Suzanne Kessler

Last updated

Suzanne Kessler (born October 13, 1946, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American social psychologist known for the application of ethnomethodology to gender. She and Wendy McKenna pioneered this application of ethnomethodology to the study of gender and sex with their groundbreaking work, Gender an Ethnomethodological Approach. [1] Twenty years later, Kessler extended this work in a second book, Lessons from the Intersexed. [2]

Contents

Career

Kessler received her doctoral degree in social psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center (1972) and a B.A. at Carnegie Mellon University (1968). She taught psychology for 30 years at Purchase College, State University of New York after which she became the dean of Natural and Social Sciences and then the dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences. [2]

Kessler and McKenna's work was influenced by Harold Garfinkel in ethnomethodology (especially his analysis of Agnes in Studies in Ethnomethodology); Stanley Milgram, their social psychology professor; and the sociologist Peter McHugh, McKenna's professor. Kessler and McKenna were the first to argue that the distinction between "gender" and "sex" is a socially constructed one and the latter (defined by biological markers) should not be privileged. Their articulation of what later became known as the social construction of gender was part of the foundation for works of ultimately more well-known gender theorists, Judith Butler (1990), Anne Fausto-Sterling (1992), and Kate Bornstein (1994). Kessler and McKenna's concept of "gender attribution" predated William Zimmerman and Candace West's concept of doing gender and Butler's concept of gender performativity .

The Phall-O-Meter by the Intersex Society of North America satirizes clinical assessments of appropriate clitoris and penis length at birth. It is based on work by Kessler. Phall-O-meter', Intersex Society of North Wellcome L0031936.jpg
The Phall-O-Meter by the Intersex Society of North America satirizes clinical assessments of appropriate clitoris and penis length at birth. It is based on work by Kessler.

Kessler's work in her book Lessons from the Intersexed detailed the medical treatment of intersex children, and summarized the range of medically acceptable infant penis and clitoris sizes. [3] Kessler states that normative tables for clitoral length appeared in the late 1980s, while normative tables for penis length appeared more than forty years before that. She combined those standard tables to demonstrate an "intermediate area of phallic length that neither females nor males are permitted to have", that is, a clitoris larger than 9 mm or a penis shorter than 25 mm. [3] Her findings were then presented visually by the (now-defunct) advocacy organization Intersex Society of North America in the Phall-O-Meter. Copies of the Phall-O-Meter are now held by the Wellcome Library in London, [4] and the Smithsonian Institution. [5]

The importance of the work of Kessler and McKenna in feminist/gender theory was acknowledged by Mary Hawkesworth in a 1997 article published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , "Confounding Gender". In it she investigates four efforts to theorize gender (Steven Smith's, Judith Butler's, R.W. Connell's, and Kessler and McKenna's). "The four works are the most ambitious efforts that I have found to theorize gender in ways that connect psyche, self, and social relations. They also represent some of the major methodological approaches (phenomenology, postmodern deconstruction, dialectical materialism, ethnomethodology) currently vying for the allegiance of feminist scholars." Three years later, most of a 2000 issue of Feminism & Psychology was devoted to a reappraisal of their book with commentary by seven theorists (Mary Crawford, Carla Golden, Leonore Tiefer, Holly (later Aaron) Devor, Milton Diamond, Eva Lundgren, and Dallas Denny). The introductory essay states that when Kessler and McKenna wrote their book, "the social construction of gender", let alone sex, was still a relatively novel idea. "They not only made the claim that sex is a belief system rather than a fact, but went on to analyze the interpretive practices that enable each of us to create the "fact" of two and only two sexes . The continuing importance of Kessler and McKenna's work is twofold: First, it provides compelling, lived examples of the social construction of gender in interaction . The second reason is: the current multiplicity of theoretical positions on gender mutability, coupled with the increased visibility of transgendered and intersex people." [6]

Suzanne Kessler's transgender papers can be found at the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria, and her intersex papers at the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan.

Books

Articles and chapters

Community service

Since 2002, Kessler has been on the board of Rehabilitation Through the Arts. She was also on the Board of The Children's Center at Purchase College, SUNY from 1986 to 2018.

Related Research Articles

The word cisgender describes a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth, i.e., someone who is not transgender. The prefix cis- is Latin and means on this side of. The term cisgender was coined in 1994 as an antonym to transgender, and entered into dictionaries starting in 2015 as a result of changes in social discourse about gender. The term has been and continues to be controversial and subject to critique.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Fausto-Sterling</span> American sexologist

Anne Fausto-Sterling is an American sexologist who has written extensively on the social construction of gender, sexual identity, gender identity, gender roles, and intersexuality. She is the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor Emerita of Biology and Gender Studies at Brown University.

Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the individual's gender identity. Gender expression typically reflects a person's gender identity, but this is not always the case. While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. The term gender identity was coined by psychiatry professor Robert J. Stoller in 1964 and popularized by psychologist John Money.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of intersex surgery</span>

The history of intersex surgery is intertwined with the development of the specialities of pediatric surgery, pediatric urology, and pediatric endocrinology, with our increasingly refined understanding of sexual differentiation, with the development of political advocacy groups united by a human qualified analysis, and in the last decade by doubts as to efficacy, and controversy over when and even whether some procedures should be performed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transfeminism</span> Branch of feminism

Transfeminism, or trans feminism, is a branch of feminism focused on transgender women and informed by transgender studies. Transfeminism focuses on the effects of transmisogyny and patriarchy on trans women. It is related to the broader field of queer theory. The term was popularized by Emi Koyama in The Transfeminist Manifesto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Androphilia and gynephilia</span> Sexual orientation to men or women

Androphilia and gynephilia are terms used in behavioral science to describe sexual orientation, as an alternative to a gender binary homosexual and heterosexual conceptualization. Androphilia describes sexual attraction to men and/or masculinity; gynephilia describes the sexual attraction to women and/or femininity. Ambiphilia describes the combination of both androphilia and gynephilia in a given individual, or bisexuality.

