Composing Gender A Bedford Spotlight Reader

Composing Gender explores questions around the central concept of gender: Is gender binary, or more complicated? How do we define gender and sexuality? What stereotypes, expectations, and rituals shape gender? What influence does the media have on gender? Readings by a range of feminist scholars, journalists, gender theorists, biologists, legal scholars, sociologists, and others take up these questions and more. Questions and assignments for each selection provide a range of activities for students. The Web site for the Spotlight Series offers comprehensive instructor support with sample syllabi and additional teaching resources.

The Bedford Spotlight Reader Series is an exciting new line of single-theme readers, each featuring Bedford’s trademark care and quality. The readers in the series collect carefully chosen readings sufficient for an entire writing course—about 30 selections—to allow instructors to provide carefully developed, high-quality instruction at an affordable price. Bedford Spotlight Readers are designed to help students make inquiries from multiple perspectives, opening up topics such as money, food, sustainability, and gender to critical analysis. The readers are flexibly arranged in thematic chapters, each focusing in depth on a different facet of the central topic. An Editorial Board of more than a dozen compositionists at schools focusing on specific themes have assisted in the development of the series.

John O'Hara, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing in the First-Year Writing Program and School of General Studies at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

Chapter One: Is Gender Either/Or (or Something Else)?

Judith Lorber, "Night to His Day": The Social Construction of Gender

Aaron Devor, Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender

Ruth Hubbard, Rethinking Women’s Biology

Petra Doan, The Tyranny of Gendered Spaces: Reflections from Beyond the Gender Dichotomy

Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert, Are We Facing a Genderless Future?

Chapter Two: How Do We Become Boys and Girls?

Claire Renzetti and Daniel J. Curran, from Women, Men and Society

Jennifer Goodwin, Even-Nine-Month-Olds Choose Gender-Specific Toys

Emily W. Kane, "No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That": Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity

Peggy Orenstein, What’s Wrong with Cinderella?

Michael A. Messner, "Looking for a Team Mom": Separating the Men from the Moms

Chapter Three: What Rituals Shape Our Gender?

Amy Best, Prom Night: Youth, Schools, and Popular Culture

Michael Kimmel, The Rites of Almost-Men: Binge Drinking, Fraternity Hazing, and the Elephant Walk

Jaclyn Geller, Undercover at the Bloomindale’s Registry

Stephanie Rosenbloom, Good Girls Go Bad, for a Day

Joseph Zoske, Male Circumcision: A Gender Perspective

Chapter Four: How Do We Define Sexuality?

Pepper Schwartz, The Social Construction of Heteroxexuality

Sandra Lipsitz Bem, On Judith Butler

C. J. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag: Adolescent Male Homophobia

Patricia Hill Collins, Hegemonic Masculinity and Black Gender Ideology

Chapter Five: How Does the Media Shape Gender?

Susie Orbach, Losing Bodies

Gail Dines, Visible or Invisible: Growing Up Female in Porn Culture

Jia-Rui Chong, Beauty and the Bleach

American Psychological Association, Report of the Task Force on the Sexualization of Young Girls

Amy Adler, To Catch a Predator

Vanity Fair, Outing