Gender and sexuality can feel natural, even immutable. But science and lived experience tell us that these categories are far more variable than they may seem. At a time when dozens of states around the US have passed or are considering legislation to enforce rigid definitions of gender, Jack Halberstam, a queer theorist, and Zach Stafford, a journalist, discuss the fallaciousness of what scholars call the “gender binary.” Bringing an intersectional perspective, and looking at examples from women’s sports, they invite journalists to speak truth to the power that is exercised, often violently, through an insistence on “normative” ideas of gender and sexuality.
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.
