Sex and Gender Beyond the Binaries

Research variables—“sex” polarized as “females” and “males,” “sexuality” polarized as “homosexuals” and “heterosexuals,” and “gender” polarized as “women” and “men”—reflect unnuanced series that conventionalize bodies, sexuality, and social location. Such research designs cannot include the experiences of hermaphrodites, pseudohermaphrodites, transsexuals, transvestites, bisexuals, third genders, and gender rebels as lovers, friends, parents, workers, and sports participants. Even if the research sample is restricted to putative “normals,” the use of unexamined categories of sex, sexuality, and gender will miss complex combinations of status and identity, as well as differently gendered sexual continuities and discontinuities. (Lorber, 1996, p. 144)