The gender binary and the invention of race

The Gender Binary and the Invention of Race explores a fundamental and often overlooked connection between modern European classifications of sex/gender and those of race.

Starting in the eighteenth century, these classifications have been co-constructed through a White, sex/gender-binary ideal for the male-female couple; an ideal that so-called “inferior races” were thought not to meet. Through an exploration of expressions of this racial sex/gender-binary ideal, this book will broaden the reader’s understanding of how thoroughly enmeshed categories of race, sex/gender, and sexuality are, as well how the racial gender-binary ideal has structured dominant understandings of race and sex/gender categories in a way that supports multiple social hierarchies.

It also demonstrates how the racial gender-binary ideal has shaped arguments for the respectability of fin de siècle male homosexuality, as well as the analysis of Simone de Beauvoir’s classic text, The Second Sex.

In addition, the book compares its approach to understanding the race-gender connection to Kimberlé Crenshaw's intersectional one. The Gender Binary and the Invention of Race is an accessibly written book that will be of interest both to undergraduate and graduate students of Gender Studies, as well as to a general audience wishing to learn more about the relationship between the categories of race, gender, and sexuality.