matrix makes the assumption that one’s gender is somehow systematically or inherently related to one’s biological sex and sexual identity As Harold Garfi nkel ( 1967 ) pointed out, at the end of the day, we see persons as either male or female, masculine or feminine, and consequently as heterosexual or homosexual According to the work of sociolo-gist Judith Lorber ( 1994 , 1996 ), most sociological research designs tend to function within this contrived sex/gender/sexuality paradigm and, hence, assume that one’s sex, gender, and sexuality remain both congruent and unchanged throughout one’s life This sex/gender/sexuality paradigm underpins much of how students connect

sex-A.D Miller

gendered understandings to sexual ones This is best seen through the amount of time, research, and money invested in the science of “gaydar,” which I look at in the next section

2.4 Biological Revivalism and the Science of “Gaydar”

Thinking back to Gaga’s anthem, the song ends with the following lyric repeated over and over—“Same DNA, I’m born this way/Same DNA, I’m born this way.” Gaga’s reference to DNA is not arbitrary to the discussion of sexuality In fact, one

of the major obstacles to teaching the idea that sexuality is a social phenomenon is that most students’ knowledge of sexuality has been rooted in a medicalized and biological model This is ever-present in research that uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or brain scanning to determine one’s sexual identity Students are also aware of the decade long human genome project which attempted (to no avail)

to fi nd a “gay gene.” Philosopher Hanne Blank’s research reminds us “no one knows whether heterosexuality is the result of nature or nurture” ( 2012 , p 41) If this were the case, then why would we know any different for homosexuality (or bisexuality, or lesbianism, etc.)? Why are we looking for a “gay gene” and not a

“sexuality” or “straight gene”?

For research endeavors using neuroimaging or brain scanning to be valid, sexuality (or homosexuality) would have to be demonstrated in some objective way In other words, we would need to quantify it in some measurable way without bias Because live humans are always the subjects of these sorts of studies, it is impossible to remove the human bias Critics might counteract that we could use brain studies to measure “homosexuality” or “heterosexuality,” but the same prob-lem persists—in order for there to be a brain marked “gay” there must be a brain we can mark as “straight”—neither one has yet to be found (Blank 2012 ) While the latter logic may make sense on its face this does not keep scientists from attempting

hetero-to fi nd evidence of homosexuality by examining the body, whether it is one’s mones, genetics or anatomy

One, of my favorite articles to distribute to students to discuss this very point is

research cited by the widely read New York Magazine in a 2007 article titled “ The Science of Gaydar ” (France) In this article, authors discuss the direction of hair whorls, voice pitch, and fi ngernail length in an attempt to predict whether one was gay While this might seem farcical at fi rst glance, this article includes the results of nationally funded research by British-neuroscientist Simon LeVay and Richard Lippa a psychologist at California State University at Fullerton—both catalogue the differences between straits and gays And while students get a kick out of measur-ing their fi nger length and looking at each others hair whorls, it is not beyond reproach to emphasize the importance of these sorts of studies to the medical and neuroscience community If for nothing else, this article reveals to students how dominant the neurosciences and biomedical model is to sexuality researchers When particular behaviors (voice pitch) or conditions (fi nger length and hair whorls) are

2 The Mis-education of Lady Gaga: Confronting Essentialist Claims in the Sex…

magic word brai n is there, no further information required” (p 172, emphasis in

original) It is against the latter types biological and medical reductionism of sexual identity that I attempt to work against in the sex and gender classroom

2.5 Overcoming the “Paranoia of Choice” Discourse

in the Classroom

Why the paranoia? For most students, unraveling the sexual identity thread that they may have strongly believed was tied to their biology is unsettling However, I con-tend that a feeling of unease is an understatement Living in a society that privileges biological and medical explanations over social ones creates what I call “paranoia

of choice.” The term “choice” used in front of a sexual identity statements such as:

