MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
A scholarly assessment of queer theory
MARY DAVIS recommends a timely exploration of the relationship between sex, gender and gender identity
DISCONTENT: Trans rights activists outside Portobello Library, Edinburgh, before a meeting to discuss transgender ideology in Scottish schools, March 2023
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
Sex and Gender: a contemporary reader
Alice Sullivan & Selina Todd, Routledge, £35.99
THIS is an important book. It is a scholarly, multi-disciplinary and very well researched exploration of the relationship between sex, gender and gender identity.
It is also a much needed and timely book because, as the editors point out, we are currently witnessing “the erasure of sex categories from language, public policy, discourse and data collection” and this has profound implications for women’s lives.
The authors of the 15 chapters of the book share a broad understanding that sex is biological, immutable and binary, and that gender is an ideological construct which imposes gendered constraints on individuals according to their sex. As such the book’s starting premise is the refutation of gender identity ideology.
More from this author
Women’s hard-fought-for rights are facing sustained and serious ideological attack. Let this International Women’s Day be a call to arms, says Professor MARY DAVIS
The proponents and enablers of Holocaust distortion and anti-communism now have increasing political power and influence in a number of European countries, obstructing an understanding of the reality of fascism’s crimes, warns MARY DAVIS
The infamous forged missive exposed how the Establishment worked to discredit Labour despite its loudly declared anti-communist stance, writes MARY DAVIS, analysing the 1924 government’s destruction
Despite some steps forward for women’s rights, the tasks ahead remain daunting as in many parts of the world these rights are being eroded and the clock is being turned back, argues MARY DAVIS
