What are the must-read books on sexuality and gender?
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Brianna Ruffin, Random college grad. New writer on Medium.
Answered Jan 5, 2016
In one of my courses on sexuality and gender, we read the following books:
Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran: Afsaneh Najmabadi
I liked this book because it offered a new way of looking at sexuality and gender that differed from what's common in Western countries. It also added nuance to international discussions that tend to portray the West as right and everyone else as "backwards," and talks a lot about the activism of transes, who are often portrayed as helpless victims who need to be saved by the West. I like how it presents these different perspectives as just that, different, not somehow worse than the ideas we have in the West. I also like that they used the terms that queer people in Iran use to describe themselves. I think in the United States it's easy to use terms like "gay" and "lesbian" in other countries, as though being queer in another country is the same as being queer in the United States, when in reality those words may be used in other languages to describe specific groups and other words may not mean quite the same thing.
Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora: Martin F. Manalansan IV
I liked this book because (as far as I know), the author was the first to challenge Western ideas of sexuality and gender that assume that other ways of viewing these issues are "backward" and eventually "progressive" countries will believe the same things as the United States. I also thought it was interesting to read his discussion of how queerness is different in different countries. This book is about the experiences of bakla, and queerness in this context is very much tied to gender, though in the United States we normally think of sexuality and gender as distinct and unrelated. It opened my eyes to a new way of looking at gender and sexuality and made me challenge journalism in the United States about the experiences of queer people in other countries.
I think both books are a good addition to gender and sexuality studies.
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Parke Muth, I write book reviews, interview authors and journalists and read a lot
Answered Feb 5, 2013
Foucault's History of Sexuality is a must I think as so much of what is written even now takes its vocabulary and point of view for granted. Judith Butler writes on the topics with a more Lacanian slant at least in her early work. And if you are going to read her then Lacan's seminar on Feminine Sexuality is very useful.
