Teaching gender and sex in contemporary america

Kristin Haltinner · Ryanne Pilgeram
Editors

Teaching
Gender
and Sex in
Contemporary
America


Teaching Gender and Sex in Contemporary
America



Kristin Haltinner • Ryanne Pilgeram
Editors

Teaching Gender and Sex
in Contemporary America


Editors
Kristin Haltinner
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Idaho
Moscow, Idaho, USA

Ryanne Pilgeram
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Idaho

Moscow, Idaho, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-30362-8
ISBN 978-3-319-30364-2
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-30364-2

(eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937499
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
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The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland


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
first 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 office 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 office chair.
When I began teaching at the University of Idaho in 2010, I found myself surrounded 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 specifically around gender and sex. For one thing, despite being a newly
minted Ph.D. in 2010, I realized how quickly the field had changed and worried that
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 responsible 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
v

vi

Foreword

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 confident in the decisions 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 benefit 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. Specifically, this volume 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 deconstructing 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 complexities, 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 challenging and relaxed, and depressing and hopeful; classrooms that accept emotional labor
as part of the work and see rage as productive.
In the final 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 first 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

vii

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 simultaneously 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 surrounded scholars who can support us in our teaching. Whether you are alone in the
wilderness (or perhaps alone in the cornfields), 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.
For detailed information about each chapter, please see Alder and Adler’s
thoughtful introduction.
University of Idaho
Moscow, ID, USA


Ryanne Pilgeram



Contents

Part I
1

2

3

Reframing Gender

Sex and Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the Social
Construction of Sex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sumner McRae

3

The Mis-education of Lady Gaga: Confronting
Essentialist Claims in the Sex and Gender Classroom . . . . . . . . . . . .

Andrea D. Miller

15

Performances of Pronouns: Using Feminist Post-structuralism
to Explore the Social Construction of Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alison Happel-Parkins

27

4

Undoing Gender: Making the Invisible Visible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lindsay Custer

5

Gender Bending in the Classroom: Teaching Gender Inequity
Without Reifying Gender Essentialism and Heteronormativity . . . .
Kristin Haltinner

45

Make Us Whole!: Deconstructing Gender Narratives
to Build Solidarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Annie D. Jollymore

53

6

7

SGS: A Sensitizing Concept for Teaching Gender Diversity. . . . . . . .
Linda J. Henderson

Part II
8

37

63

Intersecting with Systems of Power

Choosing to Abort, Alter, Adopt, or Accept: Teaching
About Abortion in the Undergraduate Classroom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Elroi J. Windsor

75

ix


x

9

10

Contents

Teaching About Gendered Violence Without
Disempowering Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jocelyn A. Hollander

85

Silence, Violence, Safety and Respect: The Challenges
of Teaching About Gender and Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nikki McGary

93

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

xi

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



Introduction to Teaching 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 teaching 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 stratification hierarchy of prostitution was deemed, by the Office 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 “trafficked slave” indicated 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 manipulation 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 minefield of issues. Without adequate care and the proper environment (and even sometimes 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
xiii


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Introduction to Teaching Sex and Gender

demand protection and recourse against the faculty from university administrators.
Ultimately, terms are fluid 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 provides 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 subject 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 stratification 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 represent or have benefitted, 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 minefields 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 necessarily 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

xv

sions of these topics in courses that don’t have “Sex” or “Gender” in the title,
including Kelsy Burke and Alexa Trumpy’s “Making the Invisible Visible: Shining
a Light on Gender and Sexuality in Courses Primarily Focused on Other Topics”
and Daniel Brian Andersen’s “On Teaching About Sex and Gender in Each and
Every Political Science Course.”
Other topics that may raise hackles include those that are personally sensitive to
given students. College campuses are rife with controversy about and the consequences 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 first hand from experiences with sexual
harassment, rape, incest, eating disorders, and other issues raised in the course curriculum invariably when faculty members present material on these topics, it will
affect some people. They then often contact the instructor, putting faculty members
in an advising role for which they may not be trained. Referrals to counseling services 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 find other material too graphic, such as presentations or videos
about the birthing process or female circumcision. This can be emotional and challenging. 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 stratification variable or a static identity, the predominant scholarship in the field 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
perspective allows faculty to challenge the orthodoxy of the objectivist view of gender 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 behavior 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


xvi

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 interesting 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 market, only to yield to Rambo types in the post 9/11 era. This can show how enactments 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 affixed to biology
and firmly 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 valuable 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 doctors, parents, and society is also important. Traditional ways of presenting this material 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 instructors, 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 influences on sexuality, it is a powerful experience. 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 illustrate that, while they deviate from society’s norms, there is a great deal of angst that


Introduction to Teaching Sex and Gender

xvii

they experience in the process. Perhaps this can make students more sensitive to
people who step outside these norms. For a thoughtful discussion of how to do this

in a classroom, see Lindsay Custer’s chapter, “Undoing Gender: Making the
Invisible Visible.” In our experience students also enjoy learning about racial, religious, and cultural differences in sexual behavior. It is valuable to discuss the many
dimensions of the double standard about sexuality including the walk of shame, the
cult of virginity, the Goldilocks Syndrome (norms surrounding having too little or
too much sex), and gendered power and positionality in sexual acts and
relationships.
All of this may ultimately lead to opening students’ views about sex. While students 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 decisions about sex with both strangers and long-term partners can impact students
deeply and longitudinally. Courtney Caviness, Patti Giuffre, and Maria WasleyValdez’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 context—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 controversial topics. By reading about how others have dealt with the issues of teaching sex
and gender, future professors can have the benefits 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.
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO, USA

