When: 10 October 15:30-17:00
Where: Attic, Soiron building GG 80-82
The mutually exclusive, binary sex categorization seems to be the most stable, incontestable part of the sex-gender system. Gender comes in many guises, bodies may turn out to be ambiguous, but everybody is categorized either as male or as female. In my newest book, I move beyond sheer criticism of the rigidness of sex categorization by doubting the category of sex: unravelling the different – sometimes discrepant – logics at work in practices of assigning people a sex. Analyzing the logics behind practices of (re)assigning 19th century hermaphrodites a sex, Doubting Sex (2012) shows how the seemingly stable sex categorization changed fundamentally over the long nineteenth century. How can the changing logics I discerned in the nineteenth century help explain or address current issues of sex and gender categorizations?
Geertje Mak is assistant professor in gender history at the Institute for Gender Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen. She is the author of Doubting sex: Inscriptions, bodies and selves in nineteenth-century hermaphrodite case histories (Manchester University Press 2012), and further published in Journal of Women’s History, GLQ, Gender & History, and Social History of Medicine. Her Dutch publications include two books: Mannelijke Vrouwen. Over grenzen van sekse in de negentiende eeuw (Masculine Women. Crossing sex boundaries in the nineteenth century) (Amsterdam/Meppel, Boom 1997) and Sporen van verplaatsing. Honderd jaar nieuwkomers in Overijssel (Traces of Displacement. A century of migrants in Overijssel), Kampen: IJsselacademie 2000.
