Overview
A critical study of how sex, gender, and desire are produced, regulated, and contested within systems of power.
This course approaches sex not as a private or purely biological domain, but as a deeply political field structured by discourse, institutions, and historical struggle. What appears most “natural”—our body, desire, and identity—is precisely what has been most rigorously organised, classified, and controlled.
Moving from the construction of the body to the regulation of desire and the limits of identity, the course develops a method of analysis that treats sexuality as a site where power becomes intimate. By the end, students will not only be able to interrogate dominant narratives of sex and gender, but also recognise how their own assumptions have been shaped within them.
The course follows three movements:
Movement I: The Past (Week 1-2) — What has been said, existing theories, and learning through critical debates
Movement II: The Present (Week 3-4) — Current observations, using extant theories as a lens to see the world today and right here, and learning through writing critical arguments
Movement III: The Future (Week 5-6) — Reimagining alternatives beyond today, and learning through collective thinking and workshops, practicing agency to reshape the way forward
Syllabus
Week 1
Making sex: Bodies, categories, and the production of difference
Inquiry
The distinction between male and female bodies appears self-evident, anchored in anatomy and stabilised through scientific knowledge. Yet Laqueur (1990) demonstrates how understandings of anatomical sex have changed throughout history, challenging the assumption that bodily categories are universal or timeless.
This week examines how bodies become objects of knowledge, classification, and regulation. Foucault (1978) reveals how sexuality is produced through discourses and institutions, while Butler (1990) argues that gender is constituted through repeated social norms that determine which identities become intelligible. Connell (2005) further demonstrates how these norms organise hierarchies between masculinities.
Together, these perspectives invite us to question where biology ends and social interpretation begins. If sex and gender are historically contingent, why do their categories remain so powerful? And can we recognise the social construction of bodies without denying their material realities?
Readings
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Laqueur, T. (1990). Making sex: Body and gender from the Greeks to Freud. Harvard University Press.
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Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, Vol. 1: An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). Pantheon Books.
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Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge.
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Connell, R. W. (2005). Masculinities (2nd ed.). University of California Press.
Week 2
The social organisation of pleasure: Sexual scripts, intercourse, and the orgasm gap
Inquiry
Sexual pleasure is commonly understood as intensely personal, arising from biological desire and individual preferences. Yet the persistent orgasm gap, particularly between heterosexual men and women, raises a fundamental sociological question: how can something so private be distributed so unequally?
This week examines how sexual encounters are organised through culturally learned expectations. Gagnon and Simon's (1986) sexual script theory reveals how societies establish conventions around initiation, intercourse, pleasure, and completion. Armstrong, England, and Fogarty (2012) demonstrate how these conventions contribute to unequal experiences of sexual enjoyment, while McClelland (2010) introduces intimate justice to question whose pleasure is recognised, prioritised, or neglected.
By examining heterosexuality itself as a social institution, students investigate how power operates through sexual practices that appear natural, consensual, and personally desired. If even pleasure is socially patterned, where does society end and individual desire begin?
Readings
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Gagnon, J. H., & Simon, W. (1986). Sexual scripts: Permanence and change. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 15(2), 97–120.
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Armstrong, E. A., England, P., & Fogarty, A. C. K. (2012). Accounting for women's orgasm and sexual enjoyment in college hookups and relationships. American Sociological Review, 77(3), 435–462.
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McClelland, S. I. (2010). Intimate justice: A critical analysis of sexual satisfaction. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(9), 663–680.
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Frederick, D. A., John, H. K., Garcia, J. R., & Lloyd, E. A. (2018). Differences in orgasm frequency among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual men and women in a U.S. national sample. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47, 273–288.
Week 3
Reproducing society: Sex, labour, and the political economy of reproduction
Inquiry
Reproduction is often understood as a biological process or personal decision. Yet the reproduction of human life is inseparable from the reproduction of economic systems, social institutions, and political hierarchies. Societies regulate not only how reproduction occurs, but whose reproduction is encouraged, whose labour sustains it, and whose bodies remain subject to control.
Federici (2004) traces how the regulation of women's bodies was central to the development of capitalism, while Fraser (2016) exposes capitalism's dependence on care labour that it simultaneously devalues. Rich (1976) distinguishes motherhood as lived experience from motherhood as an institution, revealing how reproductive expectations shape women's autonomy.
Extending these perspectives into contemporary debates on fertility, surrogacy, contraception, abortion, and transnational care work, this week examines how reproductive freedom remains stratified by gender, race, class, and geography. If reproduction sustains society, who determines which lives are worth reproducing, and who bears the costs of sustaining them?
