Sex and Gender

Understanding the concept of 'gender' in the context of social relations analysis remains a touchstone of gender and development research, teaching and training in many institutions in the UK and elsewhere.  However, outside of academia, within policy and activist arenas, the utility and relevance of 'gender' has been highly contested.  Indeed, in some policy applications, 'gender' has come to lose its feminist political content.  This paper explores conflicting discourses on the relevance and meaning of gender in policy and activist contexts.  We draw on debates over 'gender' aired at the NGO (non-government organisation) Forum of the United Nations (UN) Fourth World Conference on Women, in Huairou, China, in September 1995.  This Conference provided an extraordinary opportunity to investigate a vast range of contemporary policy and activist discourses, given the very broad spectrum of interest groups represented there.

McMath (2105) argues that while a child’s interest in future autonomy should generally be respected in relation to his own interests, the well-being of other parties may require that his autonomy be overridden in the interests of public health. At the same time, McMath seems conflicted about whether the seriousness of the threat of HIV, especially in developed countries, can in fact justify the sacrifice of individual freedom that is entailed by circumcision in infancy or early childhood (that is, the freedom to make one’s own decision about whether to undergo an elective genital surgery at an age of understanding). In this context, McMath’s discussion about the child’s interest in making decisions that reflect his mature preferences and values when he is older is compelling. But when considering arguments for paternalism in the name of public health, we suggest that McMath moves too quickly from certain empirical premises to associated policy proposals, skipping over gaps in evidence as well as important questions of value.

Abstract. Purpose of review: To survey recent arguments in favor of preserving the genital autonomy of children—female, male, and intersex—by protecting them from medically unnecessary genital cutting practices. Recent findings: Nontherapeutic female, male, and intersex genital cutting practices each fall on a wide spectrum, with far more in common than is generally understood. When looking across cultures and comparing like cases, one finds physical, psychosexual, and symbolic overlaps among the three types of cutting, suggesting that a shared ethical framework may be needed. Summary: All children have an interest in genital autonomy, regardless of their sex or gender.

The Routledge Handbook of Neoliberalism seeks to offer a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon of neoliberalism by examining the range of ways that it has been theorized, promoted, critiqued, and put into practice in a variety of geographical locations and institutional frameworks. Neoliberalism is easily one of the most powerful discourses to emerge within the social sciences in the last two decades, and the number of scholars who write about this dynamic and unfolding process of socio-spatial transformation is astonishing. Even more surprising though is that there has, until now, not been an attempt to provide a wide-ranging volume that engages with the multiple registers in which neoliberalism has evolved. The Handbook of Neoliberalism accordingly serves as an essential guide to this vast intellectual landscape. With proposed contributions from over 50 leading authors, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will offer a systematic overview of neoliberalism’s origins, political implications, social tensions, spaces, natures and environments, and aftermaths in addressing ongoing and emerging debates. Numerous books have been published on neoliberalism, including important edited volumes, but none of these contributions have attempted to bring the diverse scope and wide-ranging coverage that we plan to incorporate here. Most of the edited volumes and monographs on neoliberalism that have been published to date have a very specific thematic focus, either on particular empirical case studies, or alternatively attempt to wrestle with a specific theoretical concern. In contrast, the Routledge Handbook of Neoliberalism aims to provide the first comprehensive overview of the field.

With authors working at institutions around the world, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will offer a thorough examination of how neoliberalism is understood by social scientists working from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Our goal is to advance the established and emergent debates in a field that has grown exponentially over the past two decades, coinciding with the meteoric rise of neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology, state form, policy and program, and governmentality. In short, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will intervene by both outlining how theorizations of neoliberalism have evolved and by exploring new research agendas that we hope will inform policy making and activism. The Handbook of Neoliberalism will include a substantive introductory chapter and seven main thematic sections. By presenting a comprehensive examination of the field, this edited volume will serve as an invaluable resource for undergraduates, graduate students, and professional scholars alike. We envision the book as both a teaching guide and a reference for human geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, heterodox economists, and others working on questions of neoliberalism and its multifarious effects.

Testosterone (T) is generally understood to influence sexual behavior, but how T responds to sexuality is less well characterized across vertebrate species. Here, we review and synthesize findings on sexual modulation of T in primates (including humans), birds, fish, and rodents, with attention to the specific elements of sexual situations that drive T responses. We use a comparative perspective to show how research with females and males from a wide distribution of taxa provides novel insights for understanding effects of
sexuality on T in humans. Among other patterns, our cross-species synthesis highlights a) the importance of the context surrounding a sexual interaction, over and above specific
sensory modalities, to sexual modulation of T; b) that changes in T and changes in sexual behavior or arousal do not always occur in concert; c) that sexual contexts may be especially likely to increase T when coupled with aggression or competition, but sexuality contributes to T profiles independently as well; and d) that variation in T responses may be adaptive in balancing behavioral and physiological costs and benefits of T.We discuss how broadening the ways sexuality is defined, and especially decoupling sexuality from reproduction, would
further clarify predictors and potential functions of sexually-modulated T. Overall, effects of sexuality on T across species highlight the malleability of androgens, particularly in response
to the social environment. Not only does sexual behavior affect T, but the social environment in turn modulates the extent of sexuality’s effect on T.