Introduction to Feminist Studies
take-home exam questions

Before you begin writing your answers, be sure to read the general instructions for take-home exams in the assignments section of the syllabus. Before you write, I would also strongly recommend that you read students’ exemplary responses to the take-home midterm.

take-home final

Due on 22 April no later than 9:30 a.m. in Dr. GM’s office (Mood 216).

Part 1: Short-answer
Answer TWO of the following questions. Each answer should be a page in length.

1. In her 1988 novel about Antigua, entitled A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid wrote:

The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being. You are not an ugly person all the time; you are not an ugly person ordinarily; you are not an ugly person day to day. From day to day, you are a nice person. From day to day, all the people who are supposed to love you on the whole do. From day to day, as you walk down a busy street in the large and modern and prosperous city in which you work and live, dismayed, puzzled (a cliché, but only a cliché can explain you) at how alone you feel in this crowd, how awful it is to go unnoticed, how awful it is to go unloved, even as you are surrounded by more people than you could possibly get to know in a lifetime that lasted for millennia, and then out of the corner of your eye you see someone looking at you and absolute pleasure is written all over that person’s face, and then you realize that you are not as revolting a presence as you think you are (for that look just told you so).... One day when you are sitting somewhere, alone in that crowd… you make a leap from being that nice blob just sitting like a boob in your amniotic sac of the modern experience to being a person visiting heaps of death and ruin and feeling alive and inspired at the site of it; to being a person lying on some faraway beach, your stilled body stinking and glistening in the sand, looking like something first forgotten, then remembered, then not important enough to go back for; to being a person marveling at the harmony (ordinarily, what you would say is the backwardness) and the union these other people (and they are other people) have with nature. And you look at the things they can do with a piece of ordinary cloth, the things they fashion out of the cheap, vulgarly colored (to you) twine, the way they squat down over a hole they have made in the ground, the hole itself is something to marvel at, and since you are being an ugly person this ugly but joyful thought will swell inside you: their ancestors were not clever in the way yours were and not ruthless in the way yours were, for then would it not be you who would be in harmony with nature and backwards in that charming way? An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you.

Discuss the historical, economic, and cultural factors that could have led Kincaid to make this statement. In your answer, refer not only to this paragraph but also to other materials we have read this semester.

2. View the following on-line editorial cartoon by American political cartoonist Ann Telnaes. (To access the cartoon, click here. On the left-hand side of the page, click on “Women’s Issues.” From that page, click on the 12th image, which should be the last image in the second row.) In the first part of your response, very briefly describe the message of Telnaes’ cartoon. Then devote the rest of your response to analyzing and evaluating that message, using readings that we have done this semester. In your analysis, consider particularly this question: Does Telnaes have a realistic understanding of transnational feminist organizing?

3. Consider the following 2002 cover from Sports Illustrated, which depicts now-retired basketball star Charles Barkley. Use our readings on visual representation, colonialism, and consumer culture to write a feminist analysis of this image.

Part 2: Essay
Answer ONE of the following questions. Your answer should be three pages in length.

1. What is transnational feminism? Why is it important for feminists to analyze situations beyond the borders of one nation-state? Devote about half your essay to revealing how transnational analysis transforms one particular issue (of your choosing) that is of concern to feminists.

2. We have seen in this course that feminisms must address power differences across racial, ethnic, sexual, class, and other lines. One might conclude that feminism should no longer consider gender discrimination to be the center of its analysis and activism; rather, feminism should focus equally on every type of unwarranted discrimination. Do you agree? Or should analysis of (and activism around) gender difference still constitute the heart of feminism? Support your argument by analyzing readings from any part of the course, but be sure to include substantial discussion of readings that we have done since 23 March.

take-home midterm

Due on 9 March no later than 10:30 a.m. in Dr. GM’s office (Mood 216).

Part 1: Short-answer
Answer TWO of the following questions. Each answer should be a page in length.

1. Go back to your notes from our first day of class, and find the list that we generated of things that people commonly associate with feminism. In your answer, focus on one of those positive or negative associations (or two closely related ones). Using Freedman’s history, answer the following two questions: what historical grounds do you now have for believing that this association is mistaken (or not) and why (or why not)? What clues does Freedman give us as to why our contemporaries have come to make this association with feminism?
   