Readings
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Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the witch: Women, the body and primitive accumulation. Autonomedia.
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Fraser, N. (2016). Contradictions of capital and care. New Left Review, 100, 99–117.
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Rich, A. (1976). Of woman born: Motherhood as experience and institution. W. W. Norton.
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Ginsburg, F. D., & Rapp, R. (Eds.). (1995). Conceiving the new world order: The global politics of reproduction. University of California Press.
Week 4
Manufacturing desire: Sex, media, and the politics of desirability
Inquiry
Attraction is often understood as an expression of personal taste, yet patterns of desirability reveal persistent hierarchies of gender, race, class, and sexuality. If desire belongs to the individual, why are particular bodies repeatedly celebrated, fetishised, or excluded?
Mulvey (1975) demonstrates how visual culture structures desire through the male gaze, while MacKinnon (1993) argues that sexual representations can actively reproduce inequality. hooks (1992) complicates these perspectives through the oppositional gaze, revealing how race shapes who is seen, who looks, and who can resist dominant representations.
This week extends these debates into contemporary pornography, dating applications, beauty industries, and algorithmic platforms. Students examine how media and markets shape sexual preferences while presenting them as individual choices. When attraction feels entirely personal, what histories of power have already made those preferences possible?
Readings
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Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, 16(3), 6–18.
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MacKinnon, C. A. (1993). Only words. Harvard University Press.
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hooks, b. (1992). Black looks: Race and representation. South End Press.
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Collins, P. H. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. Routledge.
Week 5
Beyond consent: Coercion, freedom, and intimate justice
Inquiry
Consent is commonly treated as the foundation of sexual freedom, distinguishing legitimate encounters from coercive ones. Yet agreement does not necessarily imply equality. When choices are shaped by economic dependence, social expectations, gendered obligations, and unequal power, under what conditions can consent become genuinely meaningful?
Pateman (1988) challenges liberal understandings of freedom by revealing how contractual equality can coexist with structural domination. Rubin (1984) complicates this critique by demonstrating how moral hierarchies regulate which sexual practices and identities are considered legitimate. Together, these perspectives expose tensions between protection, autonomy, and liberation.
Moving beyond critique, McClelland's (2010) concept of intimate justice invites students to imagine the social conditions necessary for meaningful sexual agency. Through debates on sex work, sexual violence, education, and intimate relationships, this week asks whether consent alone is sufficient for sexual justice. What would society need to change for freedom to become something more than the formal ability to say yes or no?
Readings
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Pateman, C. (1988). The sexual contract. Stanford University Press.
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Rubin, G. (1984). Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In
C. S. Vance (Ed.), Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality (pp. 267–319).
Routledge & Kegan Paul. -
McClelland, S. I. (2010). Intimate justice: A critical analysis of sexual satisfaction. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(9), 663–680.
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Beres, M. A. (2007). 'Spontaneous' sexual consent: An analysis of sexual consent literature. Feminism & Psychology, 17(1), 93–108.
Week 6
Queer futures: Beyond the sexual order
Inquiry
Sexuality has long organised social identities, relationships, reproduction, and belonging. Even movements toward sexual liberation frequently seek recognition within existing categories and institutions. Yet does emancipation require inclusion within the current sexual order, or the possibility of imagining an entirely different one?
Sedgwick (1990) challenges the binaries through which modern sexuality is understood, while Stryker (2017) demonstrates how trans histories expose the instability of gendered categories. Muñoz (2009) extends queer theory toward futurity, proposing queerness as a way of imagining social worlds that have yet to become possible. Boellstorff (2005) further complicates universal accounts of sexual liberation by examining how sexuality takes shape through distinct cultural and national contexts in Indonesia.
Bringing together the course's preceding inquiries, students are invited to move from critique toward collective imagination. If sex is historically constructed, pleasure is socially organised, and desire and reproduction are governed through power, what alternative arrangements of intimacy, embodiment, and belonging might become possible? And what would society have to change for those alternatives to become liveable?
Readings
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Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Epistemology of the closet. University of California Press.
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Stryker, S. (2017). Transgender history: The roots of today's revolution (2nd ed.). Seal Press.
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Halberstam, J. (2018). Trans*: A quick and quirky account of gender variability. University of California Press.
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Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising utopia: The then and there of queer futurity. New York University Press.
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Boellstorff, T. (2005). The gay archipelago: Sexuality and nation in Indonesia. Princeton University Press.