Gender variance or gender nonconformity is behavior or gender expression by an individual that does not match masculine or feminine gender norms. A gender-nonconforming person may be variant in their gender identity, being transgender or non-binary, or they may be cisgender. In the case of transgender people, they may be perceived, or perceive themselves as, gender-nonconforming before transitioning, but might not be perceived as such after transitioning. Transgender adults who appear gender-nonconforming after transition are more likely to experience discrimination.

While in ordinary speech, the terms sex and gender are often used interchangeably, in contemporary academic literature, the terms often have distinct meanings, especially when referring to people. Sex generally refers to an organism's biological sex, while gender usually refers to either social roles typically associated with the sex of a person or personal identification of one's own gender based on their own personal sense of it. Most contemporary social scientists, behavioral scientists and biologists, many legal systems and government bodies, and intergovernmental agencies such as the WHO make a distinction between gender and sex.

Kenneth J. Zucker is an American-Canadian psychologist and sexologist. He was named editor-in-chief of Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2001. He was psychologist-in-chief at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and head of its Gender Identity Service until December 2015. Zucker is a professor in the departments of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Toronto.

Susan Jane Bradley is a Canadian psychiatrist. She has written many journal articles and books, including Gender Identity Disorder and Psychosexual Problems in Children and Adolescents and Affect Regulation and the Development of Psychopathology. Bradley was chair of the DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Disorders.

Susan W. Coates is an American psychoanalyst, who has worked on gender dysphoria in children and early childhood trauma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intersex</span> Atypical congenital variations of sex characteristics

Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies".

The social construction of gender is a theory in the humanities and social sciences about the manifestation of cultural origins, mechanisms, and corollaries of gender perception and expression in the context of interpersonal and group social interaction. Specifically, the social construction of gender theory stipulates that gender roles are an achieved "status" in a social environment, which implicitly and explicitly categorize people and therefore motivate social behaviors.

Transgender studies, also called trans studies or trans* studies, is an interdisciplinary field of academic research dedicated to the study of gender identity, gender expression, and gender embodiment, as well as to the study of various issues of relevance to transgender and gender variant populations. Interdisciplinary subfields of transgender studies include applied transgender studies, transgender history, transgender literature, transgender media studies, transgender anthropology and archaeology, transgender psychology, and transgender health. The research theories within transgender studies focus on cultural presentations, political movements, social organizations and the lived experience of various forms of gender nonconformity. The discipline emerged in the early 1990s in close connection to queer theory. Non-transgender-identified peoples are often also included under the "trans" umbrella for transgender studies, such as intersex people, crossdressers, drag artists, third gender individuals, and genderqueer people.

Arlene Istar Lev is a North American clinical social worker, family therapist, and educator. She is an independent scholar, who has lectured internationally on topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity, sexuality, and LGBTQ families.

Iain Morland is a British music technologist and author. He formerly lectured in cultural criticism at Cardiff University. His writings focus on issues of gender and sexuality, medical ethics, and science. In 2005, Times Higher Education described Morland as a leading academic in the field of sex research. He has edited an edition of the journal GLQ, and co-authored Fuckology, a critical analysis of the writings and practices of John Money. With Lih-Mei Liao, Morland co-founded in 2002 Critical Sexology, a continuing interdisciplinary seminar series on gender and sexuality. His audio work includes audio editing, sound design and programming.

The Phall-O-meter is a satirical measure that critiques medical standards for normal male and female phalluses. The tool was developed by Kiira Triea based on a concept by Suzanne Kessler and is used to demonstrate concerns with the medical treatment of intersex bodies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intersex rights in Canada</span> Rights of intersex individuals in Canada

Intersex people in Canada have no recognition of their rights to physical integrity and bodily autonomy, and no specific protections from discrimination on the basis of sex characteristics. Academic advocates including Janik Bastien-Charlebois and Morgan Holmes, and organizations including Egale Canada and the Canadian Bar Association have called for reform.

Emi Koyama is a Japanese-American activist, artist, and independent scholar. Koyama's work discusses issues of feminism, intersex human rights, domestic violence, and sex work among many others. Koyama is best known for her 2000 essay "The Transfeminist Manifesto", which has been republished in many anthologies and journals for transgender studies. She is a founder of the advocacy group Intersex Initiative.

References

  1. ↑ Crawford, Mary (2000). Feminism and Psychology. London: SAGE. pp. 7–152.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Kessler, Suzanne (17 February 2017). "Suzanne Kessler".
  3. 1 2 Kessler, Suzanne (1998). Lessons from the Intersexed. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. p. 43. ISBN   978-0-8135-2530-3.
  4. ↑ "L0031936". Wellcome Library.
  5. ↑ Dreger, Professor Alice D. (2006). "Intersex and Human Rights: The Long View". In Professor Sharon E. Sytsma (ed.). Ethics and Intersex. International Library of Ethics, Law and the New Medicine. Vol. 29. Springer Netherlands. pp. 73–86. doi:10.1007/1-4220-4314-7_4. ISBN   978-1-4020-4314-7.
  6. ↑ Crawford, Mary (2000). Feminism and Psychology. London: Sage. pp. 7–152.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.