This document discusses the history and development of the sociology of gender and sexualities. It describes how early sociological research ignored women's experiences and viewed gender roles as biological and natural. In the 1970s, feminist scholars challenged this view and argued that gender and sexuality are socially constructed. They emphasized exploring the experiences of all women and examining power structures like patriarchy. This transformed the sociology of gender into a field that critically examines the social forces that shape gender and sexuality.

1. The centrality of gender and sexualities in sociology exemplifies the historical struggles
of feminist sociologists, as well as the impact of social and political movements on an
intellectual one. Early in sociological research, scholars ignored the experiences of women living
as the marginalized “other” and how social systems and discourses produced asymmetrical and
hierarchical outcomes. The functionalist origins of the sociology of gender during the mid-
twentieth century paved a particular path for scholars to follow in order to produce Scientific
research that depended on essentialism. Following the work of feminist activists and young
academics in the 1970s, however, the sociology of gender was revolutionized to integrate notions
of constructionism and, later, ethnomethodology to position the social self at the center of
analysis. Feminists challenged the andocentric view of the social world and disrupted the long-
standing belief that women’s and men’s places in the world stemmed from biology. The concept
of gender emphasizes the social construction of femininity and masculinity and the specificity of
this construct in history and culture.
Intersecting with notions of race and class, critical sociologists extended their lens of
analysis to account for the lived experiences of women of color and working-class women. By
also focusing on sexuality and the body, sociologists further critiqued the notion that sexual
categories, desires, and acts are “natural.” A critical look at the concepts of gender and sexuality
allows sociologists to situate the everyday as important for the construction of identities,
institutions, and discourses. My goal for this review is to tell the story of how the sociology of
gender and sexualities advanced from the work of feminist and LGBT scholars and to explore
how sociologists responded to and impacted political movements and interdisciplinary work.
While I touch upon the work of some influential philosophers, historians, anthropologists, and

2. Earles 2
women’s studies scholars, I focus primarily on the work of sociologists and the dialectical
relationship between the discipline, academia, and activism. In doing so, this focus allows me to
narrow my scope and to center my discussion around the progression of the sociology of gender
and sexualities and the impact of sociologists in academia and activism.
Sex Roles: The Functionalist View of Biological Sex and Sociological Roles
The binary divide between the public and private spheres privileged the socially
constructed notion that women’s biology firmly attached them to the home and men to the
workplace (Bose 1987; Ferree 1990; Rosaldo 1974). The mind/body split further confined
women to the domestic sphere as their bodies became symbols of nature’s unruliness and
unpredictability (Grosz 1994; Delphy 1984). Women’s bodies and reproductive capabilities
became a constant and inescapable reminder of their subordination and relegation to particular
spaces and served as a point of “common sense” for both women and men. While sociologists
like Charlotte Perkins Gilman challenged women’s confinement to the home, sociologists prior
to the 1970s often studied the social world from the standpoint of men (Jackson and Scott 2002).
Even as sociologists began to consider how systems like capitalism rested on socially- and
historically-dependent phenomena, their concern centered around an analysis and emancipation
of the male worker (Goldthrope 1983, 1984). This reliance on body essentialism not only
rendered women invisible, but ignored the social construction of femininity and masculinity
crucial to an understanding of social movements, identities, and everyday sense-making. Women
would not be understood as social actors capable of using their bodies and minds toward positive
social action until the 1970/1980s.
The view of society as a functioning whole signifies the sociological thought that each
individual’s position or “role” is fundamental to the progression of society. Structural

3. Earles 3
functionalism is this broad perspective taken up by sociologists where scholars interpret society
as a structure with interrelated parts and see society in terms of norms, customs, traditions, and
institutions. Emile Durkheim ([1893] 1997) argues that the “civilized” division of labor relied
upon complementary “roles” where “one of the sexes takes care of the affective functions and
the other of intellectual functions” (60). Indeed, by the late 1950s, the functional approach to
sociology became so dominant that sociology and structural-functionalism became more or less
synonymous (Wallace and Wolf 1999). Consequently, rather than first taking up a critical or
interpretive analysis of women and men, mainstream sociologists began to produce knowledge
about people not only from an unquestioned masculine standpoint, but in terms of these “sex
roles” (Breines 1986; Connell 1985; Deaux and Kite 1987; Ferree 1990; Jackson and Scott 2002;
Pleck 1987; Vannoy-Hiller and Philliber 1989).
The epistemological assumptions of structural functionalism certainly underlie the
theoretical and methodological decisions by sociologists studying gender during this time.
Talcott Parsons’ 1950s functionalist analysis of the family echoed this belief that the “roles” of
wives and husbands stabilized the family so that future generations would integrate neatly into
the broader society (Parsons and Bales 1956). This stance signifies sociologists’ historical
alignment with “objectivity,” their dedication to producing Scientific knowledge, and the view of
sexed bodies as indicators of social and psychological abilities. While Parsons’ viewpoint
dominated sociological research, sociologists like Mirra Komarovsky (1946, 1962) produced
early challenges to this position by arguing that individuals often adhere to cultural norms
despite their contradictions and their functional and emotional unsuitability to specific social
situations. Even as this argument points to the impending mobilization by feminist sociologists to
resist this reliance on biology and strict psychology, the sociology of gender’s functionalist roots

4. Earles 4
created a strain of thought about women and men which greatly impacted the development of the
discipline and continues in popular culture notions about women and men.
Sociologists took up the structural argument against “sex roles” through the 1980s.
Raewyn Connell (1985) argues that the emphasis on roles relies too heavily on conformity and
socialization without attending to the impact of historically-changing social structures. The
production of an inexhaustible cycle of socialization based on individual acceptance also misses
the sociological opportunity to analyze the dialectical relationship between social systems and
social actors in everyday life. Many feminists in disciplines like women’s studies took up a
Marxist argument by arguing that women’s domestic labor contributed to the reproduction of
labor power and, subsequently, to the maintenance of capitalism. Others followed Frederick
Engels in their discussion of the “relations of reproduction” where women were subordinated
within families. Feminist sociologists also joined these intellectual movements as these
arguments allowed for a discussion of gender in consideration of societal structures.
Wini Breines (1986) also argues that Parsons and other sociologists reacted through
functionalism based on the changes to society produced through women’s activism. In other
words, while middle-class white women increased their educational and employment
opportunities in the social world, mainstream sociologists responded to this political movement
through a counter-intellectual movement that resisted change. For Breines (1986), this assertion
of “traditional roles” became a nostalgic and idealized construction of a past based on neatly
divided spaces and expectations. Even as the concept of “sex roles” dominated mainstream
sociology through the mid-1980s (Vannoy-Hiller and Philliber 1989), the activist work of many
young feminists within and outside the academy shifted the theoretical position of the discipline.
Indeed, this attendance to how institutions arise historically signifies the Marxist shift in

5. Earles 5
structural thinking. What followed, transformed mainstream sociology from the margins and led
to the eventual assertion that the subjectivity of women as valuable. Indeed, the opening up of
marginalized experiences gave sociologists access to social realities historically unavailable and
oppressed through “objectivity” (Choo and Ferree 2010; Smith 1987).
The Feminist Influence: Conceptualizing and Deconstructing Sex, Gender, and Patriarchy
Feminist sociologists took their cue from late-1960s and early 1970s activists in the field
to focus more critically on the study of women’s and men’s social lives. While I recognize the
continuum of feminist ideologies and activist beliefs, I conceptualize feminist sociologists,
feminist scholars, and feminist activists as those who work to improve the lives of women. This
allows me to include a wide-ranging set of ideas and to acknowledge the many feminists who
impacted the sociology of gender, despite their differing approaches to theorizing about how to
make women’s lives better. Indeed, while I refer to feminism and feminists, I also recognize the
important influence of activists and scholars like Alice Walker (1983) who advocated for the use
of womanism to refer to Black feminists, feminists of color, or women who love other women
and to distinguish a growing Black feminist thought. For the purposes of this paper, however, I
discuss the ways feminism has allowed individuals to connect through consciousness-raising and
promotes the understanding that gender has political, social, and economic consequences in the
world we occupy.
Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne (1996) position feminist sociology as an intersectional
analysis of the study of people negotiating within social structures. Stacey (2003) later argued
that because feminist sociologists are committed to women’s liberation, this area of sociology
implies public action to affect social change. This perspective continues to point to the
epistemological assumptions of structuralism, but does allow feminist sociologists to focus on

6. Earles 6
individuals, groups, or institutions, to understand how social order organizes relations of
inequality, and to explore how people negotiate those structures and discourses. Feminist
sociologists, no doubt, felt the tension between the academy and the activist realm as sociology
developed into a Science with methods that required scholars to explore positivistic questions
and to produce dichotomous outcomes about what is rather than more critical questions about
what should be (Alway 1995; England 1999). As Stacey and Thorne argue in their 1985 essay,
“The Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology,” sociologists often relegated gender to studies
of the family while conceptualizing other institutions as ungendered. Like feminist activists
within the movement, however, feminist sociologists looked to the work of Simone de Beauvoir
(1949) who argued that “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” Her work anticipated the
distinction between biological sex and gender which feminist sociologists adopted in the 1970s.
Through the rise of feminist sociology, concepts of gender and patriarchy replaced the notion of
“sex roles” (Jackson and Scott 2002). While the structural-functionalist underpinnings remained,
this work spoke to an important shift in the sociology of gender.
British sociologist Ann Oakley (1972) borrowed the terminology of sex and gender from
the American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Robert Stoller (1968) whose study participants’
sense of self conflicted with their assigned sex or whose biological sex was defined as
ambiguous. Following Stoller, Oakley (1972) defined sex as the anatomical and physiological
characteristics which signified biological femaleness and maleness and gender as socially
constructed femininity and masculinity. This construct separated the social outcomes from the
physical body to situate structures as historically contingent. Many sociologists also took up the
argument posed by cultural anthropologist Gayle Rubin (1975) who related gender to
reproductive sexuality through her concept of the “sex/gender system.” Rubin (1975) defined