2. One of the central tenets of this course is that we cannot fully understand feminism unless we understand it transnationally. In other words, studying only the American and European contexts does not give us a complete picture of feminism. Find one example in Freedman’s book where the author discusses a gender, sexuality, class and/or race issue outside the U.S. and Europe. Briefly describe what Freedman says about this example. Then spend the majority of your answer discussing how that example changes the way that you understand that chapter of the book and the broader history of feminism that Freedman relates.
3. After re-examining sections 1, 2, and 4 of Grewal and Kaplan, what do you think is the strongest argument made here that science and medicine can be powerful allies for feminists? On the flip side, what about science and medicine might make them problematic as allies for feminists?
   

Part 2: Essay
Answer ONE of the following questions. Your answer should be three pages in length.

1. Freedman calls her book a history of feminism, but it is really a history of feminisms. On what central tenets have feminists across time periods and cultures tended to agree, and on what key issues have they most profoundly disagreed? In other words, what has most promised to hold feminist movements together and what has most threatened to tear them apart? Spend the last page of your answer discussing how these agreements and disagreements affect the validity of Freedman’s claim that the “feminist revolution will succeed” (347). [A few tips on answering this question: First, make sure to include discussion of feminisms outside the U.S. and Europe. Second, do not try to discuss either every fault line that divides feminist movements nor every tenet that holds them together. Rather, select the ones that you believe to be the most important, and indicate why you take those to be the most important.]
   
2. Many of the readings in the first part of the course (Freedman, Bornstein, and the authors excerpted in Grewal and Kaplan’s sections 1, 2, and 4) argue that we should not place too much stock in essentialistic conceptions of sex. In about one page of your essay, summarize how and why they argue this. In the remaining two pages of your answer, analyze this evidence and determine whether it leads you (a) to believe more firmly that some aspects of sex difference still are essential and unchanging (because you find some or many aspects of these arguments unconvincing – discuss why); (b) to believe that there is no such thing as sex difference and absolutely “anything goes” when it comes to gender (either show that our authors actually argue that, or explain why you believe in total gender relativism even if the authors do not argue for it); or (c) to believe that while some biological sex differences exist, much of what we take to be natural is really cultural construction (indicate what in the texts leads you to sort sexual/biological and gender/cultural difference in this way). [A few tips on answering this question: First, there is no one right answer among (a), (b), and (c), though there are easier and more difficult options to defend. The key to “getting it right” is therefore not picking the “right” option, but rather defending your view well using specifics from the texts. Second, make sure to deal with Freedman, Bornstein, and Grewal and Kaplan in your answer. Third, realize that these authors will not agree with each other on every point. When you encounter a disagreement, indicate whose position you find more convincing and why.]

One association with feminism my fellow peers made was its dominance by white women. As a woman of color I identified myself as Chicana as opposed to feminist. Feminist groups I was familiar with all seemed to be composed of middle-class white women, a group which I can relate to on very few levels. As I read Freedman she discussed the role and level of involvement women of color played throughout the course of the feminist movement. She gave early historical examples such as “Free African American women [who] stood at the intersection of abolitionism and women’s rights” (78). These are associations I have never made with feminism. There were indeed black women who were actively fighting for their rights as women but first and foremost as a people. People make association of feminism with white women because there was a point in time when the women’s rights movement was composed of mainly privileged, white women who “ignored these growing racial injustices” (79). Many women of color ardently believe that white women ignored the needs of women of color throughout time. “By making white women’s experiences their standard, both liberal and radical feminists overlooked the perspectives of women of color (89). The first and second wave feminism addressed issues that were of concern to white women, such as their liberation from domestic chores and the possibility of gaining economic independence by working. This failed to acknowledge the fact that women of color were already a part of the workforce because they had to provide for their families. It has not been until recently that women of color have been incorporated into feminist rhetoric and brought up critical issues addressing race, class and gender. As a result of these women having “opened a cultural space for further explorations of multiple identities” (91), I can now say I’m a feminist.

