THE FIGURE OF THE TRANSWOMAN OF COLOR THROUGH THE LENS OF

THE FIGURE OF THE TRANSWOMAN OF COLOR
THROUGH THE LENS OF "DOING GENDER"
Author(s): SALVADOR VIDAL-ORTIZ
Source: Gender and Society, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 2009),
pp. 99-103
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20676756
Accessed: 28-04-2016 05:33 UTC
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THE FIGURE OF THE TRANSWOMAN
OF COLOR THROUGH THE LENS OF
"DOING GENDER"
SALVADOR VIDAL-ORTIZ
American University
Ioften visit my birth family in Manati, a mid-size town in
Puerto Rico.
For over 20 years, I have driven on a main road (before the
expressway
was built) that connected the West and the North parts of the
Island. At the
outskirts of town, there is often a voluptuous woman-with low
hips, dark
hair, tight jeans, and more often than not smoking a cigarette.
She stands
by the side of the road in what seems to be a small pathway to
a house.
She cruises the passing cars, but sometimes just stands there-
waiting to

be noticed. Growing up queer in Manati, I have noticed this
woman many
times in the last two decades; although I have never spoken to
her, I
learned long ago that she is a transwoman. Recently, Mom and
I drove by,
and I checked to see if she was still there. With the rise of the
AIDS epi
demic since the 1980s, and my (erroneous) assumptions about
sex work
and HIV risk, I have wondered if she is still alive. "Oh she is
still there,"
says my mom. And I see her. I try to understand why she
signifies so much
in my imagination, how she reassures me by being alive, why I
need to see
her standing there. This transwoman signifies to me the figure
of the
transwoman of color. Who do you imagine her to be? What is
your figure
of the transwoman of color?
This vignette illustrates both my assumptions about what the
reader
might (not) know, as well as my own position vis-a-vis "trans"
people. As
a nontranssexual queer man, I hold a set of readings on gender
(West and
Zimmerman 1987) that shape how I view nontranssexual
women and
men, and transpeople. As a professor from a U.S. ethno-racial
minority
group, I also bring an understanding about the varied raced
(and classed)
experiences--in general, and of transpeople in particular. The

figure of the
transwoman of color helps illustrate the extent to which the
"doing gen
der" framework has dealt with transgender/transsexual people.
GENDER & SOCIETY, vol. 23 No. 1, February 2009 99-103
DOI: 10.1177/0891243208326461
? 2009 Sociologists for Women in Society
99
2016 05:33:13 UTC
100 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2009
The success of "doing gender" is praiseworthy. West and
Zimmerman
moved discussions from "gender role" and "gender display" to
the
accomplishment of gender in a relational way. The sociological
project of
shifting from "matters internal to the individual" and toward
"interactional
and . . . institutional arenas" (West and Zimmerman 1987, 126)
is a par
ticularly salient one for transpeople, whose gender identity is
often con
ceived alternately as the achievement of their "true selves," or
as a mental
disorder (see Bryant 2006). This is not because transpeople "do
gender"
more than anybody, or excel at gender attributions, but because

so many
readings in U.S. society explain social norms (and perceived
deviance) as
individual attributes. The interactional constitution of gender
permits us to
recognize the manner in which these discursive practices
oversimplify the
lived experiences of transpeople.
The "doing gender" framework also drew attention to the
constitution
of gender through work, both paid and unpaid. But this
situation is com
plex for transwomen, many of whom are immigrants and
women of color.
One way of advancing a doing gender analysis with attention to
racial,
transnational, and migratory experiences of nonwhite women
would be to
reconsider the notion of labor, and the types of labor that
feminist projects
have put forth as permissible work. The line between culturally
permissible
work and "deviant" labor is often blurred for women of color,
depending
on their treatment in the socioeconomic system, whether as
second-class
citizens, colonial subjects, or undocumented immigrants. Since
the 1970s,
feminist debates have excluded prostitution from women's
labor possi
bilities in ways that do not recognize the increased
globalization and
deployment of a female work force-often outside middle-class
parame
ters of "decent" employment. "Doing Gender" reflects these

parameters
too; it was a product of its time.
Of course, not all transwomen engage in sex work (indeed, this
is an
effect of the figure as a floating imaginary-I do not know if the
transwomen
to whom I refer to is a sex worker). But West and Zimmerman
might have
indirectly given us a lot of insight into why the social
positioning of
transwomen is so visible in sex work. As West and Zimmerman
argue, gen
der displays are not optional--that is, people rarely have the
"option of
being seen by others as female or male" (1987, 130). We
operate within
institutionalized constraints and, whether we do gender
successfully or not,
are held accountable. Often, transwomen are not given
employment in for
mal economy jobs (and unlike transmen, might not retain their
jobs as they
transition-Schilt 2006; Vidal-Ortiz 2002). Such negative
assessments
reduce their possibilities to work outside street economies like
sex work.
2016 05:33:13 UTC
Vidal-Ortiz I THE FiGURE OF THE TRANSWOMAN OF

COLOR 101
Many sex workers have a sense of agency in their decision
making
about sex work, as recent community research work
demonstrates (e.g.,
Alliance for a Safe & Diverse D.C. 2008). Furthermore, the
experiences
of racialized sexualization and racialized femininities connect
transwomen
of color to other women of color. Other women of color face
stereotypes
that include the (perceived) hyper-masculine African American
woman,
the hyper-sexualized Latina teenager, or the "exotic" Asian
massage par
lor worker; they endure the subsequent negotiations that
surround these
images. These assumptions of racialized sexuality are also
imposed on
transwomen of color. Ironically, such stereotypes may also
provide
transwomen of color with work that other employers have
denied. These
job opportunities may reify transgender stereotypes but open up
the labor
market to them at the same time. No site can simply be
considered a site
of oppression. Though "doing gender" makes a significant
contribution in
its focus on the interactional/institutional, it does not fully
explore ques
tions of resistance and agency (Pascale 2007). Research
focusing on

marginalized populations may require that both agency and
institutions
are intertwined in a more explicit way than West and
Zimmerman offered
in "doing gender."
The use of Agnes (and Garfinkel's work [Garfinkel 1967]) in
"doing
gender" did not really attest to any aspect of moving beyond a
represen
tation of transgender as manipulative, or as waiting to be
discovered. We
need to expand the "doing gender" notion beyond West and
Zimmerman's
use of the transsexual imagery (which, in many examples, is
centered on
surgery and transition), and into everyday lived experience
beyond surgi
cal "reconstructions." For example, both Risman (1982) and
Connell
(2009 [this issue]) criticize the discussions of "true"
transgender identities
because scientists based them on transsexuals who came to
gender iden
tity clinics requesting sex change operations.
Similarly, I continue to hear academics use the phrase "the
transwoman
of color" in ways and contexts that worry me. Taking note of
the lack of
transwomen of color on a panel or as part of a film becomes a
need to
demand politically correct forums. The transwoman of color
becomes a
singular figure in those moments, a utensil to reference at will.
This is an