7. Earles 7
this system as a set of arrangements by which biological sex and procreation are shaped by
human, social intervention. For her, the construction of gender as a polarized dichotomy requires
the suppression of the similarities between women and men for social purposes and social
means. Her work reflects the underpinnings of social constructionism that sociologists would
later take up to talk about both gender and sexuality through a feminist lens.
Some consider the separation of sex and gender as privileging the dualism between
nature and culture and mind and body (Gatens 1983; Braidotti 1994; Brodribb 1992). Just as
historical constructions of biological sex denied women positive embodiment, many feminists
later disembodied women through their total analyses of how discourses, ideologies, and social
systems produced and perpetuated women’s oppression without attending to everyday
interaction. Sociologists responded to this shift by challenging scholars to consider not only how
gender is constructed, but also how biological sex became theorized as dichotomous (Delphy
1984; Kessler and McKenna 1978; Lindermann 1997; Stanley 1984). While some feminists
valorized feminine difference (Irigaray 1985) and women’s cultural traditions and experiences
(Rich 1980), sociologists challenged the pre-supposed differences between women and men
(Lindermann 1997). This also led some feminists to resist the concept of gender as they felt it did
not address women’s embodiment as it informed the construction of woman as the “other”
(Braidotti 1991, 1994, 2002). Rather than seeing gender as the social outcome of biological sex,
Christine Delphy (1984) argues that sex is the perceived category “because of the existence of
gender” (144).
Women of color also began to theorize about the intersection between sexism, racism,
classism, and homophobia. Communities like the Combahee River Collective (1977), for
instance, held retreats to institutionalize Black feminism and to discuss the limitations of white

8. Earles 8
feminists’ prioritization of gender and the dominant form of oppression. Indeed, their Combahee
River Collective Statement (1977), developed by Barbara Smith, Demita Frazier, and Beverly
Smith, became a key document in the history of contemporary Black feminism and impacted
how many social theorists began to think about the concept of identity as multi-faceted. In
regards to the use of sex and gender, however, the use of sex remains confounding as it could
refer to either the differences between femaleness and maleness or to sexual (erotic) relations and
practices (Jackson and Scott 2002). Sociologists, however, often advocate for the use of gender
as it focuses on the hierarchical division between women and men and the dialectical relationship
between femininity and masculinity (Delphy 1993; Jackson and Scott 2002).
Feminist sociologists also framed their analysis of gender through the concept of
socialization in order to describe how children internalized particular norms and values in order
to become social beings (Stanley and Wise 1983). Scholars using this argument focused
primarily on systems of capitalism and patriarchy and the requirements of individuals to behave
and think in certain ways. As Liz Stanley and Sue Wise (1983) argue, mothers often were
blamed for how they differentiated between children of different sexes. Sociologists, in turn,
universalized the mother-daughter experience to show how “the individual characteristics of
society are reproduced” (Sharpe 1976: 74). These arguments concentrated solely on the
structural and institutional requirements of society while missing the negotiation of gender by
individuals in everyday life and the connection between discourses and institutions. Linda
Gordon and Thorne (1996) comment on the provisional success of feminist functionalism as only
one feminist work (Nancy Chodorow’s 1978 The Reproduction of Mothering) appeared in a list
of the 10 most influential books in sociology during the previous 25 years.

9. Earles 9
Feminists outside the academy challenged both androcentrism and essentialism through
their commitment to personal politics and activism. This political movement planted the seeds
for an intellectual movement within the academy which would eventually force mainstream
sociologists to disconnect body essentialism from notions of gender. As feminists pushed their
way into the academy and into sociology specifically, writings about gender have increased
exponentially in both the social sciences and the humanities (England 1999). Even as gender
entered into sociology’s lexicon in the early 1970s, however, feminist sociologists in the
academy faced a difficult struggle to ensure gender’s full integration into sociological thinking
(Jackson and Scott 2002). This reflected both the everyday “relations of ruling” centered around
gender, race, class, and sexuality in the academy (Smith 1987), as well as sociologists’ continued
dedication to the “doctrine of objectivity” and the belief that women’s lives and experiences
were personal (Haraway 1988).
Even when sociologists began to consider notions of gender, scholars would not begin to
ask women about their everyday experiences for many years. Relying on the feminist
standpoint theories, feminist sociologists began to move away from positivism during the 1970s
and 1980s to explain the power relations that exist between the production of sexist knowledge
and the oppression of minority groups (Harding 2007). Indeed, by 1983, several feminist
scholars contributed to the development of standpoint accounts (Haraway 1978, 1981; Harding
1983; Jaggar 1983; Rose 1983). Standpoint theories helped feminist sociologists to imagine a
strand of research that starts off from the lives of women for a more bottom-up approach to
sociology (Harding 2007). This shift also indicated an epistemological shift in how feminists
began to approach the study of gender. Rather than focusing on structures, feminists prioritized
the everyday lives of women. Indeed, with this approach, feminists began to follow the

10. Earles 10
theoretical and methodological assumptions associated with interpretivism/critical theory. This
position also helped feminist sociologists to challenge mainstream sociologists’ reluctance to
study gender from a feminist viewpoint.
The contentious argument over the concept of patriarchy also reflects how scholars began
to geographically and historically situate women’s oppression and feminist activism. Derived
from Max Weber (1964), patriarchy literally means the rule of fathers and describes the position
of men as heads of the household. Feminists adopted this concept to describe an autonomous
system that intersected with capitalism to produce gender inequalities (Delphy 1984; Hartmann
1981; Walby 1986, 1990). Sociologists like Dorothy Smith (1984) later took up the critique of
this position to underscore how both systems intertwine dependently to produce fundamental
divisions along lines of gender and class. Other feminists also critiqued the concept by arguing
that patriarchy did not fully describe modern Western societies, but could only describe those
societies ordered by kinship (Rubin 1975). Some saw patriarchy as a monolithic concept that
ignored differences of class, race, and sexuality among both women and men (Beechy 1979;
Carby 1982) and questioned whether or not Black men found the patriarchal privileges enjoyed
by white men (Bhavnani and Coulson 1986; hooks 1982; Nain 1991). Caroline Ramazanoglu
(1994) further differentiates this concept by highlighting how hegemonic heterosexuality and
masculinity enforces men’s dominance through her notion of heteropatriarchy. Whether
originated in the exploitation of women’s labor, the appropriation of women’s sexuality, or
whether ideologically sustained (Jackson 1998), sociologists continue to draw upon this concept
to theoretically situate women’s experiences.

11. Earles 11
Feminism and Feminists in Sociology: Mainstream Resistance
Even as today’s feminist sociologists research and write for emancipation of women, the
Durkheimian origins of the study of gender continued to influence how many sociologists
viewed this construct through the 1980s. While many 1970s movement actors approached
women’s oppression through the radical commitment to eliminating the sex-class system,
mainstream sociologists were reluctant to “transform the basic conceptual frameworks of the
field” (Stacey and Thorne 1985: 301). During the 1960s and 1970s, philosophers and political
theorists often took up feminist theory inside the academy (England 1999). Joan Alway (1995)
also argues that the feminist transformation of knowledge was more extensive in disciplines like
anthropology, literature, and history.
Stacey and Thorne (1996) later revisited their thesis to conclude that the disciplinary
boundaries erected by some sociologists prevented the production of radical feminist work from
within the academy. In other words, feminists have the trans-disciplinary ability to align with
political and intellectual movements to reconfigure knowledge rather than relying on those
hierarchical paradigms established by 19th
-century scholars (Ray 2006; Stacey and Thorne 1996;
Thorne 2006). Sociologists took up the conversation about how to transform the language of the
mainstream so as to deconstruct the naturalized and homogenized categories that maintain both
privilege and subordination. While some sociologists argued that scholars must breech these
borders, however, Dorothy Smith and Michael Burawoy maintained that a total abandonment of
the discipline was not the answer. For them, “the renewal of feminism still depends on day to
day combat within disciplines” (Burawoy 1996: 5). For them, as feminist sociologists find
inspiration outside the discipline to combat essentialism and sexism, our dedication to

12. Earles 12
sociological theory and methodologies also ensures we maintain a commitment to the ideas of
social constructionism which gives us a critical edge.
Outside mainstream sociology, feminist sociologists carry on the heritage of two radical
strands of theorizing about sex and gender. French feminists began the tradition of materialist
feminism which signifies a Marxist feminist method of analysis. Materialist feminists argue that
gender exists only as a social division because of patriarchal domination which produces a class-
like relationship (Jackson and Scott 2002). Likewise, the categories of “woman” and “man”
become socially-constructed groups whose only distinction is based on a hierarchical division
where the latter dominates (Delphy and Leonard 1992). Through a critical perspective,
sociologists rely on materialist feminism to argue that power establishes the social meanings
which create the social processes that oppress women (Delphy 1984). Materialist feminist
Delphy’s reversal of sex and gender also connects this approach to a second strand of radical
theorizing developed by postmodern feminists (Jackson and Scott 2002). While originating
outside sociology, postmodernism pushes feminist sociologists to consider more fluid notions of
sex and gender and to think about ways of deconstructing those discourses which categorize
women as women. Many current sociologists rely on Judith Butler’s (1990) analysis of gender to
theorize about the performativity attached to normative gender expressions.
Radical Sociology: Ethnomethodological Approaches to Sex and Gender
Ethnomethodology represents the distinctly sociological approach to the study of sex and
gender which radically questions the essentialist and functionalist views of these constructs. This
substantive critique provides feminist sociologists with a disciplinary history about how scholars
approach the doings of social members on the everyday level and unravel the taken-for-granted
assumptions about gender. Rather than prescribing gendered actions through functioning

13. Earles 13
structures, ethnomethodology allows individuals to contribute to the construction of gendered
identities through reflexivity and interaction. While Harold Garfinkel (1967) did not attempt to
advance any explicit feminist goals, he provided a framework for ways to consider people as
social members who use everyday methodologies to make sense of their social realities. Over
two decades prior to Butler’s analysis, Garfinkel published his 1967 study of Agnes, a male-to-
female transsexual. Through this study, he focuses on how Agnes passes as a “real” woman
despite having male genitals and, later, post-operative female genitals. While genitals act as
cultural insignia in how others take biology as a “sign” that someone is female or male or a
“normal” woman or man, the choreographed or managed accomplishment of femininity or
masculinity allows social members to “pass” (Garfinkel 1967). In this sense, Garfinkel (1967)
calls biological sex into question by treating womanhood and manhood as an achievement
through which social members accomplish social dichotomies.
Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna (1978) provide the first fully-developed
ethnomethodological account of gender which starkly contrasted previous discussions of “roles.”
While Garfinkel (1967) relied upon the pre-feminist notions of sex and sexuality, Kessler and
McKenna (1978) theorize about how everyday interaction produces two and only two genders
and how others follow the act of “gender attribution” to mark sexed people. While Garfinkel
(1967) focused on femaleness and maleness as culturally important, Kessler and McKenna
(1978) argue that it is only the assumption that individuals possess female or male genitals which
matters. For them, the accomplishment of gender in everyday life allows others to assume the
possession of appropriately-sexed genitals. In this way, both daily practices of gender and
scientific procedures related to sex produce socialproduce social interaction. This approach

