Gender(s)

Why gender is strange, even when it''s played straight, and how race and money are two of its most dramatic ingredients.

In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kathryn Bond Stockton explores the fascinating, fraught, intimate, morphing matter of gender. Stockton argues for gender''s strangeness, no matter how "normal" the concept seems; gender is queer for everyone, she claims, even when it''s played quite straight. And she explains how race and money dramatically shape everybody''s gender, even in sometimes surprising ways. Playful but serious, erudite and witty, Stockton marshals an impressive array of exhibits to consider, including dolls and their new gendering, the thrust of Jane Austen and Lil Nas X, gender identities according to women''s colleges, gay and transgender ballroom scenes, and much more.

Stockton also examines gender in light of biology''s own strange ways, its out-of-syncness with "male" and "female," explaining attempts to