“I choose to be bisexual/homosexual/gay/lesbian” is anathema to many Biological and medical arguments not only benefi t essentialist lines of thought, but also social reformers Activists for LGBT rights have successfully used “born this way” argu-ments to further the case of civil rights, most recently seen in same-sex marriage campaigns

As the fi rst part of this chapter discussed, the current sexuo-political landscape in U.S society tends to root sexual identity (and orientation) in the idea of nature or the natural Once nature is invoked, the belief in fate or the predetermined is secured and choice becomes irrelevant In other words, why choose something that cannot

be changed? In order to alter this predictive line of thought, I ask students to ine the concept of heteronormativity—more specifi cally the widely held social belief that heterosexuality is unchangeable, fated, or a predetermined sexual iden-tity Halberstam’s conceptualization of “ gaga feminism ” gives students another looking glass to view the sexuo-political landscape Like Halberstam, let’s give our students (and ourselves) permission to “go gaga.” For Halberstam, “going gaga”

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means “letting go of many of your basic assumptions about people, bodies, and desires “( 2012 , p 27) By dropping these preconceived notions students can lean towards genders and sexualities that are not simply fi xed, but more fl uid and tempo-rary Granting students permission to “go gaga,” is especially benefi cial when con-fronted with the larger social structure of heteronormativity that I discuss next Heteronormativity , which plagues the larger social structure and social institu-tions, largely remains unexamined As feminist theorist Stevi Jackson notes with regard to choice rhetoric and sexuality: “… I consider it risky to assume that any aspect of sexuality or gender is innate, since this can entail placing aspects of our gendered and sexual practices beyond critique” ( 2005 , p 18) And because hetero-sexuality is considered a default or “not a choice” position, non-straights who attempt to describe their identity by using “choice” language are considered abject

in a society that emphasizes heterosexuality as naturally occurring By investigating

how a heteronormative social structure impacts how les/bi/gays and straight

identi-ties, I explain how the “paranoia of choice” continues to prop up heterosexuality as the only socially “legitimate” sexual identity

What I call “paranoia of choice” is at the crux of not only this paper but also the current state of LGBT politics in the United States “Choosing” one’s sexual iden-tity is not consistent with the current doxa of Western understandings of sexual identity Hanne Blank ( 2012 ) writes that the very limited number of sexual orienta-tions from which one identifi es with is simply an artifact of the social world Halperin echoed this in his breakthrough article “Is There a History of Sexuality?” where he posited that, “sexuality is not a somatic fact; it is a cultural effect” ( 1989 ,

p 257) Somatic fact or not, these kinds of statements have not given geneticists and scientists pause for fi nding differences between the heterosexual and non- heterosexual body It is cultural knowledge that geneticists have been trying to locate a “gay gene” and “gay hormones” since the Human Genome Project com-menced in 1990 Even with its offi cial ending in 2003, the pursuit for the “gay gene” continues (“Human Genome Project” 2013 )

As I reviewed in the previous section neither the marked “gay” nor the unmarked

“straight” gene, hormone(s) or brain has been found However, this Sisyphean quest continues Most sex researchers accept and reify the sexual orientation categories of

“heterosexual” and “homosexual” regardless of the sexual variance research jects’ show Moreover, the privileged position that biology, neuroscience and the like hold in Western society makes the body the primary (and sometimes only) tableau for fi nding evidence for “heterosexual” and “homosexual” selves As long

sub-as biological paradigms continue to dominate the knowledge hierarchy, alternate forms of understanding sexual orientation will continue to lack validity

In order to better frame this “paranoia of choice” I have found it helpful to ask students when and how we use “choice” language is other discourses Most students are able to point out that “choice” language is celebrated when Westerners argue for free-speech rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, etc but when it comes to sex-ual identity “choice” language is somehow not appropriate Democratic language is apparently not meant for talking about one’s sexual orientation

