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A scholarly assessment of queer theory
MARY DAVIS recommends a timely exploration of the relationship between sex, gender and gender identity
DISCONTENT: Trans rights activists outside Portobello Library, Edinburgh, before a meeting to discuss transgender ideology in Scottish schools, March 2023

Sex and Gender: a contemporary reader
Alice Sullivan & Selina Todd, Routledge, £35.99

THIS is an important book. It is a scholarly, multi-disciplinary and very well researched exploration of the relationship between sex, gender and gender identity. 

It is also a much needed and timely book because, as the editors point out, we are currently witnessing “the erasure of sex categories from language, public policy, discourse and data collection” and this has profound implications for women’s lives. 

The authors of the 15 chapters of the book share a broad understanding that sex is biological, immutable and binary, and that gender is an ideological construct which imposes gendered constraints on individuals according to their sex. As such the book’s starting premise is the refutation of gender identity ideology. 

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