additive approach that fails to consider the structural
arrangements and
discursive practices that locate the transwoman of color in such
a compli
cated site. I wonder if this is truly a concern about the
invisibility of
transwomen of color, or the speaker's positioning as an ally.
We could,
however, take a different approach: for instance, through first-
person
accounts in films on the struggles of transwomen in prison
(Baus, Hunt,
2016 05:33:13 UTC
102 GENDER & SOCIETY / February 2009
and Williams, 2006), or about taking hormones from the streets
without
medical supervision (Beauty on the Black Market 2008). The
figure of the
transwoman of color is very much alive, in ways (and as part of
patterns)
that resignify a figure (Cho 2008; Clough 1992), but do not
reconstitute it.
Such a figure is always there, as a threat, as excessive (as
excess), or as a
nonwoman (to some) (Ferguson 2004; Namaste 2000; Stryker
2008).
My question/invitation/provocation at the end of the opening
vignette

is not an innocent one. I am bringing you, the reader, into the
project of
disclosing what your figure of the transwoman of color is. Does
she
inhabit the streets? Is she a sex worker? Can you imagine her
being your
co-worker at the local university? Can you hear her theorizing
from her
own experience-and accept it? Or see her working on
something com
pletely unrelated to her identity or experience? And yet my
goal is not to
play a hierarchy of oppressions, but to build on the need to see
the prob
lematics associated with the figure-especially when common
referents
are about how this figure is raped, killed, "discovered," or
confronted as
"not being" what she desires to be.
To challenge this figure that we all (in one way or another)
reproduce
would mean to move the analysis from categorically measuring
sex/gen
der relations, to more actively incorporating sexuality--a
project West and
Zimmerman (1987) only began. Such a project would not only
trouble
notions of public and private displays of insignia, but also, the
relation
between sexuality and racialization; political economy and
migration;
gender, militarization and colonization; even the relation
between women,
gender, and sexuality. To think about "doing gender" today is
also to con

sider globalization, flows of people and migrations (and labor
in venues
other than the ones we privilege), to generate an analysis
beyond the fig
ures that emerge in the process.
REFERENCES
Alliance for a Safe & Diverse D.C. 2008. Move along! Policing
sex work
in Washington, D.C. Published by Different Avenues, Inc.
http://www
.differentavenues.com.
Baus, Janet, Dan Hunt, and Reid Williams. 2006. Cruel and
unusual (documen
tary). Reid Productions, LLC.
http://www.cruelandunusualfilm.com/.
Beauty on the Black Market. 2008. In the life (TV program
segment).
http://www.inthelifetv.org/html/episodes/52.html.
Bryant, Karl. 2006. Making gender identity disorder of
childhood: Historical
lessons for contemporary debates. Sexuality Research and
Social Policy 3 (3): 23-39.
2016 05:33:13 UTC
Vidal-Ortiz / THE FIGURE OF THE TRANSWOMAN OF
COLOR 103

Cho, Grace M. 2008. Haunting the Korean diaspora: Shame,
secrecy, and the for
gotten war. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Clough, Patricia T. 1992. The end(s) of ethnography: From
realism to social crit
icism. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Ferguson, Roderick A. 2004. Aberrations in Black: Toward a
queer of color cri
tique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Garfmkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology
Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press.
?amaste, Viviane . 2000. Invisible lives: The erasure of
transsexual and trans
gendered people. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Pascale, Celine-Marie. 2007. Making sense of race, class, and
gender. New York:
Routledge.
Risman, Barbara. 1982. The (mis)acquisition of gender identity
among transsex
uals. Qualitative Sociology 5 (4): 312-25.
Schilt, Kristen. 2006. Just one of the guys? How transmen
make gender visible at
work. Gender & Society 20 (4): 465-90.
Stryker, Susan. 2008. Transgender history, homonormativity,
and disciplinarity.
Radical History Review 100:144-57.

Vidal-Ortiz, Salvador. 2002. Queering sexuality and doing
gender: Transgender
men's identification with gender and sexuality. In Gendered
Sexualities, edited
by Patricia Gagn? and Richard Tewksbury. New York: Elsevier
Press.
West, Candace, and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. Doing gender.
Gender & Society
1 (2): 125-51.
2016 05:33:13 UTC
Contentsp. 99p. 100p. 101p. 102p. 103Issue Table of
ContentsGender and Society, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 2009) pp.
1-138Front MatterRACIALIZING THE GLASS ESCALATOR:
Reconsidering Men's Experiences with Women's Work [pp. 5-
26]STATE OF OUR UNIONS: Marriage Promotion and the
Contested Power of Heterosexuality [pp. 27-48]SEPARATING
THE MEN FROM THE MOMS: The Making of Adult Gender
Segregation in Youth Sports [pp. 49-71]"DOING GENDER" AS
CANON OR AGENDA: A Symposium on West and Zimmerman
[pp. 72-75]CATEGORIES ARE NOT ENOUGH [pp. 76-
80]FROM DOING TO UNDOING: GENDER AS WE KNOW IT
[pp. 81-84]"DOING GENDER": The Impact and Future of a
Salient Sociological Concept [pp. 85-88]"I WAS AGGRESSIVE
FOR THE STREETS, PRETTY FOR THE PICTURES": Gender,
Difference, and the Inner-City Girl [pp. 89-93]DOING
GENDER: A Conversation Analytic Perspective [pp. 94-98]THE
FIGURE OF THE TRANSWOMAN OF COLOR THROUGH
THE LENS OF "DOING GENDER" [pp. 99-
103]ACCOUNTABLE CONDUCT: "Doing Gender" in
Transsexual and Political Retrospect [pp. 104-
111]ACCOUNTING FOR DOING GENDER [pp. 112-122]Book

ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 123-125]Review: untitled [pp.
125-127]Review: untitled [pp. 127-129]Review: untitled [pp.
129-131]Review: untitled [pp. 131-133]Review: untitled [pp.
133-135]Review: untitled [pp. 135-137]Back Matter
GCU College of Education
LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE
Section 1: Lesson Preparation
Teacher Candidate Name:
Grade Level:
Date:
Unit/Subject:
Instructional Plan Title:
Lesson Summary and Focus:
In 2-3 sentences, summarize the lesson, identifying the central
focus based on the content and skills you are teaching.
Classroom and Student Factors/Grouping:
Describe the important classroom factors (demographics and
environment) and student factors (IEPs, 504s, ELLs, students
with behavior concerns, gifted learners), and the effect of those
factors on planning, teaching, and assessing students to
facilitate learning for all students. This should be limited to 2-3

sentences and the information should inform the differentiation
components of the lesson.
National/State Learning Standards:
Review national and state standards to become familiar with the
standards you will be working with in the classroom
environment.
Your goal in this section is to identify the standards that are the
focus of the lesson being presented. Standards must address
learning initiatives from one or more content areas, as well as
align with the lesson’s learning targets/objectives and
assessments.
Include the standards with the performance indicators and the
standard language in its entirety.
Specific Learning Target(s)/Objectives:
Learning objectives are designed to identify what the teacher
intends to measure in learning. These must be aligned with the
standards. When creating objectives, a learner must consider the
following:
· Who is the audience
· What action verb will be measured during
instruction/assessment
· What tools or conditions are being used to meet the learning
What is being assessed in the lesson must align directly to the
objective created. This should not be a summary of the lesson,
but a measurable statement demonstrating what the student will

be assessed on at the completion of the lesson. For instance,
“understand” is not measureable, but “describe” and “identify”
are.
For example:
Given an unlabeled map outlining the 50 states, students will
accurately label all state names.
Academic Language
In this section, include a bulleted list of the general academic
vocabulary and content-specific vocabulary you need to teach.
In a few sentences, describe how you will teach students those
terms in the lesson.
Resources, Materials, Equipment, and Technology:
List all resources, materials, equipment, and technology you and
the students will use during the lesson. As required by your
instructor, add or attach copies of ALL printed and online
materials at the end of this template. Include links needed for
online resources.

Section 2: Instructional Planning
Anticipatory Set
Your goal in this section is to open the lesson by activating
students’ prior knowledge, linking previous learning with what
they will be learning in this lesson and gaining student interest
for the lesson. Consider various learning preferences
(movement, music, visuals) as a tool to engage interest and
motivate learners for the lesson.
In a bulleted list, describe the materials and activities you will
use to open the lesson. Bold any materials you will need to
prepare for the lesson.
For example:
· I will use a visual of the planet Earth and ask students to
describe what Earth looks like.
· I will record their ideas on the white board and ask more
questions about the amount of water they think is on planet
Earth and where the water is located.
Time Needed
Multiple Means of Representation
Learners perceive and comprehend information differently.
Your goal in this section is to explain how you would present
content in various ways to meet the needs of different learners.
For example, you may present the material using guided notes,
graphic organizers, video or other visual media, annotation
tools, anchor charts, hands-on manipulatives, adaptive
technologies, etc.
In a bulleted list, describe the materials you will use to
differentiate instruction and how you will use these materials
throughout the lesson to support learning. Bold any materials
you will need to prepare for the lesson.
For example:
· I will use a Venn diagram graphic organizer to teach students

how to compare and contrast the two main characters in the
read-aloud story.
· I will model one example on the white board before allowing
students to work on the Venn diagram graphic organizer with
their elbow partner.
Explain how you will differentiate materials for each of the
following groups:
· English language learners (ELL):
· Students with special needs:
· Students with gifted abilities:
· Early finishers (those students who finish early and may need
additional resources/support):

Time Needed
Multiple Means of Engagement
Your goal for this section is to outline how you will engage
students in interacting with the content and academic language.
How will students explore, practice, and apply the content? For
example, you may engage students through collaborative group
work, Kagan cooperative learning structures, hands-on
activities, structured discussions, reading and writing activities,
experiments, problem solving, etc.
In a bulleted list, describe the activities you will engage
students in to allow them to explore, practice, and apply the
content and academic language. Bold any activities you will use
in the lesson. Also, include formative questioning strategies and
higher order thinking questions you might pose.
For example:
· I will use a matching card activity where students will need to
find a partner with a card that has an answer that matches their
number sentence.
· I will model one example of solving a number sentence on the
white board before having students search for the matching
card.
· I will then have the partner who has the number sentence
explain to their partner how they got the answer.
Explain how you will differentiate activities for each of the
following groups:

Time Needed
Multiple Means of Expression
Learners differ in the ways they navigate a learning
environment and express what they know. Your goal in this
section is to explain the various ways in which your students
will demonstrate what they have learned. Explain how you will
provide alternative means for response, selection, and
composition to accommodate all learners. Will you tier any of
these products? Will you offer students choices to demonstrate
mastery? This section is essentially differentiated assessment.
In a bulleted list, explain the options you will provide for your
students to express their knowledge about the topic. For
example, students may demonstrate their knowledge in more
summative ways through a short answer or multiple-choice test,
multimedia presentation, video, speech to text, website, written
sentence, paragraph, essay, poster, portfolio, hands-on project,
experiment, reflection, blog post, or skit. Bold the names of any
summative assessments.
Students may also demonstrate their knowledge in ways that are

more formative. For example, students may take part in thumbs
up-thumbs middle-thumbs down, a short essay or drawing, an
entrance slip or exit ticket, mini-whiteboard answers, fist to
five, electronic quiz games, running records, four corners, or
hand raising.Underline the names of any formative assessments.
For example:
Students will complete a one-paragraph reflection on the in-
class simulation they experienced. They will be expected to
write the reflection using complete sentences, proper
capitalization and punctuation, and utilize an example from the
simulation to demonstrate their understanding. Students will
also take part in formative assessments throughout the lesson,
such as thumbs up-thumbs middle-thumbs down and pair-share
discussions, where you will determine if you need to re-teach or
re-direct learning.
Explain how you will differentiate assessments for each of the
following groups:

Time Needed
Extension Activity and/or Homework
Identify and describe any extension activities or homework
tasks as appropriate. Explain how the extension activity or
homework assignment supports the learning targets/objectives.
As required by your instructor, attach any copies of homework
at the end of this template.
Time Needed
© 2019. Grand Canyon University. All Rights Reserved.
Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of
Sex, Sexuality, and Gender*
Judith Lorber, City University of New York

