“Mostly What We Do Is Ride Bikes”

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-367
Author(s):  
Kristine Newhall

Abstract As trans visibility grows, the investment in a sex/gender binary gets more entrenched in some cultural institutions, including—and maybe especially—sports. Policies governing gender identity in sports have multiplied since the 1990s. How sports governing bodies have approached policy creation has differed widely in the past two decades, reflecting philosophical differences regarding fairness of competition and ingrained beliefs about sex and gender. This article examines the policy created by an intercollegiate cycling conference using subculture theory to explain the divergence from extant policies. It also looks at the connection to the ongoing sex/gender verification process for elite female athletes and the ways in which all policing of gender is always already a legacy of imperialist practices.

2020 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-61
Author(s):  
Pooja Mittal Biswas

AbstractThis paper studies how the novel Orlando by Virginia Woolf deconstructs the male / female gender binary by deconstructing the past / future time binary. The protagonist’s sex change disrupts the linearity of ‘straight time’, in which the causality of gender is monodirectional, queer agency is impossible, and a false equivalency is drawn between gender identity and biological sex. The text instead leads Orlando (and the reader) away from straight time and into queer time, which is multidirectional, non-linear and non-heteronormative, and which unhitches gender identity at least partially from biological sex through a process that I call ‘gender lag’. This lag grants queer agency to Orlando in terms of his / her own gender identity and gender performativity. In exercising queer agency, Orlando’s changing body becomes a queer ‘chronotope’, that is, a queer expression of time and space within the narrative. Explored in the paper are the various means employed within the text to queer time and gender. The cultural context within which Orlando was written is also considered as a contributing factor to the subtextuality of its queerness. Finally, the text’s transgender connotations are analysed.


Author(s):  
Yen-Mou Lu ◽  
Chung-Hwan Chen ◽  
Yi-Jing Lue

BACKGROUND: Sex and gender affect responses to pain, but little is known about disability and quality of life. OBJECTIVES: To investigate the effects of sex and gender on disability and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients with low back pain. METHODS: Ninety-three patients with low back pain were included in this cross-sectional survey study. Disability, HRQOL and gender identity were respectively assessed with the Oswestry Disability Index, Short Form-36 and Bem Sex Role Inventory. The participants were classified into four gender role orientations (masculinity, femininity, androgyny and undifferentiated). One-way analysis of variance was used to analyze both the sex and the gender role orientation. RESULTS: Females had higher disability than males (p< 0.05), but in gender identity, no significant difference was found. Seven domains of HRQOL were lower than the healthy norms. Males experienced greater impacts than females on vitality and mental health (p< 0.05). For gender identity, five domains of HRQOL had significant differences (p< 0.05). Masculinity orientation had the least impact on four domains (p< 0.05), while undifferentiated orientation had the largest impact on all domains. CONCLUSION: Sex and gender effects can be used to analyze disability and HRQOL in patients with low back pain. Females have higher disability, while HRQOL is greatly influenced by different gender role orientations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 351-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernadette Wren ◽  
John Launer ◽  
Michael J. Reiss ◽  
Annie Swanepoel ◽  
Graham Music

