Sex, gender and international human rights law : contesting binaries
Loading...
Files
Book_cover_2024_Gilleri.jpg (13.02 KB)
Book cover (2024)
License
Access Rights
Cadmus Permanent Link
Full-text via DOI
ISSN
Issue Date
Type of Publication
Keyword(s)
LC Subject Heading
Other Topic(s)
EUI Research Cluster(s)
Initial version
Published version
Succeeding version
Preceding version
Published version part
Earlier different version
Initial format
Author(s)
Citation
London ; New York : Routledge, 2024, Feminist and queer international law
Cite
GILLERI, Giovanna, Sex, gender and international human rights law : contesting binaries, London ; New York : Routledge, 2024, Feminist and queer international law - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76194
Abstract
This book investigates the relationship between sex and gender under international human rights law, and how this influences the formation of individual subjects. Combining feminist, queer, and psychoanalytical perspectives, the author scrutinises the sexed/gendered human rights discourse, starting from the assumptions underpinning interpretations of sex, gender, and the related notions of gender identity, sex characteristics, and sexual orientation. Human rights law has so far offered only a limited account of the diversity of sexed/ gendered subjectivities, being based on a series of simplistic assumptions. Namely, that there are only two sexes and two genders; sex is a natural fact and gender is a social construct; gender is the metonymic signifier for women; and gender power relations take the asymmetrical shape of male domination versus female oppression. Against these assumptions, dominative and subordinate postures interchangeably attach to femininities and masculinities, depending on the subjects’ roles, their positionalities, and the situational meanings of their acts. The limits of an approach to gender which is based on rigid binaries are evident in two case studies, on the UN human rights treaty bodies’ vocabulary on medically unnecessary interventions upon intersex children and on the European Court of Human Rights’ narrative on sadomasochism. This examination of the impact of human rights on gendered subjectivities will be of interest to scholars, students, and researchers in international law, gender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, critical race theory, and psychoanalysis.
Table of Contents
-- Introduction : On the Edges of the Gendered Human Rights Discourse -- Part I Uncovering Binary-Normativity -- 1. The Psy-Femi-Queer Approach -- 2. Sexes, Genders, Sexualities -- 3. Exclusionary Binaries -- 4. Rethinking Victimisation -- Part II Gendered Interplays: Variations on a Theme -- 5. Unspeakable Gender: Medical Sexing Interventions -- 6. A Pleasurable Danger: Sadomasochism. Conclusion: Subject Formations in Interpretive Oceans
Additional Information
Published online: 01 December 2023
External Links
Publisher
Geographical Coverage
Temporal Coverage
Version
Published version of EUI PhD thesis, 2021