14. Earles 14
allows for a thinking and reflexive individual who actively contributes to the production of sex
and gender in everyday life.
This argument calls Rubin’s (1975) “sex/gender” distinction which Kessler and McKenna
(1978) suggest “takes for granted, the objective reality of two biological sexes” (164). For them,
an “androgynous” society, “retains the male/female dichotomy by agreeing to ignore it” (164-
65). This pushes the realms of critique available to feminist sociologists and allows scholars to
question what we consider “natural” and, in many ways, draws from the theories of Erving
Goffman (1959, 1977, 1979) to talk about how the belief in an “internal truth” produce social
differences. While Goffman relied on a top-down, Durkheimian approach to social structure and
social order, Kessler and McKenna rely upon interaction to note how people construct reality. By
exploring the ways people accomplish or practice gender, ethnomethodologists also initiate the
discussion of how the mutually-dependent relationship between femininity and masculinity or
femaleness and maleness relies more on a moral discussion rather than a natural act. Kessler and
McKenna (1978, 2000) and, later, Liz Stanley (1984), also reach beyond Garfinkel’s initial
argument to explore how androcentrism informs the hierarchical division between men and
women. This accounts for how feminist sociologists began to question not only Scientific
evidence, but how scholars began to consider people as individual actors who create the world
around them based on the knowledge and experiences available to them.
Candace West and Don Zimmerman (1987) further the ethnomethodological scope of
analysis by pointing to issues of accomplishment, constraint, and accountability. They argue that
by “doing gender,” social actors exhibit a competence or social knowledge about acceptable
notions of gender as they are assigned to a particular sex category. Sex categories become both
dichotomous and socially constructed to show how people become restricted to particular

15. Earles 15
activities. Body management becomes a part of how women, in particular, constrain and
discipline their physical bodies to align with normative constructs of femininity. This
reintroduces the body into feminist thought, although under constraint. In this sense, West and
Zimmerman (1987) suggest) suggest something similar to Michel Foucault’s (1977) work on
self-surveillance and how regimes of normalization discipline bodies. However, rather than
theorizing surveillance as coming from “nowhere and everywhere,” West and Zimmerman
account for the face-to-face interactions between everyday people. Women and men then hold
one another accountable to their perceived genders according to these expectations. If people fail
to do their gender properly, then our memberships to particular sex categories are called into
question.
Through this piece, West and Zimmerman (1987) also map out the ways gender is
reproduced through both interpersonal and institutional accountability which makes it appear as
if there are essential bodily differences. As West and Zimmerman (1987) point out, the social
order appears as if it is based upon a “natural” order where women do deference and men
dominance. This belief in “natural” differences is a “powerful reinforcer and legitimator of
hierarchical arrangements” (p. 147) where social relationships are enacted within an institutional
arena. While West and Zimmerman (1987) theorize about how individuals do gender
appropriately, however, they also discuss the ways people do gender in ways that do not always
live up to the normative conceptions of femininity and masculinity. Indeed, while some may hold
us accountable for “inappropriate” gender activities, others may not. In this scenario, the line
between “normal” and “abnormal” becomes blurred based on interaction even as the institutional
parameters of gender appropriateness remain intact. West and Zimmerman (1987) also point out

16. Earles 16
the importance of social movements like feminism for providing scholars and activists with the
tools to question the existing social order and to make change.
Through this perspective, sociologists can begin to centralize gender in everyday
interactions, rather than simply adding it to a list of other variables. James W. Messerschmidt
(2004) also calls into question the centuries-old mind/body split by suggesting that the
production of gender is an embodied social practice through which the mind’s consciousness
perceives the sensations achieved through the body. While these approaches call into question
theories of gender socialization, other sociologists suggest the ethnomethodologist’s account of
gendered inequalities is incomplete (Collins 1995). Francine Deutsch (2007) also suggests that
the West and Zimmerman’s notion of “doing gender” does not allow for individual emancipatory
practices on the local level. However, sociologists’ attention to the everyday signifies the
discipline’s turn toward a bottom-up approach which scholars previously overlooked. Sara L.
Crawley (2002) extends West and Zimmerman’s theory of “doing gender” to account for the
ways gender is done to each of us by others based on our presumed biological sex. For Crawley
(2002), people take audiences into account when constructing their presentations of self so that
social members tailor their visible identities to fit particular situations within particular
communities.
Theorizing Gender: Critical Analysis of Social Structures and Everyday Life
Early theories that deviated from notions of “sex roles” and socialization opened up the
field for other sociologists to think differently about how people experience gender. Rather than
theorizing about what is considered “natural,” gender scholars began thinking in terms of
gendered expectations, gendered messages, gender disruptions, gender combinations, and gender
emphasis (Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008). While some sociologists continue to question the

17. Earles 17
theoretical and empirical sex/gender distinction (Cealey and Hood-Williams 2002), many focus
on the division between women and men in terms of gender (Jackson and Scott 2002). Others
include a critical and empirical discussion of both constructs to think about how women make
sense of these notions in everyday life. Sociologists like Holly Devor (1989) empirically assess
the distinction between sex and gender by exploring how women can reject their femininity but
not their femaleness. Even as the women in her study were sometimes mistaken for men, Devor
(1989) shows how women can use their everyday production or deconstruction of gender as
activist work.
Sociologists now centralize the construction of femininity and masculinity in daily life to
think about how women and men constantly negotiate gender (Howard and Hollander 1997).
Connell (1987), in particular, theorizes about how iconic notions of hegemonic masculinity and
emphasized femininity produce the appearance of a dichotomous system. Hegemonic
masculinity, for Connell (1987), is the kind of masculinity that is considered more dominant and
socially valuable than all other types of masculinity and all kinds of femininity. Conversely,
emphasized femininity is “oriented to accommodating the interests and desires of men” (Connell
1987: 183). Connell (2002) also argues that femininity and masculinity are mutually dependent
upon one another where the deconstruction of one means the weakening of the other. Indeed,
while masculinity previously went unquestioned, sociologists now take up the development of
critical theories about this construct (Connell 1986, 1987, 2002, 2005; Crawley, Foley, and
Shehan 2008; Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 2003; Kimmel 1995, 2006, 2009; Kimmel, Hearn,
and Connell 2005; Seidman 1997. As Crawley, Lara J. Foley, and Constance L. Shehan (2008)
argue, while not every man can develop the muscular bodies associated with hegemonic
masculinity, they can, by proximity, obtain a sense of vicarious masculinity. These theories and

18. Earles 18
studies expand the lens through which feminist sociologists can critically analyze gender and
situate men within the social world as constructed, interacting, and accountable beings.
Over 25 years after Stacy and Thorne’s (1985) essay, the Sex and Gender section is the
largest of the American Sociological Association and Gender & Society represents the success of
this intellectual movement (Risman 2003). Even as sociologists often take up the study of gender
without the feminist component (Risman 2003), the integration of gender into mainstream
sociology manifested from the work of early feminists and represents the merging of theory and
activism. While this field flourishes, however, scholars like Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott (2002)
argue for not for the sociology of gender, but a gendered sociology. For them, this approach
would ensure that gender remains central to all sociologists’ work. Indeed, sociologists like Joan
Acker (2006) assert that the feminist revolution in sociology is still missing in the sense that
feminism has not “brought gender into theorizing about all power relations and all institutions”
(445). While many feminist sociologists connect social structures, binaries, and inequalities with
everyday practices (Connell 1987; Lorber 1994, 1996, 2005; Laslett and Thorne 1997; Martin
2004; Ridgeway 1991, 2001, 2009; Ridgeway and Correll 2004; Ridgeway and Smith-Lovin
1999; Risman 2004), this argument perhaps reflects the assertion by Barbara Risman (2004) who
argues that feminists must conceptualize gender as a social institution on “the same level of
general social significance as the economy and the polity” (429). As Risman (2003) also argues,
however, feminist sociologists will retain its cutting edge by valuing differences among
ourselves and by finding ways to reward all kinds of feminist sociologies.
Assessing Inequality and Difference: Intersectionality in the Sociology of Gender
The realization that women are not a monolithic group stemmed from the work of
sociologists like Patricia Hill Collins (1989, 2000). Collins (1989) presents a Black feminist

19. Earles 19
standpoint and an Afro-centric epistemology to articulate the knowledge of marginalized women
along lines of race and class (755). By arguing that the “long-term and widely shared resistance
among African-American women can only have been sustained by an enduring and shared
standpoint,” Collins (1989) integrates an analysis of economic and political statuses alongside
gender. These experiences, Collins (1989) argues, “stimulate[s] a distinctive Black feminist
consciousness” (746). Even as research often compares women and men while ignoring
distinctions between these groups, the introduction of intersectionality makes generalizations
within sociology difficult (Bedolla, Tate, and Wong 2005). Theories of intersectionality
deconstruct the binary structures of gender, race, class, and sexuality common within Western
discourses.
Feminists like Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) contributed theoretically to the radical
deconstruction of dichotomous thought through her introduction of the term mestizaje, meaning
beyond binary. Anzaldúa (1987) called for a “new mestiza,” which she describes as someone
who is aware and accepting of her conflicting identities and who positively embodies the
possibility of deconstructing “objective” and positivistic Western thought. For Anzaldúa (1987),
binary thought contradicted her experiences as a multi-racial, “multi-sexual” woman. Indeed,
these approaches also call into question the ways sociologists previously aligned with a strongly
“objective” stance. Critical sociologists argue that historically oppressed groups can never escape
the realities of their lived experiences and social identities and allow for sociologists to consider
their work as potentially emancipating. As Donna Haraway (1988) argues, feminist projects
situate knowledges and move away from the claim of “objectivity” historically common in
scientific research to value the lives of marginalized people. These arguments hold individual
sociologists accountable as producers of knowledge and as knowing social actors.