Science’s greatest power is its ability to show the inaccuracy of previously held beliefs and if it is coupled with thoughtful social analysis can bring enlightenment to the equality to the world. The practice of female circumcision in the remote villages of Africa is believed to ‘purify’ the women of that culture. Scientific studies show that “survivors are prone to a host of medical complications that can plague them throughout their lives, including recurrent infections, pain during intercourse, infertility and obstructed labor that can cause babies to be born dead or brain damaged” (Abusharaf 99). Science helps feminism in this aspect by showing that whatever the benefits of Female Circumcision are believed to be, they do not out weigh the consequences these girls are forced to endure. Science coupled with Social analysis shows that the practice should be ended, but as it is so entwined into the culture and belief systems of the people of Africa, the social aspects of the practice must be evaluated in the pursuit to stop it. Thus with science and social analysis together vast amounts of progress can be made.
    Possibly the most damaging thing science can do to feminism is perpetuate false theories: “A scientist may fail to see something that is right under his or her nose because currently accepted theory cannot account for the observation”(Fausto-Sterling 43). The problem with this as it relates to feminism is that scientists will take a small group of people and use them to test an entire society. The experimental populations are usually white middle class subjects “from which a scientist draws conclusions about all males and females“(Fausto-Sterling 42). This creates false conclusions that can hurt women’s struggle for equality with men. In fact, science fails to take into perspective any social variations which could alter test results. An experiment that exemplifies this is that “scientists concluded from such results (boys do better than girls in math on college entrance exams) that boys are better at math than girls....Girls take fewer math courses in high school” (Fausto-Sterling 42). Since scientists over looked this fact, they based an attribute on gender that had nothing to do with it.

The feminist revolution that has been occurring now for over two centuries is much unlike any other political or national revolution found throughout history. Rather than being confined to a single area, people, or ideology, feminist movements span beyond borders, across racial and class dividers, and incorporate numerous fields of thought and discipline. One cannot endeavor to explore the history of feminism by looking at a single people during a single place in time and hope to gain much insight into how and why this movement came into being. Instead, we must turn to the historical transitions that initially catalyzed feminism and then follow its progress, as it became a transforming political and social power that affected women worldwide. Along the way, there will be areas and times where certain facets of one movement have conflicted or threatened those of another group, class, or race. Still at other times, commonalities in disparate peoples and parties has bound women together, allowing movements to move forward. Despite inevitable opposition and backlash to feminism throughout history, its multifaceted nature and adaptability has allowed it to persevere, creating foundations for lasting changes to societies worldwide.
        Central to the creation of feminist politics and activism are the rise of capitalist thought and democracy. Capitalism led to the diminishment of traditional mutuality within families, endowing men with economic power and opportunities while making women their dependents. The growth of democracy paralleled that of capitalism, granting political rights and privilege to men only. These changes, in effect, led women in North America and Europe to identify the growing inequalities and demand they be resolved (Freedman 2). Ironically, it is these very structures that provided the means by which women could address and initiate changes to their surrounding systems of patriarchy, oppression, and injustice (46).
        Colonialism by Europe and the United States allowed for the spread of Western feminisms to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America. Colonial rule and imperialism contradicted the democracy the Europeans were supposed to purport. The colonists exhibited an air of superiority over cultures due to their treatment of women. Examples include Chinese foot bind, African polygyny, and female genital cutting (97). Feminist criticisms of this hypocrisy surfaced, yet many European feminist critiques also contained aspects of discrimination and racism. The colonized people were often viewed as uncivilized, with women being helpless to the throes of relentless patriarchy (98). Still, colonial subjects were able to incorporate Western feminist thoughts into their own movements. Women’s education, work opportunities, suffrage, and marriage rights were the focus of reforms in India (100). Anticolonial movements in Egypt overlapped with feminist action against Egyptian customs of female seclusion and veiling (101). Black women in South Africa partook in antiapartheid movements that addressed feminist as well as broader social issues (102).
        Westernization did not always aid women in their movements and fights for equality. As already mentioned, some Western women still held women of other cultures at an inferior status. The problems and issues faced by middle and upper class activists were not the same as those concerning women in foreign and third world countries. This led in some cases to resentment between feminists across racial, cultural, and national lines. Some countries used a top-down approach to enforce Westernization and European feminism. Turkey began to outlaw traditional family code and adopt women’s suffrage and education opportunities (103). Other countries, such as Algeria, rejected European, particularly French, colonialism. The government “dismissed calls for women’s emancipation along with most things European” (104). Thus, we can see that although exposure of peoples to Western practices of democracy and capitalism helped spread feminist thought and action in some countries, for others it served to threaten solidarity between peoples.
        Freedman remains confident that the “feminist revolution will succeed” (347). With the end of the age of colonialism, we are now entering a world that is increasingly becoming interconnected and urbanized through modernization. This is not to say that humans are now becoming more homogenous. Differences between cultures and peoples are now more easily identified and are increasingly being accepted and respected. The unique situations for women in different countries, races, and class are becoming more evident, and feminist thought and education is better prepared to address these now than ever before. Through the spread of democracy and industrial capitalism, women are being allowed increased opportunities in education, work, and political activity. This is inevitably leading to victory after victory in the struggle for gender justice. Transnational interaction of women’s groups, economic globalization, and ease of communication are not only sustaining but also promoting the growth of feminist politics and women’s justice on an unprecedented scale. Though inequality persists and backlashes still occur, attention to gender and sex relations between men and women has never been stronger. We find it in protests, grassroots movements, art, music, literature, and politics. Along with this is the identification of connections between gender issues and issues concerning race and class. In recognizing the multifaceted nature of the movement that feminism defines, it becomes clear that our diverse world will indeed sustain feminism and its triumphs.

