Debating Sex and Gender

"Debating Sex and Gender offers a clear, concise, and useful overview of methodological, interpretive, and historical distinctions between sex and gender. The text arrives with refreshingly transparent language, balanced analytical construction, and a compelling, enthusiastic tone that draws the reader into its points and points of view. Clearly directed toward undergraduates, it is the sort of text that will easily find its way into introduction to women's and gender studies courses."---Thomas F. DeFrantz, MIT

"The volume provides a clear, interesting, and comprehensive overview of the range of views concerning sex and gender. I predict that it will be used not only in women's studies classes, but also in feminist classes in various disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and sociology."---Nancy Tuana, Penn State University

"A concise yet rich guide to the sex/gender debates....Professor Warnke has crafted an incisive synthesis of debates around a set of questions that have consistently preoccupied scholars for nearly six decades."---Lessie Jo Frazier, Indiana University

The fifth volume in the Fundamentals of Philosophy Series, Debating Sex and Gender by Georgia Warnke is a concise yet in-depth introduction to contemporary feminist thought on sex and gender. Featuring a lucid and accessible writing style, the book focuses on four historical debates: the relation and possible distinction between sex (biologically based) and gender (culturaily based); questioning the binary (male-female) character of sex and gender; the idea of gender as a performance and as a performative; and the intersection of gender with race, class, and other features of identity. These discussions serve as guides for the first four chapters of the book. The fifth chapter strives to resolve the four issues by situating sex and gender within a broader theory of identity, arguing that sex and gender are ways of understanding who people are and do not define us any more than other characteristics do. Unique in its exploration of several different debates---and their relationship to each other---Debating Sex and Gender is ideal for use in a variety of feminist philosophy, women's studies, and gender studies courses.

Georgia Warnke is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of After Identity: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Gender (2008) and Legitimate Differences: Interpretation in the Abortion Controversy and Other Public Debates (1999).