20. Earles 20
West and Sarah Fenstermaker approach intersectionality through an ethnomethodological
approach in “Doing Difference” (1995). They theorize race, class, and gender as overlapping
categories, rather than separate variables. While they acknowledge that these concepts operate
differently depending upon the lived experiences of each individual, critical sociologists like
Collins (1995) argue that a focus on difference dismisses the conversation about power,
oppression, and resistance. As Collins (1995) suggests, “Doing Difference” claims the language
of inclusivity while “decontextualiz[ing] it from the history of race, class, gender studies. It strips
the very categories of race, class, and gender of meaning and then recasts the problems of
institutional power in the apolitical framework of how we might ‘do difference’” (493). Iris
Marion Young (1994) takes up this argument by using the Satrian concept of seriality to
construct women as a social group without suggesting that all women share a set of cloned
attributes. For her, feminist action does not stem from the category of “woman” as a whole, but
from the social practices that politicize “women’s condition.” This allows women to act
politically as women.
Theories of intersectionality prompted sociologists to explore the lives of women of
color, while whiteness often remained an untheorized category. By drawing on the work of
women’s and gender scholars, however, feminist sociologists also began to contribute to the
deconstruction of white privilege and oppression in connection with race and gender.
Sociologists drew from the work of feminist scholars like Marilyn Frye (1983) who defines
oppression as a system that “presses” people “between or among forces and barriers which are so
related to each other that jointly they restrain, restrict or prevent . . . mobility” (2).
Oppositionally, Peggy McIntosh (1988) argues that privilege manifests in either unearned
advantages like feeling valued or safe or “conferred dominance,” which gives one group power

21. Earles 21
over another. For McIntosh (1988), everyone should have unearned advantages (but do not),
while no one should possess “conferred dominance” in a society that values social justice and
equity. Oppression and privilege cannot exist without the existence of the other.
Whiteness and masculinities studies have proliferated in recent sociology (Brod and
Kaufman 1994; Brodkin 1992; Connell 2005; Ferber 2007; Jacobson 1999; Kimmel 2006; Lopez
1997; Morrison 1992; Roediger 2002). Scholars argue that gender is central to the dynamics of
whiteness (Brodkin 1992; Ferber 1998, 2007; Frankenberg 1993; Roediger 2002) and see this
construct as invisible and the assumed norm. This becomes important for feminist work as many
white feminists previously ignored their own racial privilege to claim that the “sex-class” system
remained the ultimate oppressor. Just as racism is perpetuated through a color-blind philosophy,
sexism also is ignored through the erasure of gender (Ferber 2007). Social constructionism
becomes integral in connecting theory with activism so that the “realness” of both whiteness and
masculinity is contested. As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2003) asks, “how can we fight something
that is socially accepted as real?” (284). Even as social constructionism can help sociologists
radically critique notions of gender, race, and class, however, critical sociologists urge scholars
to remain aware of the material outcomes of these categories. In this way, these arguments can
work together to bridge the disconnect between theory and activism to affect real change in
everyday life.
Sexualities Studies: The Dialectical Relationship between Gender and Sexuality
Gender reoriented established fields of sociological investigation and opened up new
areas to the sociological gaze. While (male) sociologists previously addressed sexuality only in
terms of marriage, reproduction, and demographics and viewed this concept as a natural human
capacity, the sociological study of gender allowed scholars to critically address the normative

22. Earles 22
discourses and institutions attached to this concept. In turn, the study of sexualities introduced
notions of the empowered body and a critique of normative heterosexuality and the attached
hierarchies. Sexuality defined sociologically encompasses all desires, practices, and personal and
political identities thought to be erotic and is a product of the social order and social action
(Jackson and Scott 2002). As intersected with sex and gender, sexuality provides feminist
sociologists with a lens through which scholars can analyze the material outcomes of these
categories, as well as the social action of activist women and men. Indeed, as sex refers to both
an act and to a category of person, the assumption under Western thought is that there is an
intimate connection between “being” female or male and how one has sex and with whom
(Weeks 1986). Sociologists often begin with the deconstruction of this binary in order to theorize
about how contemporary sexual identities came to be.
In the West, many think of their sexuality as the most spontaneously natural thing about
them (Weeks 1986). However, as Jeffrey Weeks (1986) argues, the meanings we give to
sexuality are socially organized and sustained by language. Through these meanings, individuals
know what sex is, what it ought to be, and what it could be (Weeks 1986). Language gives us the
tools to articulate ourselves and others in terms of women and men, homosexual and
heterosexual, “normal” or “abnormal,” and “natural” or “unnatural.” Sexual identities, however,
are historically and culturally specific and do not stem “naturally” from any aspect of our
personalities. In terms of sexuality and through the politicization of sex, new possibilities and
consequent challenges have emerged for sexual transgression and dissidence, political analysis,
opposition, and moral control (Weeks 1986). For sociologists, sexuality includes both the
observable and the unobservable as it is a plural and non-linear concept. Indeed, the difficulty in
both conceptualizing about sexuality and in creating a knowledge base from unobservable

23. Earles 23
emotions also reflects the volatile connection between everyday individuals’ experiences and the
sexual “order” as defined by governments, institutions, and discourses.
A few scholars pioneered constructionist work on sexuality during the 1960s and 1970s
(Gagnon and Simon 1973; McIntosh 1968; Plummer 1975). However, it was not until gender
became established as a sociological concept that more scholars became open to theorizing about
and investigating sexuality (Brickell 2006; Jackson 1999). Gender studies, along with these early
works, allowed sociologists to widen their scope of inquiry and to question inequalities based on
the binary divide between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Sociologists, in particular, were
highly influential in developing radical theories of sexuality and in challenging essentialist
understandings of this social field (Crawley and Broad 2008). Drawing on the social
constructionism donated by symbolic interactionists, phenomenologists, and labeling theorists,
and by theorists outside sociology (Foucault 1978), these earlier works provide the means for
sociologists to theorize about everyday sexuality and to locate sexuality within the broader social
world. The everyday, as Jackson and Scott (2002) argue, is missing from more contemporary
works about sexuality. In this sense, a closer look at these foundational works can give
sociologists the framework to think about sexuality in terms of daily interaction between
reflexive people.
Mary McIntosh (1968) begins the critical exploration of sexuality by drawing on labeling
theory to question “the conception of homosexuality as a condition” (183). McIntosh’s argument
pre-dates Foucault’s (1978) to explore how the role of “the homosexual” is historically and
culturally specific and, in many ways, signifies the turning point in the conceptualization of
sexuality (Weeks 1998). While people of the same sex engage in sexual acts throughout history
and across cultural borders, McIntosh (1968) argues that becoming and being “deviant” is a

24. Earles 24
result of labeling and an outcome of specific interactional processes (Becker 1963; Matza 1969).
Peter Nardi and Beth Schneider (1998) later point to McIntosh’s study as an important
illustration between the constructionist and essentialist argument presented by Frederick
Whitman (1977). While Whitman (1977) suggests that homosexuality is not a “role,” but a
“natural” orientation, McIntosh’s (1968) serves as key example of the sociological argument
against biological determinism. Even as sociologists find their arguments strongly countered by
psychological, biological, and political arguments, scholars continue to take up historical
research as a way to counter essentialism and marginalization (Faderman 1981; Katz 1976;
Seidman 2003; Smith-Rosenberg 1975; Weeks 1977).
McIntosh (1978) later explored the intersection between sexual arrangement and
women’s oppression by arguing that institutions suppress rather than satisfy any sexual needs
women’s might possess. Indeed, the idea that sexuality is socially constructed undercut much of
the ideology that legitimized women’s subordination and defined homosexuality as an illness
(Jackson and Rees 2007). Through social constructionism, sociologists view sexual desires,
identities, and acts as malleable and as the products of culture, history, and circumstance
(Stanley 1995). Consequently, this forces scholars and policy makers to defend rules and laws
surrounding sexuality, rather than calling upon “nature” or religion to support their claims
(Seidman 2003). This argument also calls into question the historical significance attached to
sexuality which, as David Halperin (1998) argues, has not been a long tradition. The sociology of
sexuality links with the denaturalizing project and, as Steven Epstein (1996) argues,
demonstrates that “sexual meanings, identities, and categories were intersubjectively negotiated
social and historical projects – that sexuality was, in a word, constructed” (p. 145).

25. Earles 25
John Gagnon and William Simon (1973) take up the social constructionist argument
about sexuality by rejecting the idea that sexual conduct involves the expression of inherent
drives. They also argue against the dominant contention that sexuality constitutes a separate and
somehow special aspect of life. Instead, Gagnon and Simon (1973) contend that the social
meanings attached to sexuality are what help to establish this construct as uniquely important.
For them, nothing is inherently sexual but certain activities and expressions become socially
sexual dependent on where and how they are enacted. Gagnon and Simon’s (1973) theory of
“sexual scripts” accounts for language and action, convention and expectations, and the
connections between the wider social context and individual experience. Cultural scenarios and
cultural are constructed so that individuals gain the knowledge about how to act sexually and
with whom they can conduct these acts (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels 1994).
Sociologists continue to draw upon the idea of sexual scripts to explore how people do sexuality
within particular social contexts (Gutterman 2001; Keys 2002; Laner and Ventrone 2000;
Mutchler 2000). This theory is insistently social and questions the more determinist argument
that sexual desires “originat[e] in the deepest recesses of the self” (Simon 1996: 43).
Where Gagnon and Simon (1973) concentrate on the broad definition of sexuality to
include all expressions, McIntosh (1968) and Kenneth Plummer (1975) focus on homosexuality.
Plummer (1975) provides a case study of gay life through a combination of symbolic
interactionism, constructionism, and, specifically, Goffman’s notion of stigma to explore how
homosexuality became defined as “deviant.” Plummer (1975) continues the critique of
essentialism and the notion of perversion to show how sexual meanings become constructed
through the language of “human nature.” Most importantly, Plummer (1975) begins to account
for the diversity of sexual life and accounts for how dominant ideologies influence social

26. Earles 26
thought. He, again, points to the idea that sexual meanings do not reside in specific body parts
but in the social importance assigned them. For him, heterosexuality and homosexuality can
imbue these body parts with either eroticism or shame. Even as these three studies disassociate
the “natural” or “biological” body from sexuality, however, sociologists would not reintroduce
the body in terms of constructed sexuality and reflexive agent for many years.
Feminist Approaches to the Study of Sexualities
Feminists understand sexuality as another axis of inequality where heterosexuality is
routinely privileged over lesbian and gay sexualities (Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008;
Ingraham 1994; Jackson 1999; Jackson and Scott 2000; McCarl Nielsen, Walden, and Kunkel
2000). For feminist sociologists, gender and sexuality intertwine to produce unique lived
experiences for lesbians and gay men. Both lesbians and gay men threaten to destabilize the
gender hierarchy for their refusal to live within the confines of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich
1980), by rejecting the tie between sex and reproduction (Firestone 1970), and by refusing the
legitimization of gender difference as the basis of emotional and sexual attraction (Taylor and
Rupp 1993). Many feminist sociologists, in particular, reject the idea that sexualities are fixed
and, instead, look to the evidence of historically- and culturally-variant expressions. While
Foucault did not pay much attention to gender and the regulation of women’s sexuality, feminist
scholars often rely on his work to see female sexuality as socially constructed and reconstructed
through discourses in complex and often contradictory ways (Jackson and Scott 1996). This
perspective also allows scholars to view female sexuality as not wholly suppressed or
marginalized along lines of power, but to explore how women can wield their own forms of
sexual power.