Most sociological research designs assume that'each person has
one sex, one sexu-
ality, and one gender, congruent with each other and fixed for
life. Postmodern feminists
and queer theorists have been interrogating bodies, desires, and
genders, but sociology
has not. Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many
possible categories em-
bedded in social experiences and social practices. As
researchers, as theorists, and as ac-
tivists, sociologists have to go beyond paying lip service to the
diversity of bodies,
. sexualities, genders. The sociologist's task should be to
deconstruct the conventional cat-
egories of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex,
cross-cutting constructs
into research designs. There are revolutionary possibilities
inherent in rethinking the cat-
egories of gender, sexuality, and physiological sex. Sociological
data that challenge con-
ventional knowledge by rcframing the questions could provide
legitimacy for new ways
of thinking. Data that undermine the supposed natural
dichotomies on which the social
orders of most modern societies are still based could radically
alter political discourses
that valorize biological causes, essential heterosexuality, and
traditional gender roles in
families and workplaces.
"Being situated within several mental fields at the same time,
intermediate identities necessar-
ily defy the either/or logic underlying perceived mutual
exclusivity of categories, thereby ques-
tioning the very viability of the boundaries separating them

from one another"
—(Zerubavel 1991, p. 35)
In the fall of 1994, there was a production oi As You Like It
played by all
men, as it was in Shakespeare's day.' This comedy is full of
witty comments on
gender shifts—men play women characters who masquerade as
young men, and
other women characters played by men act out falling in love
with them, and the
men playing women masquerading as men act out pining for the
love of men
characters, played by "real" men. Or are they? Shakespeare
comments on man-
liness:
We'll have a swashing and a martial outside.
As many other mannish cowards have
That do outface it with their semblances. (I, iii, 122-124)
Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 66, No. 2, May 1996, 143-159
©1996 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin,
TX 78713-7819
144 JUDITH LORBER
At the end of As You Like It, the phrase "if there be truth in
sight" supposedly
restores the masquerader, Rosalind, to her rightful shape—a
woman (played by a
man, of course). But there has been no truth in sight throughout
the play, for Ro-
salind's lover, Orlando, sees her (him) only as a young man

when she (he) is
dressed so, even though she (he) tells him to think of her (him)
as Rosalind while
they play out a mock courtship. Throughout, believing is seeing
(Lorber 1993).
Recent movies, such as The Crying Game, Farewell My
Concubine, and M
Butterfly, as well as older ones—Tootsie, Victor/Victoria, Some
Like It Hot—
have depicted transvestic sexual and gender ambiguities that
also destabilize what
we think we see. These ambiguities upend conventional notions
of the differences
between femaleness and maleness, heterosexuality and
homosexuality, woman-
hood and manhood, masculinity and femininity. The concept of
androgyny is not
adequate to encompass these ambiguities because androgyny
assumes fairly clear
masculine and feminine attributes that can be amalgamated—
without changing
them. Today's gender ambiguities are much more complex
(Bolin 1994; Cal-
lender and Kochems 1985; Connell 1992; Fuss 1991; Garber
1992, 1995; Herdt
1994; Money 1988). It is these complexities and their
implications for sociologi-
cal research that this article addresses. It expands
epistemological and method-
ological issues raised in Paradoxes of Gender (Lorber 1994).
Limitations of Conventional Gender Categories
Most research designs in sociology assume that each person has
one sex,

one sexuality, and one gender, which are congruent with each
other and fixed for
life. Sex and gender are used interchangeably, and sex
sometimes means sexual-
ity, sometimes physiology or biology, and sometimes social
status. The social
construction of bodies is examined only when the focus is
medicine, sports, or
procreation (Butler 1993). Variations in gender displays are
ignored: A woman is
assumed to be a feminine female; a man a masculine male.
Heterosexuality is the
uninterrogated norm against which variations are deviance
(Ingraham 1994).
These research variables—"sex" polarized as "females" and
"males," "sexu-
ality" polarized as "homosexuals" and "heterosexuals," and
"gender" polar-
ized as "women" and "men"—reflect unnuanced series that
conventionalize
bodies, sexuality, and social location (Young 1994). Such
designs cannot include
the experiences of hermaphrodites, pseudohermaphrodites,
transsexuals, trans-
vestites, bisexuals, third genders, and gender rebels as lovers,
friends, parents,
workers, and sports participants. Even if the research sample is
restricted to pu-
tative "normals," the use of unexamined categories of sex,
sexuality, and gender
will miss complex combinations of status and identity, as well
as differently gen-
dered sexual continuities and discontinuities (Chodorow 1994,
1995).
Postmodern feminists and queer theorists have been

interrogating bodies,
desires, and genders, but sociologists have not, despite the
availability of con-
BEYOND THE BINARIES 145
cepts from labeling theory and symbolic interaction: "The idea
that sexuality is
socially constructed was promoted by interpretive sociologists
and feminist theo-
rists at least two decades before queer theory emerged on the
intellectual scene"
(Stein and Plummer 1994, p. 183).^ Current debates over the
global assumptions
of only two gender categories have led to the insistence that
they must be nuanced
to include race and class, but they have not gone much beyond
that (Collins 1990;
Spelman 1988; Staples 1982). Similarly, the addition of sexual
orientation has
expanded gendered sexual statuses only to four: heterosexual
women and men,
gays, and lesbians.
Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many possible
categories
embedded in social experiences and social practices, as does the
deconstruction
of race and class. As queer theorists have found, multiple
categories disturb the
neat polarity of familiar opposites that assume one dominant
and one subordinate
group, one normal and one deviant identity, one hegemonic
status and one

"other" (Martin 1994; Namaste 1994). But in sociology, as
Barrie Thorne
(1993) comments in her work on children.
The literature moves in a circle, carting in cultural assumptions
about the nature of masculinity
(bonded, hierarchical, competitive, "tough"), then highlighting
behavior that fits those param-
eters and obscuring the varied styles and range of interactions
among boys as a whole, (p. 100)
Behavior that is gender-appropriate is considered normal;
anything else (girls in-
sulting, threatening, and physically fighting boys and other
girls) is considered
"gender deviance" (Thorne 1993, pp. 101-103). The
juxtaposition both assumes
and reproduces seemingly clear and stable contrasts.
Deconstructing those con-
trasts reveals that the "normal" and the "deviant" are both the
product of de-
liberate social practices and cultural discourses. Of all the
social sciences,
sociology is in the best position to analyze those practices and
discourses, rather
than taking their outcome for granted.
But as long as sociological research uses only the conventional
dichotomies
of females and males, homosexuals and heterosexuals, women
and men, it will
take the "normal" for granted by masking the extent of
subversive characteris-
tics and behavior. Treating deviant cases as markers of the
boundaries of the
"normal" implies that the "normal" (e.g., heterosexuality) does

