The -ism Series (11): Binarism

There is the tendency that gender is rather rigidly presented as a construct that "works along a male-female binarism in mass mediated accounts" (Sloop, 2004). This categorisation is criticised as those who do not clearly and permanently fall into one category are more likely to be stigmatised and marginalised (Preves, 2000). The limitations were firstly seen by feminists when queer theory came up in the 1990s (Kwok, 2005) since genderqueer individuals break gender binary.



- Kwok, P. (2005) Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press
- Preves, S. E. (2000) Negotiating the Constraints of Gender Binarism: Intersexuals' Challenge to Gender Categorization. Current Sociology, 48(3), 27-50
- Sloop, J. M. (2004) Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex Identity in Contemporary U.S. Culture. University of Massachusetts Press
- photograph by John Lewis Stage (1960) via