27. Earles 27
The binaries of heterosexuality and homosexuality become meaningless without their
gendered underpinnings (Jackson 1999). Gender and sexuality are interrelated and overlapping
so that lesbians and gay men find themselves marginalized by and compared to normative
performances of femininity and masculinity. Subsequently, politics shape every aspect of
sexuality as institutions sustain the social structure’s use of gender to justify and extend the
control over sexuality in everyday life (Schwartz and Rutter 1998). Activists mobilize around
social movements and communities to affect change, but also resist through everyday subversion
to disrupt overarching stereotypes and to interrupt “normalcy.” As the activist efforts of lesbians
can become subsumed under the larger sexuality umbrella (Frye 1983; Jeffreys 2003; Rudy
2001; Taylor and Rupp 1993; Taylor and Whittier 1992), some women align more with a lesbian
feminist ideology rather than the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) model. Political
lesbians view patriarchy and heterosexuality as intersecting discourses which allow men
uninhibited access to women’s bodies, give men dominance over women, and see lesbians as
invisible. In particular, Verta Taylor and Leila Rupp (1993) argue that lesbian feminism
encompasses “a variety of beliefs and practices based on the core assumption that a connection
exists between an erotic and/or emotional commitment to women and political resistance to
patriarchal domination” (p. 33). Indeed, the often-cited slogan, “Feminism is the theory and
lesbianism is the practice” (Koedt 1973), positions lesbianism as a powerfully resistive act.
Others argue that the “de-centering” of lesbian feminism has created more visibility for lesbians
(Stein 1993).
Adrienne Rich’s (1980) theory of compulsory heterosexuality is thought to be the
predecessor to theories of heteronormativity. Heteronormativity is the belief that institutionalized
heterosexuality constitutes the standard for legitimate relationships (Ingraham 1994). Within the

28. Earles 28
heteronormative paradigm, sex, gender, and sexual orientation are ideologically imbedded and
are assumed to stem from biological or innate characteristics of the body rather than social
prescription (Butler 1990; Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008; Ingraham 1994; Jackson and Scott
2000; Kessler 1998; Kessler and McKenna 1978; Lorber 1996; West and Zimmerman 1987).
While gender is presumed to reflect biological sex in all social interactions, doing gender so that
audiences presume the presence of matching genitals is heightened in sexual and sexualized
situations (Schilt and Westbrook 2009). Chrys Ingraham (1994) further connects gender with
sexuality through her concept of heterogender. Heterogender confronts the longstanding equation
of heterosexuality with the natural and gender with the cultural. Through this concept, feminist
sociologists can articulate the ways both concepts are socially constructed and to weaken the
binary between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Indeed, some theorists propose locating both
gender and sexuality on a continuum to distinguish different degrees of “homosexuality” and
“heterosexuality” (Schwartz and Rutter 1998). While some feminists argue that heterosexuality
is always oppressive (Wittig 1992), others contend that the experiences of everyday women do
not always correspond with how scholars define inequalities at the institutional or discursive
level (Jackson 1999). Even as the former falls under the institutional study of gender, the latter
relies on the constructionist view of sexuality which focuses on the discursive.
The concepts of heteronormativity and heterogender problemitize heterosexuality and
represent the core areas of analyses for many scholars (Adkins and Merchant 1996; Kitzinger,
Wilkinson, and Perkins 1992; Maynard and Purvis 1995; Richardson 1996; Wilkinson and
Kitzinger 1995). Scholars also centralize the notion of institutionalized heterosexuality by
intersecting this concept with other areas of social life, including heterosensibilities (Epstein and
Steinberg 1995), heterosexual hegemony (Thompson 1992), heteropatriarchy (Ramazanoglu

29. Earles 29
1994), heterocentricity (Kitzinger, Wilkinson, and Perkins 1992), technologies of heterosexuality
(Gavey 1993), the heterosexual imaginary (Ingraham 1994), and gendered heteronormativity
(McCarl Nielson, Walden, and Kunkel 2000). Crawley, Foley, and Shehan (2008) argue that
Western messages instruct people to believe that there is a dichotomous set of “natural” bodies
and that two, and only two, genders and sexualities stem from these distinctive forms. This
“gender box structure” (Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008) sends messages tell us that females
are feminine and desire men and these men are males who desire women. For Crawley, Foley,
and Shehan (2008), however, these naturalistic beliefs ignore the social expectations which
prompt people to act in certain ways. Their “Gender Feedback Loop” accounts for the gender
messages which act as forms of social control (Crawley, Foley, and Shehan 2008). Relying upon
these normative messages, women and men engage in the surveillance of others and themselves
to encouraging conformity to these messages. This concept allows sociologists to look explore
how people maintain discourses and institutions of gender and sexuality in everyday life.
The Study of Sexualities through the Lens of Intersectionality
Ethnic and racial “others” become sexualized through discourses of “us” and “them” and
through discussions of values, attributes, and moral worth (Nagel 2000). As Joane Nagel (2000)
argues, both race and ethnicity are performed resulting in day-to-day affirmations,
reinforcements, and enactments of difference. These performances create sexual taboos,
professed loyalties, prescribed purities, and sexual boundaries. Indeed, the notion of ethnic or
racial regimes links closely with Foucault’s (1977, 1985, 1986) “observations about . . .
discipline and punishment, of hegemony and domination, but also revelation and reinvention”
(Nagel 2000: 125). For Nagel (2000), ethnic boundaries are also sexual boundaries which are
surveyed, regulated, and constantly broken by individuals to form sexual links with others. Even

30. Earles 30
as these sexual boundaries and notions of ethnic otherness are used to justify the rape of
homeland and women, the everyday crossing of these boundaries by individuals also breaks
down divisions so that notions of essentialism are weakened and destroyed (Nagel 2000).
Sexuality intersects with other forms of inequalities like racism and classism to further
marginalize women of color and working-class women. Collins (2004) explores how Black
sexuality is used to maintain racial divisions between pure white womanhood and the hot-
blooded Latinas, exotic Suzy Wongs, and wanton jezebels. For Collins (2004), Black men
confront similar biases along with these racial discourses as the mainstream media constructs
Black men as drug dealers, brutish athletes, irresponsible fathers, and rapists. Carissa Froyum
(2007) also attends to the intersection between Black masculinity and heterosexuality by
exploring the ways a group of low-income Black teenagers construct and affirm their identities.
The teenagers attempt to protect their heterosexual identities by adopting heterosexist ideologies,
disassociating from gay-coded actions, and threatening gender or sexual non-conformists
(Froyum 2007). Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez (2005) also recognizes the disciplinary elements of
sexual discourses, but also accounts for the ways married Mexican women experienced fluidity
in their gendered experiences which “allow[ed] [them] to have sexual agency and pleasure but
also to be exposed to forms of control and danger” (p. 4-5). This ethnographic study bridges the
macro and the micro to explore how people make sense of their everyday lives and reflects the
important work accomplished by sociological ethnographers.
LGBT Studies: The Sociology of Sexualities in Terms of Community and Political Life
Early within the sociology of sexualities, scholars expressed interest primarily in
“defiance,” and especially in the coping mechanisms of medicalized sexual beings within the
normalized realm of heterosexuality (Leznoff and Westley 1956; Reiss 1961) and the “deviant

31. Earles 31
sexual underworld of hustlers, prostitutes, prisons, tearooms, baths, and bars” (Seidman 1996: 7).
Over time, studies of the “other” transformed to critically assess the broader theorization of the
concept of deviance (Irvine 2003) and to explore how heteronormativity happens (Crawley and
Broad 2008). The interdisciplinary field of gay and lesbian studies came of age alongside the
sexual liberation movements in the 1970s and 1980s when sociologists became more interested
in a study of sexualities that centered around community and political life (Gamson and Moon
2004). This intersection reflects the impact of political movements on intellectual movements
and the work LGBT scholars do within both realms. Indeed, ethnographers documented the
everyday life of gay and lesbian communities (Krieger 1983; Levine 1979; Newton 1972),
political sociologists researched lesbian and gay movements (Adam 1987; Altman 1982; Ponse
1978; Taylor and Whittier 1992), some scholars studied the incidents of sexuality-based
discrimination (Herek 1989; Jenness and Broad 1994; Schneider 1987), and survey researchers
demonstrated the prevalence of both anti-gay sentiments and non-normative sexual practices
(Klassen, Williams, Levitt 1989; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels 1994; Reiss and
Miller 1979).
Sociologists like Crawley and Kendal Broad (2008) illustrate the importance of
ethnographic studies for constructing portrayals of LGBT life from the standpoint of everyday
people. Laud Humphrey’s (1975) study, despite its ethical concerns (Irvine 2003; Nardi 1995),
questioned the distinction between public/private and provided scholars with the means to
critically question the surveillance of “private/public” tearooms by law enforcement (Galliher,
Brekhus, and Keys 2004). Esther Newton’s (1972) study of stage and street female
impersonators deconstructs the notion that camp is a “thing” by arguing that camp is a
“relationship between things, people, and activities or qualities, and homosexuality” (23). Susan