not have to be
explained as equally the result of processes of socialization and
social control
(Ingraham 1994). Such research colludes in the muffling and
suppressing of be-
havior that may be widespread, such as heterosexual men who
frequently cross-
dress, which, if not bracketed off as "deviant," could subvert
conventional
discourses on gender and sexuality (Stein and Plummer 1994).
Our commonsense knowledge of the real world tells us that
behavior is situ-
ational and that sexual and gender statuses combined with race
and social class
produce many identities in one individual (West and
Fenstermaker 1995). This
146 JUDITH LORBER
individual heterogeneity is nonetheless overridden by the major
constructs (race,
class, gender) that order and stratify informal groups, formal
organizations, social
institutions, and social interaction. By accepting these
constructs as given, by not
unpacking them, sociologists collude in the relations of ruling
(Smith 1990a,
1990b).
As researchers, as theorists, and as activists, sociologists have
to go beyond
paying lip service to the diversity of bodies, sexualities,
genders, and racial-

ethnic and class positions. We have to think not only about how
these character-
istics variously intermingle in individuals and therefore in
groups but what the
extent of variation is within these categories. For example,
using conventional
categories, where would we place the competitive runner in
woman's competi-
tions who has XY chromosomes and normal female genitalia
(Grady 1992)? Or
the lesbian transsexual (Bolin 1988)? Or the woman or man who
has long-term
relationships with both women and men (Weinberg, Williams,
and Pryor 1994)?
Or the wealthy female husband in an African society and her
wife (Amadiume
1987)? These are not odd cases that can be bracketed off in a
footnote (Terry
1991). As did the concept of conflicting latent statuses (e.g.,
black woman sur-
geon), they call our attention to the rich data about social
processes and their out-
comes that lie beneath neat comparisons of male and female,
heterosexual and
homosexual, men and women.
Deconstructing Sex, Sexuality, and Gender
In rethinking gender categories, it is important to split what is
usually con-
flated as sex/gender or sex/sexuality/gender into three
conceptually distinct cat-
egories: sex (or biology, physiology), sexuality (desire, sexual
preference, sexual
orientation), and gender (a social status, sometimes with sexual
identity). Each is

socially constructed but in different ways. Gender is an
overarching category—a
major social status that organizes almost all areas of social life.
Therefore bodies
and sexuality are gendered; biology, physiology, and sexuality,
in contrast, do not
add up to gender, which is a social institution that establishes
patterns of expec-
tations for individuals, orders the social processes of everyday
life, is built into
the major social organizations of society, such as the economy,
ideology, the fam-
ily, and politics, and is also an entity in and of itself (Lorber
1994).
For an individual, the components of gender are the sex
category assigned at
birth on the basis of the appearance of the genitalia; gender
identity; gendered
sexual orientation; marital and procreative status; a gendered
personality struc-
ture; gender beliefs and attitudes; gender displays; and work
and family roles. All
these social components are supposed to be consistent and
congruent with per-
ceived physiology. The actual combination of genes and
genitalia; prenatal, ado-
lescent, and adult hormonal input; and procreative capacity may
or may not be
congruous with each other and with the components of gender
and sexuality, and

the components may also not line up neatly on only one side of
the binary divide.
Deconstructing Sex
Anne Fausto-Sterling (1993) says that "no classification scheme
could more
than suggest the variety of sexual anatomy encountered in
clinical practice" (p.
22), or seen on a nudists' beach. Male and female genitalia
develop from the
same fetal tissue, and so, because of various genetic and
hormonal inputs, at least
1 in 1,000 infants are born with ambiguous genitalia, and
perhaps more (Fausto-
Sterling 1993). The " m i x " varies; there are
the so-called true hermaphrodites. . . , who possess one testis
and one ovary. . . ; the male
pseudohermaphrodites . . . , who have testes and some aspects
of the female genitalia but no
ovaries; and the female pseudohermaphrodites. . . , who have
ovaries and some aspects of the
male genitalia but lack testes. Each of these categories is in
itself complex; the percentage of
male and female characteristics . . . can vary enormously among
members of the same sub-
group. (Fausto-Sterling 1993, p. 21)
Because of the need for official categorization in
bureaucratically organized
societies, these infants must legally be labeled "boy" or "girl"
soon after birth,
yet they are subject to rather arbitrary sex assignment (Epstein
1990). Suzanne
Kessler (1990) interviewed six medical specialists in pediatric

intersexuality and
found that whether an infant with XY chromosomes and
anomalous genitalia was
categorized as a boy or a girl depended on the size of the penis.
If the penis was
very small, the child was categorized as a girl, and sex-change
surgery was used
to make an artificial vagina.
An anomaly common enough to be found in several feminine-
looking
women at every major international sports competition is the
existence of XY
chromosomes that have not produced male anatomy or
physiology because of
other genetic input (Grady 1992). Now that hormones have
proved unreliable,
sports authorities nonetheless continue to find ways of
separating "women"
from "men." From the point of view of the sociological
researcher, the interest-
ing questions are why certain sports competitions are gender-
neutral and others
are not, how different kinds of sports construct different kinds
of women's and
men's bodies, and how varieties of masculinities and
femininities are constructed
through sports competitions (Hargreaves 1986; Messner 1992;
Messner and Sabo
1994).
As for hormones, recent research suggests that testosterone and
other andro-
gens are as important to normal development in females as in
males, and that in
both, testosterone is converted to estrogen in the brain.^

Paradoxically, maximum
androgen levels seem to coincide with high estrogen levels and
ovulation, leading
one researcher to comment: "The borders between classic
maleness and female-
148 JUDITH LORBER
ness are much grayer than people realized. . . . We're mixed
bags, all of u s "
(quoted in Angier 1994).
From a societal point of view, the variety of combinations of
genes, genita-
lia, and hormonal input can be rendered invisible by the surgical
and hormonal
construction of maleness and femaleness (Epstein 1990). But
this variety, this
continuum of physiological sex cannot be ignored. Sociologists
may not want to
explore the varieties of biological and physiological sexes or
the psychology of
the hermaphrodite, pseudohermaphrodite, or transsexual, but the
rationales given
for the categorization of the ambiguous as either female or male
shed a great deal
of light on the practices that maintain the illusion of clear-cut
sex differences.
Without such critical exploration, sex differences are easily
invoked as the "natu-
ral causes" of what is actually socially constructed.
Deconstructing Sexuality