2 The Mis-education of Lady Gaga: Confronting Essentialist Claims in the Sex…

Perhaps what is most troubling to the student in the sex and gender classroom is that many who eschew “choice” discourse are gay activists themselves, including many who run nationally recognized LGBT organizations like the Human Rights Campaign ( HRC ) and the National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Taskforce I have students investigate the sort of language these organizations use when talking about sexual orientation to their membership base by investigating the organizations’ website and written literature It is not surprising that students fi nd arguments rooted in biological essentialism or the natural because biological argu-ments are key to the campaigns of some les-bi-gay organizations; they uphold the idea that les-bi-gay folks “pose no threat to the heterosexual majority” (Jackson

2005 , p 16) For example, The Human Rights Campaign’s Resource Guide to

Coming Out notes in bold type (and all caps) that “Your sexual or gender identity is

not a choice It chooses you” A few paragraphs down, the pamphlet tells it readers,

“Being Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual or Transgender is Natural” (“A Resource Guide to Coming Out,” 2014 ) This is just one of many organizations that rely on a “paranoia

of choice” paradigm that discourages anything that is not believed to be innate or natural

Outside of national organizations like the HRC, gay advocates and bloggers like

John Aravoisis, writing for “ AMERICAblog ” reacted harshly to Sex and the City

star Cynthia Nixon when she posited that her bisexuality was a “choice.” After her announcement he wrote: “If you like both fl avors, men and women, you’re bisexual, you’re not gay, so please don’t tell people that you are gay, and that gay people can

‘choose’ their sexual orientation, i.e., will it out of nowhere Because they can’t.” Aravoisis goes on to say, “Every religious right hatemonger is now going to quote this woman [Nixon] every single time they want to deny us our civil rights” (Aravoisis 2012 ) While I don’t dismiss Aravoisis’ fears that hate mongers will use Nixon’s comments to support reasons gay and lesbian (and bisexual) folks shouldn’t have civil rights, the larger question is: “Should we promote dogmatic either/or tropes to discuss sexual orientation because hate mongers will vilify us or do we attempt to instead present cultural facts about queer folks regardless of how hate-mongers react?”

Sexuality researchers like Lisa Diamond ( 2008 ) rightly notes that there is no other topic in sexuality research that infuriates more than that of choice or change

in one’s sexual orientation ( 2008 ) And while Diamond sees sexual orientation as something that cannot be changed she is willing to advocate that folks should be able to determine their sexual lives regardless of who might be the current hatemon-ger: “… plenty of inborn traits are viewed as highly undesirable, so why should the notion of social orientations as a biological trait make it more socially acceptable?… After all, the common view of race and ethnicity as inborn traits has not eroded rac-ism” ( 2008 , p 138)

For those of us, especially our students who have been faced with bias—whether due to a combination of race, ethnicity, gender, age or sexuality—many would point out that hatemongering will continue regardless of the language one chooses to talk about outsider identities Moreover, the task of the social scientist is to look at social

and cultural facts (and artifacts) and present their effect on society, not avoid these

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facts in order to spare what Aravoisis and others see as a way to dissuade civil rights Civil rights will be denied to those of us who do not follow hegemonic ideals regardless of whether or not we think something is a choice The idea is that civil rights will not be afforded to groups who “choose” their disadvantage in society But as sex researcher John D’Emilio suggests: “Do we really expect to bid for real power from a position of ‘I can’t help it?’” ( 1992 , p 187) Must we use the essen-tialist, “not a choice” trope that will at best provide a minority-status in a socio- political climate that continues to buttress heterosexual privilege on the backs of les-bi-gay politics? Or instead, as Whisman posits: “What about … the recognition that living as sexual outlaws is what unites us, not a shared and essential identity” ( 1996 , p 124)

An example of uniting under the banner of “sexual outlaws” is the “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage ” ( 2006 ) statement signed by some of the most prominent U.S and International queer theorists and activists and the Against Equality (AE) (Conrad 2014 ) group that has collectively published essays on why gay marriage does little for equality since marriage, itself, perpetuates power imbalances The signatories of the “ Beyond Same-Sex Marriage ” call for a new strategic plan to LGBT organizing that does not limit it to the securing of same-sex marriage rights, but broadens the goal to varying family relationships that exist outside of a two- person marriage

