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Laurie Laufer and Florence rocHefort, eds., Qu'est-ce que le genre? [What is gender?], Paris: Payot et Rivages (Petite bibliothèque Payot), 2014, 315 p.
This work, edited by Laurie Laufer and Florence Rochefort, contains 11 contributions by 17 authors. The themes covered are so diverse that the chapters have not been divided up into sections. The authors draw on many different disciplines and approaches, including grammar and linguistics, social anthropology, biology and anatomy, the neurosciences, film, sports, education, occupational studies, "care," sex work, sexuality, psychoanalysis, religious debate on same-sex marriage and the offensive recently launched in France against "gender theory." The work arrives at a time when gender studies are acquiring increasing importance in scientific research in France (in journals and book series, research groups and institutions, education, academic conferences, etc.) and the question of gender (in education, marriage, same-sex parenthood, etc.) has become the focus of occasionally heated media, political and citizen debate. The scientific concept of gender, defined and discussed in extremely diverse terms in the academic world, has thus been catapulted into "lay" debate in France. This development is the first to be analysed in the book.
Before presenting a considerable quantity of research findings, the work analyses and deconstructs how the idea of "gender theory" was developed by conservative Catholic movements in an attempt to de-legitimate scientific research on gender. The word "gender" itself (genre in French) has been contested in France, including within the research world itself; in 1995, for example, when its use was called into question by the national terminology commission. The first chapter thus focuses on grammar, the notion of gender in linguistics, and French discussions about importing the American concept of "gender" and how to translate the term.
The book in fact undertakes a history of concepts and practices, including controversial ones. The genealogy of "gender" is retraced in detail (chapters by Chevalier and Planté, Laufer), starting from 1955, when the term was forged by the psychologist John Money in connection with his study of "gender roles" and children. In 1964 the psychiatrist Robert Stoller used the term "gender identity" for the first time, in discussing his work with inter-sexed patients. At the outset, then, gender was a descriptive...