Categories of sexuality—conventionally, homosexual and
heterosexual—
also mask diversity that can be crucial for generating accurate
data. Sexuality is
physically sexed because female and male anatomies and
orgasmic experiences
differ. It is gendered because sexual scripts differ for women
and for men whether
they are heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, or
transvestite. Linking
the experience of physical sex and gendered social prescriptions
for sexual feel-
ings, fantasies, and actions are individual bodies, desires, and
patterns of sexual
behavior, which coalesce into gendered sexual identities. These
identities, how-
ever various and individualized, are categorized and socially
patterned into gen-
dered sexual statuses. There are certainly more than two
gendered sexual
statuses: "If one uses the criteria of linguistic markers alone, it
suggests that
people in most English-speaking countries . . . recognize four
genders: woman,
lesbian (or gay female), man and gay male" (Jacobs and Roberts
1989, p. 439).
But there is not the variety we might find if we looked at what
is actually out
there.''
Studies of bisexuality have shown that the conventional sexual
categories
are hard to document empirically. At what point does sexual
desire become
sexual preference, and what turns sexual preference into a
sexual identity or so-

cial status? What sexual behavior identifies a "pure"
heterosexual or a "pure"
homosexual? Additionally, a sexual preference involves desired
and actual sexual
attraction, emotions, and fantasies, not just behavior. A sexual
identity involves
self-identification, a life-style, and social recognition of the
status (Klein, Sepe-
koff, and Wolf 1985).
Sexual identities (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual) are
responses not just
to psychic constructs but also to social and cultural strictures
and pressures from
family and friends. Because Western culture constructs
sexuality dichotomously,
many people whose sexual experiences are bisexual are forced
to choose between
a heterosexual and homosexual identity as their "real" identity
(Blumstein and
Schwartz 1976a, 1976b; Garber 1995; Rust 1992, 1993,
forthcoming; Valverde
1985, pp. 109-120). Rust's research on bisexual and lesbian
sexual identity
found that 90 percent of the 323 self-identified lesbians who
answered her ques-'
tionnaire had had heterosexual experiences, 43 percent after
coming out as les-
bians (1992, 1993). They discounted these experiences,
however; what counted
for these lesbians was their current relationships. The forty-two

women who
identified themselves as bisexual, in contrast, put more
emphasis on their sexual
attraction to both women and men. Assuming that all self-
identified homosexual
men and lesbians have exclusively same-sex partners not only
renders invisible
the complexities of sexuality but can also have disastrous health
outcomes, as has
been found in the spread of HIV and AIDS among women
(Goldstein 1995).
The interplay of gender and sexuality needs to be explored as
well. One
study found that heterosexual men labeled sexual
provocativeness toward them
by gay men sexual harassment, but heterosexual women did not
feel the same
about lesbians' coming on to them (Giuffre and Williams 1994).
The straight men
felt their masculinity was threatened by the gay men's
overtures; the straight
women did not feel that a lesbian's interest in them impugned
their heterosexu-
ality.
Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor (1994) found five types of
bisexuals among
the 49 men; 44 women, and 11 transsexuals they interviewed in
1983 (pp.
46-48). In their research, gender was as salient a factor as
sexuality. On the basis
of sexual feelings, sexual behaviors, and romantic feelings, they
estimated that
only 2 percent of the self-identified bisexual men in their
research and 17 percent

of the self-identified bisexual women were equally sexually and
romantically at-
tracted to and involved with women and men, but about a third
of both genders
were around the midpoint of their scale. About 45 percent of the
men and 20
percent of the women leaned toward heterosexuality, and 15
percent of each gen-
der leaned toward homosexuality. About 10 percent of each
were varied in their
feelings and behavior.
Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor (1994) found that although
gender was irrel-
evant to choice of partner among bisexuals, sexual scripting was
not only gen-
dered, but quite conventional, with both women and men saying
that women
partners were more emotionally attuned and men partners were
more physically
sexual (pp. 49-58). Paradoxically, they say.
In a group that often sets itself against societal norms, we were
surprised to discover that bi-
sexual respondents organized their sexual preferences along the
lines of traditional gender ste-
reotypes. As with heterosexuals and homosexuals, gender is the
building material from which
they put together their sexuality. Unlike these groups, however,
the edifice built is not restricted
to one gender, (p. 57)
150 JUDITH LORBER

The meaning of gender and sexuality to self-identified
homosexuals cannot
be taken for granted by researchers. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
notes that some
homosexuals want to cross into the other gender's social space
(e.g., gay drag
queens and butch lesbians), whereas for others (e.g., macho gay
men and lesbian
separatists) " . . . it is instead the most natural thing in the
world that people of the
same gender, people grouped under the single most
determinative diacritical
mark of social organization, people whose economic,
institutional, emotional,
physical needs and knowledges may have so much in common,
should bond to-
gether also on the axis of sexual desire" (1990, p. 87).
Paula Rust (forthcoming), in her research on varieties of
sexuality, found
that her respondents spoke of being attracted to another person
because of par-
ticular personality characteristics, ways of behaving, interests,
intellect, looks,
style. What heterosexuals do—choose among many possible
members of the op-
posite sex—is true of gays and lesbians for same-sex partners,
and bisexuals for
either sex. The physical sex, sexual orientation, masculinity,
femininity, and gen-
der markers are just the beginning set of parameters, and they
might differ for a
quick sexual encounter, a romantic liaison, a long-term
relationship. Rather than
compare on categories of gender or sexuality, researchers might
want to compare

on types of relationships.
Deconstructing Gender
Gendered behavior is constantly normalized by processes that
minimize or
counteract contradictions to the expected. Competitive women
body-builders
downplay their size, use makeup, wear their hair long and
blond, and emphasize
femininity in posing by using "dance, grace and creativity";
otherwise, they
don't win competitions (Mansfield and McGinn, 1993):
There are a wide variety of styles of dress and personal
presentation available to Western
women of the late twentieth century to the extent that the notion
of female-to-male cross-dress-
ing has become almost meaningless. However, in the same way
as it is necessary for the ex-
treme gender markers of the hyper-feminine to be adopted by
the male cross-dressers in order
to make it clear that they wish to be recognized as "women," so
too is it necessary for women
bodybuilders. . . . It seems that the female muscled body is so
dangerous that the proclamation
of gender must be made very loudly indeed, (p. 64)
Iris Marion Young (1994) argues that gender, race, and class are
series—
comparatively passive social collectives grouped by their
similar tasks, ends, or
social conditioning. These locations in social structures may or
may not become
sources of self-identification, significant action by others, or
political action. When

