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Defeating Bigenderism: Changing Gender Assumptions in the Twenty-first Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Miqqi Alicia Gilbert
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Abstract

Bigenderism maintains there are only two genders, which correspond with the two sexes, male and female. Basic bigenderism requires that legal documents and public institutions designate a single invariant gender (that is, sex). Strict bigenderism applies these categories in a social context that stigmatizes “imperfect” men and women who do not reach ideals set by the bigenderist schema. I discuss these concepts and their implications, present three models that successively weaken bigenderist assumptions, and argue for the most radical of the three.

Type
Transgender Studies and Feminism: Theory, Politics, and Gendered Realities
Information
Hypatia , Volume 24 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Transgender Studies and Feminism: Theory, Politics, and Gendered Realities , Summer 2009 , pp. 93 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Hypatia, Inc.

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