Sex and the Sociological Dope

Abstract

Abstract Harold Garfinkel’s case study of “Agnes,” a young woman assigned male at birth who sought medical treatment at the University of California at Los Angeles in the late 1950s, is widely characterized as the first sociological case study of a person who might today identify as transgender. While myriad scholars have reinterpreted his written case material over the years, less attention has been paid to locating his theoretical insights about “sex status” within the context of the social sciences of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Drawing on published works and archival materials, the author situates Garfinkel’s writing about Agnes within the then-dominant strands of sociological and psychoanalytic thinking about sex and gender. In particular, the chapter focuses on the distinctive sociological lens through which Garfinkel interpreted Agnes’s life history through a juxtaposition of Garfinkel’s work with that of his collaborator on Agnes’s case, psychiatrist Robert J. Stoller.