Review of “The New Gender Paradox: Fragmentation and Persistence of the Binary”

Abstract

Judith Lorber’s recent book shows that the new gender paradox is not all that different from the “old” paradox introduced by the same author in 1994: To dismantle gender, we must first use the gender binary to make inequality highly visible. If this has stayed the same, however, much else has changed. To list just a few momentous shifts, we now have the first woman vice president of the United States, the first openly transgender athlete has won a NCAA Division I championship, and as of April 2022, individuals may now select “X” for their gender identity on US passports. Considering this new social landscape, The New Gender Paradox provides a blueprint of the contemporary institution of gender, identifying the ways in which it is reconstructed, showing where there are cracks in its structure, and highlighting a path toward equality. To achieve equality, Lorber argues that we must degender society by no longer using gender as a frame for interaction, an organizing principle, or a basis of identity. Yet, to do this, we must often use gender binary tools to identify and address existing inequalities. After all, we could not uncover gender wage disparities, or design solutions, without provisional reliance on some binary designations. The #MeToo movement posed perhaps the greatest challenge to workplace sexual assault by exposing its prevalence and harm. Yet, as Lorber discusses, this movement too relied on, and therefore reproduced, the gender binary as a means of visibility. We cannot make gender inequality go away by “gender-blind” approaches that ignore the binary. Instead, Lorber suggests that we use the binary to subvert inequality, paradoxically deconstructing it along the way.