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The New Gender Paradox
Fragmentation and Persistence of the Binary
Judith Lorber
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Judith Lorber 2022
The right of Judith Lorber to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2022 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4435-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4436-3(pb)
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank Jonathan Skerrett, Polity editor, for suggesting this book. I’d also like to thank Susan Farrell, Kathleen Gerson, and Patricia Yancey Martin for their reviews at various stages and the anonymous reviewers of the first draft for their astute comments. Much of the book was written during the various levels of the COVID-19 lockdowns. That should have given me the gift of time, but anxiety over the pandemic often ate away at my ability to concentrate and write. I thank friends and East End Temple Sisterhood members for their psychological support.
The inspiration for the book came from J. Lorber (2018), “Paradoxes of Gender Redux: Multiple Genders and the Persistence of the Binary,” in J. W. Messerschmidt, P. Y. Martin, M. A. Messner, and R. Connell (eds), Gender Reckonings: New Social Theory and Research, New York: New York University Press.
Some material in the book is adapted from J. Lorber (2005), Breaking the Bowls: Degendering and Feminist Change, New York: W. W. Norton, and these articles and reviews: “Using Gender to Undo Gender: A Feminist Degendering Movement,” Feminist Theory 1 (2000): 101–18; “Constructing Gender: The Dancer and the Dance,” in J. A. Holstein and J. F. Gubrium (eds), Handbook of Constructionist Research, New York: Guilford Publications, (2008); “Review Essay: Gendered and Sexed Brains,”’ Contemporary Sociology 40 (2011): 405–9; “Review Essay: Why Do Bathrooms Matter?,” Contemporary Sociology 41 (2012): 598–602.
New York
March 31, 2021
Introduction
Recently, I received an email urging everyone to use gender-neutral pronouns – they, their, them. A longtime proponent of doing away with gender, I nonetheless found myself resisting the erasure of my identity as a woman, even at the cost of maintaining the gender binary that I believed was the source of women’s oppression. So I refused. I want to be identified as a woman – she, hers, her. I want women to be visible. Others responded similarly to the email and to an article in Scientific American (Saguy and Williams 2019a), especially women of color. They noted the need for visibility and recognition of accomplishments as well as identifying continued areas of discrimination (Hanna et al. 2019). At that point, I realized that one of the reasons for the persistence of the gender binary is the necessity of the continued valorization of women, especially those of denigrated groups.
Today, in western countries, we are seeing both the fragmentation of the gender binary (the division of the social world into two and only two genders) and its persistence. Multiple genders, gender-neutral pronouns and bathrooms, X designations on official documents and other manifestations of degendering are increasingly prevalent, and yet the two-gender structure of most social worlds persists.
The main gender paradox I explored over twenty-five years ago in Paradoxes of Gender (Lorber 1994) focused on the rhetoric of gender equality made meaningless by a total system that rendered women unequal and exploited. Today’s new gender paradox is a rhetoric of gender multiplicity undermined by a continuing bi-gendered social structure that supports continued gender inequality. Underneath the seeming erasure of a rigid gender binary and its discriminatory norms lurks the persistence of men’s power and patriarchal privilege.
When the concept of gender