In order to juxtapose ideas from so-called “ sexual outlaws ” students should also

be aware of the stance that major lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender organizations in the United States have on the “born this way” trope This sort of informal research can easily be undertaken in beginner or intermediate undergraduate classroom I have successfully employed informal research with fi rst and second-year students in September 2012 and again in September 2014 Students conducted informal analy-sis of major LGBT organizations (The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Lambda Legal, GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), and PFLAG (formerly Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), and found that all warn against the statement that sexual orientation is a “choice.” As an exemplar of this practice Lambda Legal cautioned against using the world “choice” because it might prop up reparative therapy campaigns even though the American Psychological Association denounced reparative therapy in August 2009 (APA Task Force) No doubt are these major organizations infl uenced by the essentialist

or biological position on one’s sexual orientation as they more easily fi t the civil rights model of social movements that rely on a “born this way” trope

2.6 Conclusion

Certainly, the cultural creation of knowledge by the early sexologists has not been abandoned It is part of our common nomenclature that heterosexuality exists and

by default so too does homosexuality Today, research ranging from neuroimaging

to the length of one’s fi ngers is at the crux of “discovering” our true sexuality

2 The Mis-education of Lady Gaga: Confronting Essentialist Claims in the Sex…

While this sort of research persists, we also know that studies of nervous systems between heterosexual and non-heterosexual folks have shown no signifi cant differ-ences (Blank 2012 ) Geneticists on the hunt for the “straight” and “gay” gene have also had no conclusive results Obviously the dizzyingly amount of research that exists in an attempt to fi nd evidence of homosexuality is critical to Western societ-ies Like most minority-politics, we need to discover who is “out” so we can prop

up who is “in.” The fact remains (at least thus far) that sexual orientation does not appear to have a signifi cant correlation to the physical body (Blank 2012 ; Fine

2011 ) What these lack of fi ndings suggests is not that there is no biological nent to sexual orientation, but that sociologists have more to offer about sexual identity or orientation as an organizing agent in society So while the geneticists, endocrinologists, and neurologists continue to seek their answers to fi nding sexual orientation within the body, social scientists need to not only problematize this approach but do their own looking—into the social interactions, social institutions and ultimately, the power relations in Western society

Not only do the categories exist, but also we believe as a society that we know how to fi ll them—and what better way to fi ll the categories than with those ideas that seem to be rooted in nature Invoking nature or the natural is so pleasing, copa-cetic even, because it does not involve further question or inquiry—it “just is” and heterosexuality or homosexuality can exist without humans really having to do much The secret is that no one really knows conclusively whether heterosexuality

is the result of nature or nurture—most likely it is some combination of both and then some

I have proposed here that the future of discourse in the sex and gender classroom must move away from the essentialist origin stories that attempt to explain women and men’s sexual orientation as primarily a product of nature or biology Lady Gaga’s anthem, “Born this Way,” may be empowering on some level, but at what cost? If students are willing to unravel the “gender knot” (Johnson 2014 ) then why not equip them with similar tools to unravel what sexual orientation might look like outside of “born this way,” essentialist tropes? Perhaps this is where “gaga femi-nism” comes in: “[to be] the fl y in the ointment, the wrench in the machinery … Halberstam 2012 , p 141) I want to give students more than a tribute to being “on the right track” because they were “born this way.” Will we be shoved “off the track” if our DNA cannot prove our sexuality? What if the neuroimaging scans and the DNA analysis give us a result we do not wish for? Will heterosexuals be willing

to submit DNA samples for testing? Perhaps my fear is not merely that we will be pushed of “off the track,” but that we will be run over by a train that is speeding up

to fi nd biological answers to social questions Let’s go gaga instead!

References

APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation (2009) Report of

the task force on appropriate therapeutic responses to sexual orientation Washington, DC:

American Psychological Association

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