and how they do is an area for research. For example, U.S.
lesbians first identified
with homosexual men in their resistance to sexual
discrimination, but after expe-
riencing the same gender discrimination as did women in the
civil rights and
draft-resistance movements, they turned to the feminist
movement, where, unhap-
pily, they experienced hostility to their sexuality from many
heterosexual women.
Subsequently, some lesbian feminists have created an
oppositional, woman-iden-
tified, separatist movement that identifies heterosexuality as the
main source of
the oppression of women (Taylor and Rupp 1993).
David Collinson and JefFHearn (1994) argue that men in
management ex-
hibit multiple masculinities: aggressive authoritarianism,
benevolent paternalism,
competitive entrepreneurialism, buddy-buddy informalism, and
individualistic
careerism. These multiple masculinities among men managers
have different ef-
fects on relationships with men colleagues, women colleagues,
as well as on
sponsor-protege interactions. Collinson and Hearn call for a
simultaneous em-
phasis on unities and differences among men. Cynthia Cockburn
similarly says
about women, "We can be both the same as you and different

from you, at vari-
ous times and in various ways" (1991, p. 10).
Igor Kopytoff (1990), raising the question of why it seems to be
easier for
women in traditional societies than in Westernized societies to
claim positions of
political power and rule as heads of state, uses a concept of core
or existential
gender identities. He argues that in Africa and many other
traditional societies
the core of womanhood (or immanent or existential being as a
woman) is
childbearing—but all the rest is praxis and negotiable,
transferable. Because
women do not have to bring up their children to be women in
traditional societies,
just birth them, he argues that they are free to take on other
time-consuming roles.
In the West, in contrast, since the nineteenth century, being a
"real" woman
means one must be married with children, and must bring them
up personally,
while also keeping an impeccable house and attractive
appearance, and looking
after a husband's sexual and emotional needs. "Once
existentially complete, she
can then turn to other occupations," but will rarely have the
time to assume a
position of leadership (p. 93).
The crucial question . . . is this: granted that most and perhaps
all societies posit that being a
woman is an existential identity with a set of features immanent
in it, how many such immanent
features are there and what are they? Or, to put it most simply,

the problem of women's roles is
not whether a society recognizes women as being different from
men (they invariably do) but
how it organizes other things around the difference, (p. 91)
Useful Methodologies
The sociologists' task should be to deconstruct the conventional
categories
of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex, cross-
cutting constructs into
research designs. There are several ways to rethink the
conventional "manage-
able units" that laypeople construct (Rodkin 1993, p. 635). We
can deconstruct
the commonly used categories to tease out components; we can
add categories;
we can also reconstruct categories entirely. That is, we can take
a critical stance
towards the conventional categories without abandoning them
entirely, examin-
152 JUDtTH LORBER
ing the social construction and meanings of sex, sexuality, and
gender, as has al-
ready been done for race, ethnicity, and social class. We can
adapt categories to
particular research questions, cross-cutting sex, sexuality, and
gender the way
race, ethnicity, and social class have been used as cross-cutting
categories. Or, we
can do research that predicts behavior from processes and social
location without

the overlay of status categories, examining what people do to
and with whom and
how these processes construct, maintain, or subvert statuses,
identities, and insti-
tutional rules and social structures. None of these new
approaches discards fa-
miliar sociological tools, but all of them demand thoughtful
examination of the
familiar binaries.
Sociology has several methodologies that do not rely on
polarized catego-
ries. Among them are analysis of positions in a social network
(Knoke and Kuk-
linski 1982), examination of the clustering of attitudinal
perspectives through
Q-sorting (Stephenson 1953), letting patterns emerge from the
data as recom-
mended by grounded theory (Glaser, 1992; Straus and Corbin,
1990), and the
critical deconstruction of social texts (Reinharz 1992, pp. 145-
163). The familiar
categories can be used in the next level of analysis to see
whether the emergent
network positions, attitude clusters, typical behavior, and
subtexts are character-
istic of those of different genders, races, ethnic groups, and
classes, and they can
be taken to a third level describing how they relate to power and
resource control.
Or they can be dropped entirely in favor of category names
more descriptive of
empirical content. Using grounded theory to analyze the
varieties of behavior of
male cross-dressers, Richard Ekins (1993) distinguished
patterns related to sex

("body femaling"), sexuality ("erotic femaling"), and role
behavior ("gender
femaling").
Letting patterns emerge from the data, the methodology long
recommended
by ethnomethodologists and other qualitative researchers,
permits the analysis of
processes within structures (West and Fenstermaker 1995; West
and Zimmerman
1987). As Marilyn Frye notes, "Pattern discovery and invention
requires encoun-
ters with difference, with variety. . . . Discovering patterns
requires novel acts of
attention" (1990, p. 180). These patterns can also be used for
quantitative com-
parisons, as Mary Clare Lennon and Sarah Rosenfeld (1994) did
in their statis-
tical analysis built on Arlie Hochschild's (1989) interview data
on the extent of
housework done by husbands and wives where the woman was
the greater earner.
Organizing data without reliance on the conventional
dichotomous categories
does not confine researchers to single-case analysis or a limited
number of in-
depth interviews; quantitative methods will still be applicable.
The common practice of comparing females and males, women
and men, or
homosexuals and heterosexuals frequently produces data that
are so mixed that it
takes another level of analysis to sort out meaningfiil categories
for comparison.
It would be better to start with categories derived from data
analysis of all sub-

jects and see the extent to which they attach to the conventional
global categories
of sex, sexuality, and gender, or better yet, to one or more of
the components.
However, in order to do this second level of analysis, the
sample groups have to
be heterogenous on the conventional categories in the first
place. Thus, the fa-
miliar categories do not have to be dispensed with entirely, but
their use in analy-
sis can be bracketed until after other differentiating variables
are revealed. These
differentiating variables are likely to break up and recombine
the familiar catego-
ries in new ways that go beyond the conventional dichotomies
but do not remove
the category from our lexicon. As Linda Nicholson (1994) says
in "Interpreting
Gender,''
Thus I am advocating that we think abotit the meaning of
woman as illustrating a map of in-
tersecting similarities and differences. Within such a map the
body does not disappear but
rather becomes a historically specific variable whose meaning
and import are recognized as
potentially different in different historical contexts. Such a
suggestion . . . [assumes] that mean-
ing is found rather than presupposed, (pp. 101-102)
Challenge Categories, Challenge Power