32. Earles 32
Krieger (1983) delves into the construction of a lesbian feminist community and, through her
interpretation, explores some of the contradictions lesbians experience between personal and
community identity. As Krieger (1983) argues, “the community . . . would often seem to threaten
their selfhood” (p. xii). In this sense, ethnographies link the analytical work of sociologists with
the reflexive thought and everyday methodologies people use to make sense of their social
worlds.
Other recent microsociological research in the sociology of sexualities points to the
importance of ethnographic work in locating the distinctive hows, wheres, and whens of case
studies (Brekhus 2003; Collins 2010; Hammers 2008; Pascoe 2007; Puri 1999; Stein 1993;
Taylor and Rupp 2003). Arlene Stein (1993) argues that the lesbian culture of San Francisco
began to “decenter” in a way that redefined its borders so as to reinvent itself for the 1990s.
Verta Taylor and Leila Rupp (2003) ethnographic study of Key West drag queens developed into
a grounded theory that deconstructed the boundaries between gay and straight, women and man,
and further de-essentialized notions of both sex and gender. Wayne Brehkus (2003) argues that
“there is considerable conflict within identity categories about how to perform one’s identity (p.
11). Jyoti Puri also criticizes conventional sociological definitions of sex and gender by arguing
that these categories “miss the point that these constructs may be the effect of regulating,
normative mechanisms of power” (p. 5). By connecting the experiences of Indian women with
Foucault’s notion of power, Puri (1999) critiques this framework by arguing that Foucault’s
work focused almost exclusively on elite productions of discourse without attending to everyday
interactions. These studies illustrate important moments in the development of the study of
sexualities from a social constructionist stance and the move from a look at “deviance” to the
exploration of everyday life and the disruption of gender by women and men. This research also

33. Earles 33
reflects the empirical work sociologists contribute in order to connect the theories of sexualities
with the lived experiences of women and men. As Adam Isaiah Green (2002) argues, empirical
work in the field of sexualities is central to the progression of the discipline.
Queer Theory and the Feminist Response
Queer theory departs from earlier gay-positive scholarship by intending to destabilize or
deconstruct all identities and to challenge “the assumption of a unified homosexual identity”
(Seidman 1997: 93). The radical approaches to sexuality in the 1970s and the rise of
poststructuralism and postmodernism found expression in the 1990s through a new form of
social constructionism: queer theory (Gamson and Dawn 2004). Foucault’s influence on the
studies of sexualities in all disciplines marks the influence of queer theory on this area of
research where scholars point to the construction of identity and orientation by institutions and
supporting discourses (Gamson and Moon 2004). Queer theory, however, is not a unified
perspective and not easy to define since many of the scholars who produced its founding
canonical texts in the 1990s do not identify themselves as queer (Butler 1990; de Lauretis 1994;
Dollimore 1991; Fuss 1991; Halperin 1995; Katz 1995; Sedgewick 1990). Many scholars agree,
however, that queer theory’s critical potential extends beyond the political effect of lesbian and
gay studies which are provisional and contingent on dominant ideologies (Jackson 2010). Queer
theory has come to stand for the entirety of critical, radical studies of sexualities and extends its
influence into the broader sphere of intimate relations (Jackson 2010; Stacey 1996, 2004;
Roseneil and Budgeon 2004).
Strictly speaking, queer theory moves away from the sociologist’s symbolic interactionist
analyses of identity and self-articulation and toward a conception of subjectivity which radically

34. Earles 34
disarticulated from the social (Green 2007). In particular, queer theory rests upon the notion of
strong deconstructionism that often conflicts with both sociology and feminist thought.
For interpretive sociologists, in particular, identity is constituted in language and
interaction. These sociologists focus on the processes and techniques individuals use to construct
and make sense of their own social identities. On the other hand, queer theorists disavow the
“self” or any kind of stable “identity” in full consideration of the performance. As Green (2007)
argues, however, sociologists often critique queer theory for its “refusal to name a subject”
(Seidman 1993: 132), when the two approaches to subject are founded on differing
methodological and epistemological principles (Green 2007). Where sociologists often prioritize
empirical work to show how individuals understand their everyday experiences, queer theorists
do not consider empirical work as queer. For queer theorists, empirical work overly attends to
the idea of the “subject” when its principles unapologetically situate it within a poststructural
framework that aims toward desubjectification (Green 2007). However, sociologists can look to
queer theory and the discursive deployment of power to critique the binary divide between
heterosexuality and homosexuality (Crawley and Broad 2008). This unifying stance allows
scholars to critique grand theories and the normalization that comes from institutional categories.
By aligning with Foucault, queer theorists disavow the belief that people are free-
thinking individuals and, instead, argue that subjectivities extend from discourses of sexual
difference. In this way, the discursive binaries of sexuality encourage participation in the
heteronormative power structures and connect with sex and gender to produce (what appears to
be) neat categories of people (Best 2000; Crawley and Broad 2008; Ingraham 1999; Sedgwick
1990). Even as sociologists were a bit reluctant to embrace this humanities-based perspective
(Crawley and Broad 2008), many sociologists have begun to sharpen their analytical lens to

35. Earles 35
include a look at the discursive production of sexual identities through heteronormativity (Green
2002). As Fuss (1991) argues, “that language and law that regulate the establishment of
heterosexuality as both an identity and an institution, both a practice and a system, is the
language and law of defense and protection. . .” (p. 2). Homosexuality, as Fuss (1991) argues,
becomes the “contaminated other” so that heterosexuality can retain its self-identity as the
absolute.
Scholars like Elizabeth Grosz (1995) extend queer sexuality to critically assess
heterosexual acts and to make it possible for the supposed “natural coupling” of women and men
to come “unstuck” (226-27). She argues that the fluidity of human sexuality is decidedly queer
and sees a difference between queer bodies and queer sex acts. This approach rejects the orderly
division of the social world into two types of people and disconnects specific acts from particular
identities. Despite the push toward thinking along a continuum, however, queer theorists do not
often write about bisexuality (Callis 2009; Daumer 1992; Rust 1995, 2000). As
deconstructionism moves toward the erasure of identity (Green 2007), scholars critique this
perspective for not attending to these lived experiences. While some queer theorists explore how
racial and ethnic categories intersect with understandings of sexuality (Almaguer 1991; Alonso
and Koreck 1993; Hunter 2010; Mercer 1993; Nagel 2003; Sommerville 2000), Stephen
Valocchi (2005) argues that sociologists should centralize these investigations into queer theory.
These critiques, however, provide sociologists with calls for future work using the tool of queer
theory to explore these discourses.
Stein and Plummer (1994) discuss the ways queer theory has informed sociology and the
exploration and critique of identities and sexualities. Even as not all scholars of sexuality define
themselves as queer theorists, queer theory has reshaped the language, concepts, and theoretical

36. Earles 36
concerns of sociologists of sexuality (Green 2002). Where sociologists of the past turned to
essentialism, even when looking at gender through a social constructionist lens, queer theory
allows scholars to analyze the fluidity of sexual subjectivity and to theoretically deconstruct
gender and sexual binaries. In return, sociology can give to queer theory “a more grounded, more
accessible approach” by extending its reach to focus on inequalities based on sexual orientation,
the disruption of the institutionalized sexual binary, and a “queer pedagogy” that deconstructs the
heterosexual classroom (Stein and Plummer 1994: 185). Together, these perspectives bridge the
gulf between “ideological constructs and the lived experience” of subjects (Valocchi 2005: 753).
As Stein and Plummer (1994) argue, “the Missing Sexual Revolution in Sociology” can be found
by sociologists’ willingness to accept a transformation of existing conceptual frameworks. Even
as the work of sociologists in the area of sexualities has been informed by queer and feminist
theory, in particular, Joshua Gamson and Dawn Moon (2004) argue that sociologists should not
forget their old concerns of micro- and macro-politics, sexual images, economics, intimacy,
bodies, pain, and pleasure.
While some sociologists argue for a further queering of the sociology of gender and
sexualities to shift the center of the political and intellectual movements from feminist to queer
theory and scholarship (Valocchi 2005), others argue that this shift “lose[s] its grip on the
‘obdurate empirical world’ and its search for a truth that will at least hold for the time being”
(Plummer 2003: 520). Some scholars, including those credited with its origination, argue that
queer theory is already on the decline (de Lauretis 1994), while others suggest that it might
outlive its postmodern parent (Mattewman and Hoey 2006). Others further question the reliance
on the notion of complete deconstructionism and ask whether or not this dependence is creating a
false dichotomy between constructionism and essentialism (Fuss 1989). Epstein (1987)

37. Earles 37
illustrates how academics favor constructionist perspectives while the gay movement in the
United States typically portrays itself in more essentialist terms. He argues that “neither strict
constructionism nor strict essentialism are capable of explaining what it means to be gay”
(Epstein 1987: 151). Carol Vance (1998) argues that sexual identity is very real for those living
through it and advocates for a better understanding between and among constructionists, between
disciplines, and about which aspects of sexual life can be constructed. Green (2002) calls for a
“reenergized sociological presence in the study of sexuality that recognizes the limits of
poststructuralism and makes central the . . . ‘social’ – in shaping the ‘sexual’” (p. 523). For
Green (2002), a “post-queer” study of sexuality would ground theory in the social world.
Lesbian-Feminists Response to Queer Theory and Queer Activism
Many activists acknowledge that both lesbians and transwomen are actively involved in
deconstructing heteropatriarchy (Whittle 2000), however, feminist theory and practice have not
historically allowed for more fluid notions of identity. Transgendered activists, in particular,
often find themselves marginalized by both the dominant and lesbian culture. Susan Stryker
(1994) conceptualizes transgendered to describe anyone who lives a gender they were not
assigned at birth or who does not publicly perform a recognizable gender that conforms to the
Western cultures’ binary system. Indeed, some feminist writers condemn transwomen and argue
against their inclusion in lesbian communities (Hausman 1995; Raymond 1979). Cressida J.
Heyes (2003) argues, however, that through our detachment from one another, solidarity will
founder. As she argues, “if we are all individuals making normatively equal gender choices, then
where is oppression?” (Heyes 2003: 1117). This argument points to and critiques the essentialist
boundaries which often guarded lesbian communities and the feminist critique of queer theory
for its inability to recognize both oppression and the need for collective resistance.