Version 1: Essentialistic conceptions of sex have come into light as one of the major determinants behind sex discrimination. Many of the readings from the first part of this course have argued that we should not place too much stock in these essentialistic ideas. However, they all argue it for different reasons and support their arguments using very different and unique approaches.
        In No Turning Back, Estelle B. Freedman argues her case by evaluating essentialism from an active feminist stance. Defining people by their biology tends to give power to men almost based on their genitalia alone. This leaves females (and transgenders) at a disadvantage, both “economically and politically,” and forces them to endure the “social consequences,” which is exactly what feminists are fighting against (Freedman 204). To convince the reader that sexual biology is too unreliable to be used as a measuring device, Freedman presents a cultural example of how “biology is also variable, both culturally and individually” (Freedman 203). And instead of accepting the female/male dichotomy, Freedman describes how feminists are “building upon the Western ideal of self-determination” and “recognizing a range of possible identities” (Freedman 204-205).
        While many of the authors presented in Grewal and Kaplan’s book, An Introduction to Women’s Studies, would agree that essentialistic conceptions of sex are wrong, their argument is based more on a scientific approach to the subject. According to the majority of the writings, we should try to avoid determining gender based solely on biology because it gives science the power to “naturalize our social conventions about gender” rather than seek the truth (Martin 15). By presenting different examples of how cultures across the world define gender as well as different views on what constitutes good scientific inquiry, the authors presented by Grewal and Kaplan offer a convincing argument that maybe gender and sex are not something that can be defined.
        In My Gender Workbook, Kate Bornstein would fight the female/male dichotomy whether it was based on biology or not. To Bornstein, “gender, this thing we’re all seemingly born with, is a major restraint to self-expression” (Bornstein 1), and it creates a world in which only a few people of the ideal gender have oppressive power over everyone else (Bornstein 39-41). By redefining the term gender as “anything that categorizes people” and the term sex as “fucking”, Bornstein “robs essentialist thinkers of their biological imperative,” but ze does so in an interesting, and very personal, manner (Bornstein 26-27). Bornstein also supports hir case by providing the reader with many examples of how “we all change our genders” on a day to day, even hour to hour, basis (Bornstein 9).
        After analyzing the arguments presented by Freedman, Bornstein, and the authors excerpted in Grewal and Kaplan’s book, I have changed my opinions about sex and gender. Before these readings, I just accepted the female/male dualism as natural. However, I now believe that while there are still some biological sex differences, much of what I’ve assumed to be natural about gender/sex differences are actually socially constructed.
The most convincing argument for me involved Bornstein’s ideas of identity. Bornstein first states that “gender is a kind of identity, that’s all” (Bornstein 30). Bornstein then goes on to prove that we all “shift” our identities (and thus our genders) all of the time by providing everyday examples like how “we’re usually not the same kind of man or woman with our lover as we are with our boss or a parent” (Bornstein 8). No other texts provided such a clear, logical and thorough explanation of how to look at gender if we don’t want to consider it the same thing as our biological sex. Freedman does briefly mention that we could “categorize humans based on behaviors or personality traits,” but this still doesn’t help the reader understand how more than two genders can exist because she doesn’t explain the relationship between gender and identity (Freedman 204).