Tony Kushner, in Angels in America, deconstructs the term
homosexual in a
way that a sociologist could emulate. Roy Cohn, a notoriously
arrogant Washing-
ton lawyer, is a historical character in Kushner's epic drama. In
one scene be-
tween Cohn and his physician, Cohn refuses to admit that he has
AIDS and insists
that he has liver cancer. When his physician tells him that his
illness is the result
of his sexual behavior, Cohn says.
Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on
labels, that you believe they mean
what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You
think these are names that tell
you who someone sleeps with but they don't tell you that. . . .
Like all labels they tell you one
thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified
fit in the food chain, in the
peeking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something
much simpler; clout. Not who I
fuck or who fiicks me, but who will pick up the phone when I
call, who owes me favors. That
is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not
understand this, homosexual is what I
am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong.
Homosexuals are not men who sleep
with other men. . . . Homosexuals are men who know nobody
and who nobody knows. Who
have zero clout. . . . I have sex with men. But unlike nearly
every other man of whom this is
true, I bring the guy I'm screwing to the White House and
President Reagan shakes his hand.
Because what 1 am is defined entirely by who I am. Roy Cohn

is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn
is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fiicks around with guys.
(1993, pp. 45-46, emphasis in
original)
What Kushner has done here is to transform the commonly used
term homo-
sexual from a person with an identity, essential core, and major
status to behavior
that may or may not be practiced continuously, that docs not
characterize the per-
son, that does not necessarily stigmatize. Homosexual versus
heterosexual prac-
tices are not the categories; power and powerlessness are. The
rejoinder also
154 JUDITH LORBER
alludes to multiple layers of secrecy and passing: Cohn is
denying his homosexu-
ality but valorizing staying in the closet and the ease of passing,
even with a
"constant companion." Cohn participated in the McCarthy
hearings that
"outed" Communists and conflated homosexuality and political
dissidence;
deaths from cancer and later AIDS were long referred to
euphemistically as "af-
ter a long illness"; Cohn masked his Jewishness, another form
of "closet" (see
Edelman 1993; Sedgwick 1990).
The goal of sociological research should similarly be multiple
levels of

analysis that include the heterogeneity of people's lives, the
varied dimensions of
status categories, and the power relations between and among
them. As Dorothy
Smith (1990) says,
The social scientist must work with the constraint of actuality
and is not privileged to draw
relations between observables arbitrarily. A theoretical account
is not fixed at the outset, but
evolves in the course of inquiry dialectically as the social
scientist seeks to explicate the prop-
erties of organization discovered in the way people order their
activities. Hence the structure of
a theoretical account is constrained by the relations generated in
people's practical activities,
(p. 48)
Research using a variety of gendered sexual statuses has already
challenged
long-accepted theories. Lesbian and homosexual parenting, as
well as single-par-
ent households, call into question ideas about parenting and
gendered personality
development based on heterogendered nuclear families. In
psychoanalytic theory,
having a woman as a primary parent allows girls to maintain
their close bonding
and identification with women, but forces boys to differentiate
and separate in
order to establish their masculinity. The personality structure of
adult women re-
mains more open than that of men, whose ego boundaries make
them less emo-
tional. Women in heterosexual relationships want children to
bond with as

substitutes for their lack of intense emotional intimacy with
their men partners.
But there are lesbians who have deep and intense relationships
with women who
also want children, as do some homosexual men (Lewin 1993).
Furthermore, not
all full-time mothering is emotionally intense, nor is all
intensive mothering done
by women. Barbara Risman (1987), in her study of fifty-five
men who became
single fathers because of their wives' death, desertion, or giving
up custody,
found that their relationships with their children were as
intimate as those of
single mothers and mothers in traditional marriages. And Karen
Hansen's studies
(1992) of nineteenth century heterosexual men's friendships
reveal a world of
feeling similar to that described by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
(1975) for women.
In work organizations, position in the hierarchy does and does
not override
a worker's gender. The behavior of men and women doctors
sometimes reflects
their professional status and sometimes their gender, and it is
important to look at
both aspects to understand their relationships with patients
(Lorber 1985). The
men workers in women's occupations and the women workers in
men's occupa-

tions cannot be lumped in a minority category. The women
come up against the
glass ceiling that blocks their upward mobility, whereas the men
are on what
Christine Williams has called a "glass escalator": They are
encouraged to com-
pete for managerial and administrative positions (Williams
1989, 1992).
Joey Sprague (1991) found that because material interests
reflect positions
in the social relations of production and reproduction, as well as
more immediate
community contexts, political attitudes hew more closely to
class, gender role,
and affiliation with social movements than to a simple division
of men versus
women (also see Henderson-King and Stewart 1994).
There are revolutionary possibilities inherent in rethinking the
categories of
gender, sexuality, and physiological sex. Sociological data that
challenge conven-
tional knowledge by reframing the questions could provide
legitimacy for new
ways of thinking. When one term or category is defined only by
its opposite,
resistance reaffirms the polarity (Fuss 1991). The margin and
the center, the in-
sider and the outsider, the conformist and the deviant are two
sides of the same
concept. Introducing even one more term, such as bisexuality,
forces a rethinking
of the oppositeness of heterosexuality and homosexuality. "A
critical sexual poli-
tics, in other words, struggles to move beyond the confines of

an inside/outside
model" (Namaste 1994, p. 230). The politics of identity are
challenged, but such
political stances are already split racially and by social class.
Data that undermine
the supposed natural dichotomies on which the social orders of
most modern so-
cieties are still based could radically alter political discourses
that valorize bio-
logical causes, essential heterosexuality, and traditional gender
roles in families
and workplaces.
ENDNOTES
•Versions of this article were presented at the Thirteenth World
Congress of Sociology,
Bielefeld, Germany, July 1994; the Society for the Study of
Social Problems Annual Meetings, Los
Angeles, August 1994; the North American Society for the
Sociology of Sport, Savannah, Georgia,
November 1994; and the Eastern Sociological Society Annual
Meetings, Philadelphia, March 1995.1
thank Barbara Katz Rothman, Patricia Yancey Martin, Eileen
Moran, and Susan Farrell for their help-
ful critiques.
Address correspondence to Prof Judith Lorber, Department of
Sociology, CUNY Graduate
Center, 33 West 42 Street, New York, NY 10036; phone: 212-
642-2416; fax: 212-642-2420; e-mail:
[email protected]
'The Cheek by Jowl Company, directed by Declan Donnellan.
^For widely cited postmodern feminist and queer theorists, see
Butler (1990), Flax (1990), Frye

(1992), Nicholson (1990), arid Sedgwick (1990). The
symposium on queer theory and sociology in
the July 1994 issue of Sociological Theory addresses some of
the questions raised in this article.
156 JUDITH LORBER
'For summaries of recent research on estrogen and testosterone,
see Angier (1994, 1995).
•"Grimm (1987, Tables 1-3, pp. 74-76) comes up with forty-five
different types of erotic and
nonerotic, complementary and similar relationships.
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