University of Denver
Denver, CO, USA


Patricia A. Adler

Peter Adler


Part I

Reframing Gender


Chapter 1

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

1.1

Using Sports to Teach About the Social Construction
of Sex

This chapter assists instructors who hope to approach class discussions related to
gender and sex with a deeper analysis of not just the construction of gender, but of
sex as well. Instructors can illuminate these concepts for their students by providing
concrete examples of the ways in which human bodies defy binary sex classification, such as the relationship between biology and society in the case of individuals

categorized as intersexed or whose bodies otherwise do not conform to socially
accepted markers of male or female.
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 fluid 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 find it tempting to define male and female sex categories as biological fact in contrast to gender, which is more easily recognized as socially constructed. While use of such a framework to teach about gender can help students

S. McRae (*)
Washington, DC, USA
e-mail:
© 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

3


4

S. McRae

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 reinforces 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 categories “male” and “female” are themselves natural and fixed, when in reality,
human bodies are not exclusively sexually dimorphic. We know that physical features vary significantly 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 conformity, and the ways in which the notion of a fixed 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 international 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 justified 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 integrated 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.


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

5

Athletes competing in female sports are thus under particular pressure to conform to categorical benchmarks for female bodies set by international athletics
authorities (Karkazis et al. 2012). However, strict lines between the sexes in athletics 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
defined 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 proportion of the population fits into neither range (the ranges do not overlap) (Karkazis
et al. 2012). Testosterone levels, particularly in people medically identified 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 person (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 ultramarathons – most notably, Rory Bosio, a female ultra-marathoner who placed seventh in the 2013 Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB), the first woman ever to finish
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 looking 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 challenge students’ perceptions of sex, based on a set of mutually exclusive physical
attributes, as strictly dichotomous. The idea that females, by definition, 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 suspected 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 suspicious. 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.


6

1.4

S. McRae

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 field World Championships. Earlier the same month, Semenya
posted a time of 4:08:01 in the 1500 m. Semenya’s 800 m time, while extraordinarily 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 official 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 flagged for drug tests (which came back
negative), the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body for international track and field competition, focused their concern on
Semenya’s status as female. Semenya’s peers were similarly fixated 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 official confirmed 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 “hermaphrodite” (Levy 2009). Prior to the Worlds event, South African athletic officials
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 performance enhancing drugs and to confirm 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-specifically 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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Sex and Gender in International Sports: Athletes and the Social Construction of Sex

7

Semenya’s more recent finish times have yet to approach her incredible performances
from 2009. After the Olympics, where she looked strong and relaxed during the
800 m final and yet inexplicably could not catch the winner, Mariya Savinova of
Russia, some sports journalists questioned whether Semenya had thrown the race on
purpose to divert further scrutiny (Thomas 2012). Other commentators wondered
whether the supposed “treatment” Semenya had received had limited her athletic
abilities. In 2014, two years after the Olympics, noting that Semenya still had not
returned to her 2009 form, sportswriter Jon Gugala wrote of Semenya’s career in the
800 m, “At 18 years old, she became the 13th-fastest woman ever to run the distance, 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
‘woman,’ the sport decided to make her less of an athlete.” (Gugala 2014).
It is difficult 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 fingers and toes with flexible 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 certainly 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 advantage to a male athlete, like in wrestling, singles figure 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 necessarily be characterized as “unfair.”
Unfortunately, Semenya’s case has not led to greater acceptance of women athletes whose physical characteristics fall outside the norms of femininity. If anything, 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
“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 first athlete from India
to make it to a final 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

8

S. McRae

Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, but was unexpectedly cut from the team shortly
before the competition.
Like Caster Semenya, it appears that Chand’s quick rise to success along with
complaints from her competitors about her “masculine,” muscular physique led the
Athletics Federation of India to investigate whether Chand should compete with
women. Instead of traveling to the Commonwealth Games, Chand underwent medical tests during the summer of 2014. Chand was first led to believe that doctors were
looking for signs that she had used performance enhancing drugs. The initial tests
showed high androgen levels, information that doctors did not immediately share
with Chand. She was sent for an ultrasound, most likely to verify whether she had
ovaries or detect the presence of testes, though she was still unaware of the purpose.
She was reportedly surprised by the ultrasound request. To her knowledge, an ultrasound was not typically part of a doping investigation, which she still believed was
the reason for the tests (Koshie et al. 2014). Doctors then informed Chand that she
had hyperandrogenism and was ineligible to compete in international women’s athletic events unless she agreed to treat her high testosterone either surgically or via
hormone therapy.
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 petition 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 final 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 opportunities 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 scientific fact is culturally informed and produced in the same manner as
social categories such as gender. These racial and colonial elements are evident both
in the scrutiny 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 during 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 country, a number of South African officials, including President Jacob Zuma, have pub-