        Freedman did, however, provide another intriguing argument that I had not considered beforehand. While most people think biology is a constant thing that never changes, Freedman shows how biology can vary between cultures. The !Kung women of southwestern Africa only menstruate a few times during their whole lifetime (as compared to once every month in America) because of their culture’s particular diet and exercise (Freedman 203). By not fitting what most people consider to be the norm for female biology, the !Kung tribe (and other cultures like them) make it difficult for science to give an exact definition to sex/gender, which is exactly Freedman’s point. Bornstein takes Freedman’s argument a step further by explicitly stating that “there is too much disagreement about what constitutes a ‘real man’, and what constitutes a ‘real woman’ for there to be one acceptable document containing the absolute definitions of either” (Bornstein 3). Although Freedman’s cultural example strongly supports Bornstein’s statement, the most convincing proof can be seen in the selection of writings collected by Grewal and Kaplan, because one can more readily compare between articles how different cultures define gender. In Western culture, the ovaries “were thought to be the ‘essence’ of femininity itself” but have currently been replaced with hormones (Oudshoorn 9-10). In many Islamic cultures, bodies are “gendered depending on how hot or cold and wet or dry they are” (Laderman 17). And the Chinese describe males and females with “the aspects of yin and yang” while recognizing “variation in sexual behavior and gender roles” (Furth 20). Seeing how different the definitions of sex and gender can be between only three different cultures proves that definitive answers to sex and gender questions do not exist in science, and that gender must be something that is applied by culture, not nature. This simple argument sparked me to ask myself how I would define males and females. What I discovered was that most people I know, including myself, have both “feminine” and “masculine” qualities, which further convinced me that “gender” doesn’t really exist.
        Once Freedman and Bornstein established that gender is just another form of identity that biology cannot define, they both began to explore what gender is. According to Bornstein, “gender assignment is something that’s done to each of us, before we have the ability to have any say” (Bornstein 28). What is “done” to us is the act of having “social meanings attached to [our biological sexes] male and female” (Freedman 204). Both Bornstein and Freedman imply that culture creates the female/male identities and not nature. However, Carole S. Vance, the author of “Social Construction Theory: Problems in the History of Sexuality”, suggests that even though sexuality can be considered socially constructed, it “does not mean that individuals have an open-ended ability to construct themselves” (Vance 29). While Vance does acknowledge that social construction has taken place, I believe that her main concern in this article is that the new social construction theory has gone to the opposite extreme of essentialism and has “made no room for the body, its functions and physiology” (Vance 30). Vance acknowledges that we may need to find a road somewhere in-between the two extremes and I find myself agreeing with her. We should not forget the truths we do know about our bodies through science. One cannot disagree with the fact that males and females serve different biological functions in reproduction (such as females carry the child in her womb) or the fact that females and males carry different reproductive organs. However, since she does not fully elaborate on where to draw the line between body biology and social construction, her argument only presented me with an idea to think about and a reminder that science isn’t all completely imaginary.
        In the end, I find myself believing in the bare minimum of sex biology that deals more with bodily parts and functions and believing that gender is in fact a set of socially constructed standards of behavior. On the personal level, I still have yet to figure out where I sit amongst the many genders, but my mind is now open to what is out there in the “no-gender” world (Bornstein 14).

