1. Sex before gender : From determining true sex to finding the better sex -- Robert : Hope -- 2. Happy and well adjusted : The psychologization of sex in the 1930s and 1940s -- Karen : Coming of age -- 3. Culture, gender, and personality -- 4. Making boys and girls : Gender at Johns Hopkins -- 5. Gender in the clinic : The process of normalization -- 6. The circulations of gender, cortisone, and intersex case management -- Janet : Despair -- 7. The life of gender : Reformulations and adaptations -- Epilogue.
Summary:
"This timely history tells the story of how 'gender' was invented in American medicine. The concept of gender shifted from a pragmatic tool in the sex assignment of children with intersex traits in the 1950s to an essential category in clinics for transgender patients in the 1960s, to a feature of feminist debates about the sex/gender binary in the 1970s, to the word we know today. Our current idea of gender might not map exactly onto these earlier formulations, but we still live with the legacy of this genealogy. Sandra Eder reveals that there was-without a doubt- something new, transformative, and enduring about the concept of gender that developed through clinical practices at pediatric endocrinology clinics. The history of gender laid out in this book shows that these ideas held no single, unified meaning-neither within the clinic nor outside it-and that 'gender' was shaped by the behaviors and needs of those who used and adapted it. This is not a neat and tidy story about the introduction of a liberating concept. Nor does this book simply focus on the development of a medical regime that subjected intersex infants to irreversible genital surgery. Rather, How the Clinic Made Gender explores the shifting landscapes of discussion about sex, gender, and sexuality in modern US history. The process by which ideas about gender became medicalized, enforced, and popularized was messy, and how gender came to be understood and applied through the treatment of patients with intersex traits was fraught and contested. This book is about the intricate ways in which the most intimate of ideas were put into practice in medicine and how those clinical practices, in turn, have informed our ideas about gender to this day"---Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.