38. Earles 38
Suzanna Danuta Walters (1996) argues that “a feminist queer theory might focus more on
the material realities of lives lived under patriarchal, capitalist, racist regimes, not as a
background or aside, but as the very stuff of a political and politicized analysis” (p. 865). This
argument makes the case for a “feminist-queer alliance” (Hammers and Brown 2004), which,
despite, the clear theoretical differences, some scholars have found evidence of in the empirical
world (Hammers 2008). As Burawoy (2005) argues, feminism, queer theory, and critical race
theory have transformed sociology so that scholars are held accountable for how they attend to
notions of fluidity, bias, and oppression. For him, “critical sociology is the conscience of
professional sociology just as public sociology is the conscience of policy sociology” (Burawoy
2005: 10).
Embodied Participants: Bringing the Gendered Body Back into the Sociological Discussion
Following the dominant essentialist and medicalized discourses surrounding the
marginalized body, it is not surprising that feminists and LGBT scholars suspended notions of
the body in their analyses. Feminist sociologists, in particular, struggled with merging concepts
of lived experiences and material outcomes with the female body (Jackson and Scott 2000).
Sociologists point out both the missing body within the historical study of sexualities (Plummer
2003) and the difficulty in distinguishing between the gendered and the sexual body (Butler
1990, 1993; Jackson and Scott 2000). For women, a gendered body equates to a sexualized body
or a body disciplined to appear sexually attractive to men (Bartky 1990; Jackson 2010).
Historically, discourses suggest that men are rational and objective, while women are viewed as
less than because they are seen as too emotional and ruled by their bodies (Frost 2001; Young
1990). Feminist sociologists, however, now make the distinction between a sexualized body, or a

39. Earles 39
body read as passive, and the sexual body, or one capable of giving, receiving, and experiencing
sexual pleasure and desire (Jackson and Scott 2000; Lindemann 1997).
The study of sexualities provides the theoretical and empirical framework for redirecting
the body back into research (Jackson and Scott 2000; Plummer 2003). While early works
separated the body from the reflexive self (Giddens 1991), other scholars took up the embodied
individual as central to their research in the 1980s (Armstrong 1983; Barker 1984; Feher,
Naddaff, and Tazi 1989; Johnson 1983; O’Neill 1985, 1989; Turner 1984). Sociologists began to
realize that social interaction is facilitated through bodily negotiations and that notions of social
identity are marked on the physical body. Contemporary scholars also argue that the body cannot
be abstracted from the mind, self, and social context in how sociologists think about the living
body in relationship to social space, pleasure, pain, and self-consciousness (Crawley, Fowley,
and Shehan 2008; Jackson and Scott 2000; Lindemann 1997; Turner 1993).
While Butler misses the conception of a reflexive, socially-embodied self in interaction
with others (Jackson and Scott 2000), sociologists can see the presence of an “I” that is part of
the social process of achieving subjectivity (Mead 1934). This perspective allows sociologists to
represent the body as inhabited and, in terms of sexuality, to recognize that while people use
their bodies to have sex, they also bring with them their biographies, social locations, and social
identities (Jackson 2010; Plummer 2003). To further the scope of inquiry, Plummer (2003) calls
for more autoethnographic work in the field sexuality and Green (2008) suggests a greater
emphasis on sexual desire. These calls extend the analytic lens to situate not only the participants
as sexually situated, but to include the researcher herself as a thinking and embodied sexual
being.

40. Earles 40
Ethnographic studies, in particular, situate the queer body and the ways people use bodily
performance to disrupt normative categories of gender and sexuality and to reorient the lines
between “us” and “them” (Hammers 2008; Taylor and Rupp 2003). As Vance (1998) argues,
sociologists must attend to different degrees of social constructionism to account for the ways
people experience different levels of embodiment based on their social location. Ethnography
provides sociologists the tools by which researchers can explore the particular, situated, and
everyday. Through her ethnography of a lesbian/queer bathhouse, Corie Hammers (2008) argues
that the theoretical divide between feminism and queer theory dissolves as the bodies of lesbians,
bisexuals, and transgendered people met in this sexual site. For her, the possibility of sexual
agency creates a “hybrid space” where queer bodies are “explored, valorized and encouraged”
(p. 160). Indeed, these works mark the current work of sociologists who draw upon the work of
feminists, queer theorists, social constructionists, and interactionists to create a distinctive type
of sociological thought. While the sociology of gender began from a functionalist standpoint, this
research signifies the ability of scholars and activists to transform academic work through the
radical rejection of essentialism. This work provides a space for women to speak from their
experiences, to account for the ways women enact social change, and to continue the critique of
those social institutions that oppress. Thanks to feminist, critical race, and queer sociologists, it is
not longer possible to ignore identity categories in any sociological study.

41. Earles 41
Works Cited
Acker, Joan. 2006. “Introduction: ‘The Missing Feminist Revolution’ Symposium.” Social
Problems 53 (4): 444-47.
Adam Barry. 1987. The Growth of a Gay and Lesbian Movement. Boston: Twayne.
Adkins, Lisa, and Vicki Merchant. 1996. Sexualizing the Social: Power and the Organization of
Sexuality. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Almaguer, Tomas. 1991. “Chicano Men: A Cartography of Homosexual Identity and Behavior.”
Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3 (2): 75-100.
Alonso, Ana Maria and Maria Teresa Koreck. 1993. “Silences: ‘Hispanics,’ AIDS, and Sexual
Practices.” Pp. 100-26 in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, edited by Henry Abelove,
Michele A. Barale, and David M. Halperin. New York: Routledge.
Altman Dennis. 1982. The Homosexualization of America. Boston: Beacon.
Alway, Joan. 1995. “The Trouble with Gender: Tales of the Still-Missing Feminist Revolution in
Sociological Theory.” Sociological Theory 13 (3): 209-228.
Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands: The New Mestiza = La Frontera. San Francisco:
Spinsters/Aunt Lute.
Armstrong, David. 1983. Political Anatomy of the Body: Medical Knowledge in Britain in the
Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barker, Francis. The Tremulous Private Body: Essays on Subjection. London: Methuen, 1984.
Beauvoir, Simone de. 1949. The Second Sex. New York: Knopf.
Becker, Howard. 1963. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
Bedolla, García L., Katherine Tate, and Janelle Wong. 2005. “Indelible Effects: The Impact of
Women of Color in the U.S. Congress.” Pp. 152-75 in Women in Elective Office, Past

42. Earles 42
Present and Future, 2nd ed., edited by Sue Thomas and Clyde Wilcox New York:
Oxford University Press.
Beechey, Veronica. 1979. “On Patriarchy.” Feminist Review 3: 55-82.
Best, Amy L. 2000. Prom Night: Youth, Schools, and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge.
Bhavnani, Kum-Kum and Margaret Coulson. 1986. “Transforming Socialist-Feminism: The
Challenge of Racism.” Feminist Review 23: 81-92.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo 2003. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence
of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Bose, Christine. 1987. “Dual Spheres.” Pp. 267-85 in Analyzing Gender: A Handbook of Social
Science Research, edited by Beth B. Hess, and Myra Marx Ferree. Newbury Park, CA:
Sage Publications.
Braidotti, Rosi. 1991. Patterns of Dissonance. Cambridge: Polity.
Braidotti, Rosi. 1994. “Feminism by Any Other Name.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist
Cultural Studies 6 (2/3): 27-61.
Braidotti, Rosi. 2002. Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Brehkus, Wayne. 2003. Peacocks, Chameleons, Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of
Social Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Breines, Wini. 1986. “The 1950s: Gender and Some Social Science.” Sociological Inquiry 56:
69-92.
Brickell, Chris. 2006. “The Sociological Construction of Gender and Sexuality.” The
Sociological Review 54 (1): 87-113.
Brod, Harry and Michael Kaufman. 1994. Theorizing Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

43. Earles 43
Brodkin, Karen 1992. How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in
America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Brodribb, Somer. 1992. Nothing Mat(T)Ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism. North
Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press.
Burawoy, Michael. 1996. “The Power of Feminism.” Perspectives: The ASA Theory Section
Newsletter 18 (3):4–7.
Burawoy, Michael. 2005. “2004 Presidential Address: For Public Sociology.” American
Sociological Review 70(1):4–28.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York:
Routledge.
Callis, April S. 2009. “Playing with Butler and Foucault: Bisexuality and Queer Theory.”
Journal of Bisexuality 9 (3 & 4): 213-33.
Carby, Hazel. 1982. “White Women Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood.”
Pp. 211-34 in The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 70s Britain, edited by Centre
for Contemporary Cultural Studies. London: Hutchinson.
Cealey Harrison, Wendy and John Hood-Williams. 2002. Beyond Sex and Gender. London:
Sage Publications.
Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of
Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.

44. Earles 44
Choo, Hae Yeon and Myra Marx Ferree. 2010. “Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological
Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions, and Institutions in the Study of
Inequalities.” Sociological Theory 28 (2): 129-49.
Collins, Dana. 2010. “’We’re There and Queer’: Homonormative Mobility and Lived Experience
among Gay Expatriates in Manila.” Gender & Society 25 (2): 465-93.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1989. “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought.” Signs 14:
745-73.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1995. “On West and Fenstermaker’s ‘Doing Difference.’” Gender &
Society 9 (4): 491-505.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the
Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2004. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New
Racism. New York: Routledge.
Combahee River Collective. 1977. The Combahee River Collective Statement: Black Feminist
Organizing in the Seventies and Eighties. Latham, NY: Kitchen Table: Women of Color
Press.
Connell, Raewyn. 1985. “Theorising Gender.” Sociology 19 (2): 260-72.
Connell, Raewyn. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Connell, Raewyn. 2002. Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Connell, Raewyn. 2005. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Crawley, Sara L. 2002. “Prioritizing Audience: Exploring the Differences between Stone Butch
and Transgender Identification.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 6: 11-21.

45. Earles 45
Crawley, Sara L. and Kendall Broad. 2008. “The Construction of Sex and Sexualities.” Pp. 545-
566 in Handbook of Constructionst Research. New York: Gulfport Press.
Crawley, Sara L., Lara J. Foley, and Constance L. Shehan. 2008. Gendering Bodies. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Daumer, Elisabeth D. 1992. “Queer Ethics: Or, the Challenge of Bisexuality to Lesbian Ethics.”
Hypatia 7 (4): 91-105.
Deaux, Kay and Mary Kite. 1987. “Thinking About Gender.” Pp. 92-117 in Analyzing Gender,
edited by Beth Hess and Myra Marx Ferree. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Delphy, Christine and Diana Leonard. 1992. Familiar Exploitation: A New Analysis of Marriage
in Contemporary Western Societies. Cambridge: Polity.
Delphy, Christine. 1984. Close to Home: A Materialist Analysis of Women’s Oppression.
London: Hutchinson.
Delphy, Christine. 1993. “Rethinking Sex and Gender.” Women’s Studies International 16 (1): 1-
9.
Deutsch, Francine. 2007. “Undoing Gender.” Gender & Society 21 (1): 106-27.
Devor, Holly. 1989. Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Dollimore, Jonathan. 1991. Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Durkheim, Émile. [1893] 1997. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. New York: Free Press.
England, Paula. 1999. “The Impact of Feminist Thought on Sociology.” Contemporary
Sociology 28 (3): 263-68.