Version 2: The beginning of Kate Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook provides a perfect point of departure for an exploration of sex and/or gender. “From the moment we take our first breath (and sometimes even before that, what with sonic imaging technology), the cry ‘It’s a boy’ or ‘It’s a girl’ ushers us into this world” (1). This classification of “boy” or “girl” then stays with us (supposedly in a rather static form) throughout the course of our life. And, ultimately, (as the texts we have encountered so far in this class illustrate in various ways,) this gender shapes and guides the course that our life may take.
        The gender assignment that is granted so much importance in our society of “male” and “female” is given to us at birth and is based on the sex, or the “biological genitalia” that the doctor observes. How incredibly absurd Bornstein feels this is becomes apparent in hir work, particularly when ze speaks about how people who are “in between” at birth are “forced to have one or another,” and then assigned the role of male or female. This is one example of an “essentialist conception” of sex, because the traits of that human being – the traits that are expected of the gender that it was is assigned to – are relegated to the individual based on the physical attribute of genitalia. This “relegation” occurs, in part, because of previously determined ideals of what one’s genitalia may/should look like, and what this physical attribution means for the traits that the human being will exhibit.
        Freedman also takes up a very similar line of exploration in Part IV of No Turning Back. She notes that many critics of feminism point to markers of the body, and to women’s “reproductive capacity,” to show how women are created for a certain purpose and must “depend on men” (203). “Yet biology is also variable,” Freedman reminds us, and this variation comes culturally and individually (204). Not all women have the same kind of genitalia, and neither do mean. What does it mean if a “woman” can not have children? Or if a person has both testes and ovaries? Where do these people fit? Or, to take up the cultural line of exploration, what if we began to see that the very fact that we do view sex as a signifier shows that sex itself is culturally constructed, and not merely something that “gender” is laid on top of. What would considerations such as these do to our concepts of sex and gender?
        In Grewal and Kaplan’s Introduction to Women’s Studies we are introduced to one possible answer to this. In Emily Martin’s “The Egg and the Sperm,” for example, we can begin to see how the language of science (which we tend to think of as objective and free from prejudice) can reflect “biases against women that are shared by the societies in which this knowledge is produced” (12). Many scientific texts “have an almost dogged insistence on casting female processes in a negative light” (13). The sperm production is celebrated because “continuous from puberty to senescence, while they portray egg production as inferior because it is finished at birth” (13). Martin reads these descriptions by recognizing the essentialized notions of masculine and female bodies that are at work (i.e. the passive female body and the active, productive male body.) These notions of female/male (“essential” in that all possible variations or differences are reduced the idea of the “essence” of masculinity and femininity) thus even invade science, our supposedly objective and “scientific” safe place. These notions of essence are extrapolated even throughout the reproductive system, in such metaphors as the large passive egg and the incredibly productive sperm.
        All three of these examples from the texts give us new frameworks for looking at bodies through the questioning of our essentialistic conceptions of sex. The various extrapolations (such as through the example of scientific descriptions) that occur as a result of these conceptions are widespread. As Bornstein says, “gender is everywhere.” I believe, however, that all three of our “possible answers” to this midterm question are not only all entirely possible, but can even exist as “right options” alongside one another. One example of this is that all of the answers are represented, simultaneously and in some powerful ways, in Bornstein’s My Gender Workbook. [Footnote: I also think that all three of these answers could be taken up with the other texts as well (although, to be honest, I am much less interested and challenged by Freedman’s attempt to problematize sex/gender/biology, as while I think that she recapitulates some good stuff from other theorists, particularly De Beauvoir, I think that her immediate transitions from this to “non-western” examples are pretty disturbing.)]
        Through this reading we can begin to see that yes, “sex is.” Gender is. It can be seen. It is a material, visceral, physical part of our bodies, one that we do indeed often experience and see as unchanging. We do have genitalia, and that genitalia does function in certain ways in this world we live in, and does mean certain things depending on our cultural contexts.
        But, at the same time, the possibilities are – as Bornstein tells us – endless. We can believe in “gender relativism” and the complete absurdity of the importance we place on “sexual difference” at the same time as we realize how real and influential this sexual difference is in our lives. Bornstein hirself seems to live in this place of “in between.” “I’ve been saying for some years now that I don’t have a gender” ze says, “that gender is a trap, a chimera” (256). Ze goes on to say that while it is fine to say, and even to believe, in this, “the sad fact is that despite all our wonderful spiritual or philosophical takes on identity and the nature of gender, gender is here in the world and people are oppressing each other for no other reason than gender itself” (257). I am inclined to say that the answer does not lie in any sort of clear demarcation of natural/cultural. While these concepts help us to understand how deeply influenced our lives, views, and bodies are by our culture(s) it is also important to consider that there is no “blank slate” waiting to receive the markings of culture. Even our thinking on this “blank slate” is marked by our cultural processes, as the examples from Emily Martin’s work and our thoughts on the sex/gender distinction can show us. One possibility, however, is to resist the Western need for “either/or” and to remain firmly in a state of “all,” a state of possibility. By doing this we can live in a place of contradiction; a place that we are told from birth (it’s a boy! it’s a girl!) is not somewhere we can live. Bornstein gives us many ways to begin exploring this place of possibility. “Maybe it is important,” ze says, “that our revolution not rely on binary, linear methods, lest by relying on them in one are of our lives, we fall back into relying upon binaries in all or many things that we do (65).