Redoing Gender

"Darwin masterfully balances the voices of her nonbinary participants with an astute sociological analysis. This book provides important insight into nonbinary people understand their identities and navigate social relationships, and has much to say about doing, undoing, and redoing gender for everyone regardless of gender identity."
Mimi Schippers, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, Tulane University, USA


"Redoing Gender is a timely examination of the labor that nonbinary people perform in order to achieve their gender in a society that denies and erases their existence. Darwin’s proposal to reimagine our role in expanding the possibilities of gender is a welcome contribution."
Megan Nanney, East Carolina University, USA, and Chair of Sociologists for Trans Justice

“Redoing Gender boldly shines a spotlight on nonbinary experiences in what is a significant contribution to trans studies. Darwin carves out a space for doing gender theory to grow in ways that expect rather than accommodate gender diversity. This book offers us a new paradigm for understanding gender, and our relationship to and experience of it, while lifting up the experiences of nonbinary people who perhaps have the most at stake in this gender revolution.”
Austin Johnson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Kenyon College, USA

Redoing Gender demonstrates how difficult it is to be anything other than a man or a woman in a society that selectively acknowledges those two genders. Gender nonbinary people—who identify as other genders besides simply “man” or “woman”—have begun to disrupt this binary system, but the limited progress they have made has required significant everyday labor. Through interviews with 47 nonbinary people, this book offers rich description of these forms of labor, including “rethinking sex and gender,” “resignifying gender,” “redoing relationships,” and “resisting erasure.” The final chapter interrogates the lasting impact of this labor through follow-up interviews with participants four years later. Although nonbinary people are finally managing to achieve some recognition, it is clear that this change has not happened without a fight that continues to this day.


The diverse experiences of nonbinary people in this book will help cisgender people relate to gender minorities with more compassion, and may also appeal to those questioning their own gender. This text will also be of keen interest to academics across Sociology and Gender Studies. 


Helana Darwin is an award-winning sociologist with a PhD in Sociology whose research focuses on social inequality and abuses of power. She has published articles in Gender & Society; Gender, Place, & Culture; Social Currents; Sociology of Religion; Contemporary Jewry; Symbolic Interaction; and Feminist Media Studies. See www.HelanaDarwin.com for more about her research.