46. Earles 46
Epstein Steven. 1996. “A Queer Encounter: Sociology and the Study of Sexuality.” Pp. 145-67 in
Queer Theory/Sociology, edited by Stephen Seidman, Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Epstein, Debbie, and Deborah Lynn Steinberg. 1995. “Twelve Steps to Heterosexuality?
Commonsensibilities on the Oprah Winfrey Show.” Feminism and Psychology 5:275-
280.
Epstein, Steven. 1987. “Gay Politics, Ethnic Identity: The Limits of Social Constructionism.” Pp.
134-59 in Social Perspectives in Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Reader, edited by Peter N.
Nardi and Beth E. Schneider. New York: Routledge.
Epstein, Steven. 1996. “A Queer Encounter: Sociology and the Study of Sexuality.” Pp. 145-67
in Queer Theory/Sociology, edited by Steven Epstein. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Faderman, Lillian. 1981. Surpassing the Love of Men. New York: Morrow.
Feher, Michel, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, eds. 1989. Fragments for a History of the
Human Body. New York, NY: Zone.
Ferber, Abby L. 1998. White Man Falling: Race, Gender and White Supremacy. Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield.
Ferber, Abby L. 2007. “Whiteness Studies and the Erasure of Gender.” Sociology Compass 1/1:
265-82.
Ferree, Myra Marx. 1990. “Beyond Separate Spheres: Feminism and Family Research.” Journal
of the Family and Marriage 52: 866-84.
Firestone, Shulamith. 1970. The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage
Books.

47. Earles 47
Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1. New York:
Vintage Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1985. Uses of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Volume 2. New York:
Vintage Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1986. The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Volume 3. New York:
Vintage Books.
Frankenberg, Ruth. 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Frost, Liz. 2001. Young Women and the Body: A Feminist Sociology. Houndmills, Basindstoke,
Hampshire: Palgrave.
Froyum, Carissa. 2007. “’At Least I’m Not Gay’: Heterosexual Identity Making among Poor
Black Teens.” Sexualities 10 (5): 603-22.
Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. Freedom, CA: The
Crossing Press.
Fuss, Diana. 1989. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference. New York: Routledge.
Fuss, Diana. 1991. Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. New York: Routledge.
Gagnon, John H., and William Simon. 1973. Sexual Conduct; The Social Sources of Human
Sexuality. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.
Galliher, John F., Wayne Brekhus, and David Patrick Keys. 2004. Laud Humphreys: Prophet of
Homosexuality and Sociology. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Gamson, Joshua and Dawne Moon. 2004. “The Sociology of Sexualities: Queer and Beyond.”
Annual Review of Sociology 30: 47-64.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Frentice-Hall.

48. Earles 48
Gatens, Moira. 1983. “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction.” Pp. 143-60 in Beyond
Marxism? Interventions After Marx, edited by Judith Allen and Paul Patton. New South
Wales: Intervention Publications
Gavey, Nicola. 1993. “Technologies and Effects of Heterosexual Coercion.” Pp. 93-1 19 in
Heterosexuality: A Feminism and Psychology Reader, edited by Sue Wilkinson and Celia
Kitzinger. London: Sage Publications.
Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Goffman, Erving. 1977. “The Arrangement Between the Sexes.” Theory and Society 4: 301-31.
Goffman, Erving. 1979. Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper & Row.
Goldthrope, John. 1983. “Women and Class Analysis: In Defense of the Conventional View.”
Sociology 17 (4): 445-58.
Goldthrope, John. 1984. “Women and Class Analysis: A Reply to the Replies.” Sociology 18 (4):
491-99l.
González-López, Gloria. 2005. Erotic Journeys: Mexican Immigrants and their Sex Lives.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gordon, Linda and Barrie Thorne. 1996. “Women’s Bodies and Feminist Subversions.”
Contemporary Sociology 25: 322–25.
Green, Adam Isaiah. 2002. “Gay But Not Queer: Toward a Post-Queer Study of Sexuality.”
Sociological Theory 31: 521–45.
Green, Adam Isaiah. 2007. “Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject and the Self in
Sexuality Studies.” Sociological Theory 25 (1): 26-45.

49. Earles 49
Green, Adam Isaiah. 2008. “Erotic Habitus: Toward a Sociology of Desire.” Theory and Society
37 (6): 597-626.
Grosz, Elizabeth A. 1995. Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. New
York: Routledge.
Grosz, Elizabeth. A. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Gutterman, David. 2001. “Postmodernism and the Interrogation Of Masculinity.” Pp. 56-71 in
The Masculinities Reader, edited Stephen Whitehead and Frank Barrett. Cambridge:
Polity.
Halperin, David. 1995. Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Halperin, David. 2002. How to do the History of Homosexuality, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Hammers, Corie and Alan D. Brown III. 2004. “Towards a Feminist-Queer Alliance: A
Paradigmatic Shift in the Research Process.” Social Epistemology 18 (1): 85-101
Hammers, Corie. 2008. “Bodies that Speak and the Promises of Queer: Looking to Two
Lesbian/Queer Bathhouses for a Third Way.” Journal of Gender Studies 17 (2): 147-64.
Haraway, Donna 1981. “In the Beginning was the Word: The Genesis of Biological Theory.”
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 6 (3): 469-81.
Haraway, Donna. 1978. “Animal Sociology and Natural Economy of the Body Politics, Pts. 1
and 2.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 4 (1): 21-36, 37-60.
Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the
Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14 (3): 575-99.

50. Earles 50
Harding, Sandra. 1983. “Why has the Sex/Gender System Become Visible Only Now?” pp. 311-
24 in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics,
Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, edited by Sandra Harding and Merrill B.
Hintikka. Dordrecth, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
Harding, Sandra. 2007. “Feminist Standpoints.” Pp. 45-69 in Handbook of Feminist Research:
Theory and Praxis, edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
Hartmann, Heidi. 1981. “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More
Progressive Union.” Pp. 1-42 in Women and Revolution: The Unhappy Marriage of
Marxism and Feminism, edited by Lydia Sargent. London: Pluto.
Hausman, Bernice L. 1995. Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Haywood, Chris, and Mairtin Mac an Ghaill. 2003. Men and Masculinities: Theory, Research,
and Social Practice. Buckingham: Open University.
Herek Gregory M. 1989. “Hate Crimes Against Lesbians And Gay Men.” American Psychologist
44: 948–55.
Heyes, Cressida J. 2003. “Feminist Solidarity after Queer Theory: The Case of Transgender.”
Signs 28 (4): 1093-120.
hooks, bell. 1982. Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism. Cambridge, MA: South End
Press.
Howard, Judith A. and Jocelyn Hollander. 1997. Gendered Situations, Gendered Selves.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

51. Earles 51
Hunter, Marcus Anthony. 2010. “All the Gays are White and all the Blacks are Straight: Black
Gay Men, Identity, and Community.” Sexuality Research and Policy 7 (2): 81-92.
Ingraham, Chrys. 1994. “The Heterosexual Imaginary.” Sociological Theory 12 (2): 203-19.
Ingraham, Chrys. 1999. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture. New
York: Routledge.
Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This Sex Which is not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Irvine, Janice. 2003. “The Sociologist as Voyeur: Social Theory and Sexuality Research, 1910-
1978.” Qualitative Sociology 26 (4): 429-56.
Jackson, Stevi. 1998. “Feminist Social Theory.” Pp. 12-33 in Contemporary Feminist Theories,
edited by Stevi Jackson and Jackie Jones. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Jackson, Stevi. 1999. Heterosexuality in Question. London: Sage Publications.
Jackson, Stevi. 2010. Theorizing Sexuality. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill International (UK) Ltd.
Jackson, Stevi and Amanda Rees. 2007. “The Appalling Appeal of Nature: The Popular
Influence of Evolutionary Psychology as a Problem for Sociology.” Sociology 41 (5):
917-30.
Jackson, Stevi and Sue Scott. 2000. “Putting the Body's Feet on the Ground: Towards a
Sociological Reconceptualization of Gendered Embodiment.” Pp. 9-24 in Constructing
Gendered Bodies, edited by Kathryn Beckett-Milburn and Linda McKie. New York:
Palgrave.
Jackson, Stevi and Sue Scott. 2002. “Introduction: The Gendering of Sociology.” Pp. 1-26 in
Gender: A Sociological Reader, edited by S. Jackson and S. Scott. New York: Routledge.
Jackson, Stevi, and Sue Scott. 1996. Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader. New York: Columbia
University Press.

52. Earles 52
Jacobson, Matthew Frye 1999. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the
Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jaggar, Alison. 1983. “Feminist Politics and Epistemology: The Standpoint of Women.” Pp. 353-
93 in Feminist Politics and Human Nature, edited by Sandra Harding. Totowa, NJ:
Rowman & Allenheld.
Jeffreys, Sheila. 2003. Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Jenness Valerie, Kendall Broad. 1994. “Anti-Violence Activism And The (In)Visibility Of
Gender In The Gay/Lesbian Movement And The Women’s Movement.” Gender &
Society 8: 402–23.
Johnson, Don. 1983. Body. Boston: Beacon Press.
Katz, Jonathan N. 1976. Gay American History. New York: Crowell.
Katz, Jonathan N. 1995. The Invention of Heterosexuality. New York: Dutton.
Kessler, Suzanne J. and Wendy McKenna. 1978. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach.
New York: John Wiley.
Kessler, Suzanne. 1998. Lessons From the Intersexed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press.
Keys, David Patrick. 2002. “Instrumental Sexual Scripting: An Examination Of Gender-Role
Fluidity In The Correctional Institution.”’ Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 18
(3): 258–78.
Kimmel, Michael S. 1995. The Politics of Manhood: Profeminist Men Respond to the
Mythopoetic Men's Movement (and the Mythopoetic Leaders Answer). Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.