SUMMARYIssues of sexual reproduction lie at the core of evolutionary thinking, which often places an emphasis on how individuals attempt to maximise the number of successful offspring that they can produce. At first sight, it may therefore appear that individuals who opt for gender-affirming medical interventions are acting in ways that are evolutionarily disadvantageous. However, there are persuasive hypotheses that might make sense of such choices in evolutionary terms and we explore these here. It is premature to claim knowledge of the extent to which evolutionary arguments can usefully be applied to issues of gender identity, although worth reflecting on the extent to which nature tends towards diversity in matters of sex and gender. The importance of acknowledging and respecting different views in this domain, as well as recognising both the uncertainty and likely multiplicity of causal pathways, has implications for clinicians. We make some suggestions about how clinicians might best respond when faced with requests from patients in this area.LEARNING OBJECTIVESAfter reading this article you will be able to:•understand evolutionary arguments about diversity in human gender identity•identify strengths and weaknesses in evolutionary arguments applied to transgender issues•appreciate the range and diversity of gender experience and gender expression among people who present to specialist gender services, as well as the likely complexities of their reasons for requesting medical intervention.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor R. Thomas ◽  
Dabney Hofammann ◽  
Brooke G. McKenna ◽  
Anna I.R. van der Miesen ◽  
Mark A. Stokes ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTBiological sex is an important factor in mental health, and a non-binary view of how variation in sex and gender influence mental health represents a new research frontier that may yield new insights. The recent acceleration of research into sexual orientation, gender identity, and mental health has generally been conducted without sufficient understanding of the opinions of sexual and gender minorities (SGM) toward this research. We surveyed 768 individuals, with an enrichment of LGBTQ+ stakeholders, for their opinions regarding genetic research of SGM and mental health. We found that the key predictors of attitudes toward genetic research specifically on SGM are 1) general attitudes toward genetic and mental health research 2) tolerance of SGM and associated behaviors 3) non-cisgender stakeholder status and 4) age of the respondent. Non-heterosexual stakeholder status was significantly associated with increased willingness to participate in genetic research if a biological basis for gender identity were discovered. We also found that non-stakeholders with a low tolerance for SGM indicated their SGM views would be positively updated if science showed a biological basis for their behaviors and identities. These findings represent an important first step in understanding and engaging the LGBTQ+ stakeholder community in the context of genetic research.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marybeth Meservey ◽  
Yvonne Gomez-Carrion

The healthcare community and lay public have become more aware of transgender (TG) people in the past decade as celebrities have publicly transitioned and activists have pushed back against restrictive laws. Movies, television, nonfiction books, and novels increasingly represent the experience of people who are TG. News organizations and entertainment outlets have given attention to the lives, needs, and challenges of TG and gender-nonconforming individuals. Nonetheless, TG individuals are often fearful when seeking healthcare. Experiences of shame, judgment, and rejection with providers lead to anxiety in future encounters. The number of clinical providers who feel prepared to offer care for TG individuals is limited. Many TG individuals have been denied basic primary and preventive healthcare as a result of their TG status. Understanding the concepts of TG and gender nonconformance expands the skill set of the healthcare professional for providing culturally competent care to all patients and their family members. This review contains 26 figures, and 59 references. Key Words: cis-sexual, gender binary, gender confirmation surgery, gender dysphoria, gender nonconforming, intersex, LGBTQ, queer, transgender, WPATH


Author(s):  
Janet C. Wesselius

The feminist philosopher Susan Bordo suggests that the dilemma of twentieth-century feminism is the tension between a gender identity that both mobilizes a liberatory politics on behalf of women and that results in gender prescriptions which excludes many women. This tension seems especially acute in feminist debates about essentialism/deconstructionism. Concentrating on the shared sex of women may run the risk of embracing an essentialism that ignores the differences among women, whereas emphasizing the constructed natures of sex and gender categories seems to threaten the very project of a feminist politics. I will analyze the possibility of dismantling gender prescriptions while retaining a gender identity that can be the beginning for an emancipatory politics. Perhaps feminists need not rely on a reified essentialism that elides the differences of race, class, etc., if we begin with our social practices of classification rather than with a priori generalizations about the nature of women.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-49
Author(s):  
Dipika Jain ◽  
Kimberly M. Rhoten

This article examines how efforts at legal legibility acquisition by gender diverse litigants result in problematic (e.g., narratives counter to self-identity) and, at times, erroneous discourses on sex and gender that homogenize the litigants themselves. When gender diverse persons approach the court with a rights claim, the narrative they present must necessarily limit itself to a normative discourse that the court may understand and, therefore, engage with. Consequently, the everyday lived experiences of gender diverse persons are often deliberately erased from the narrative as litigants mould themselves into the pre-existing normative legal categories of gender and sex. As a result of such mechanisms, the article finds that gender diverse litigants face epistemic injustice in the courts as their legal legibility is constructed within a constraining gender binary paradigm of judicial discourse. The article explores the trajectory of transgender rights in India, through an analysis of case law prior to and post the landmark NALSA decision, to understand how the approach to transgender rights and identities has been shaped by and shapes, in turn, normative conceptions of gender. The article argues for the incorporation of temporal pluralism into the law that would allow courts to hear gender diverse litigant accounts premised on contemporary gender diversity beyond the binary (rather than incontestable prior understandings based in past precedent), which would better account for such social injustices.


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