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.
Syllabus
Week 1
The constructed body: Sex as discourse
Inquiry
The category of “sex” appears self-evident: anchored in anatomy, then stabilised by science. Yet this apparent naturalness dissolves when placed in historical perspective. For instance, Laqueur (1990) demonstrates that the distinction between male and female bodies has not always existed in its current form, showing that those images are not discovered, but produced.
This week introduces the idea that the body is not simply a biological object, but a discursive construction, shaped by institutions such as medicine, law, and religion. Foucault’s (1978) concept of biopower becomes central here: power operates not only by repression, but by producing knowledge about bodies, categorising them, and rendering them governable.
This week, we aim to recognise that biology itself is interpreted, organised, and made meaningful through systems of power. What we take to be “natural” is often the most successful outcome of normalisation.
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.
Week 2
Gender as regulation: Performing the intelligible self
Inquiry
This week reframes gender not as identity, but as performance: reiterated acts that produce the illusion of a stable self. Butler’s (1990) theory of performativity is not about choice or expression, but rather about constraint. Gender norms operate as regulatory frameworks that determine which bodies are intelligible and which are not. To “be” a man or a woman is to cite these norms over time successfully. At the same time, as Connell (2005) demonstrates, not all masculinities or femininities are equal. Some are hegemonic (rewarded and idealised) while others are subordinated or excluded. Gender, then, becomes a political technology: it organises hierarchy while presenting itself as identity.
Readings
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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.
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Beauvoir, S. de. (2011). The second sex (C. Borde & S. Malovany-Chevallier, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1949)
Week 3
Reproduction and labour: The political economy of the body
Inquiry
Reproduction is often framed as natural, maternal, and apolitical. This week dismantles that illusion by situating reproduction within economic systems. We explore the body not only biologically but also productively: generating labour, sustaining populations, and reproducing social order.
Federici’s (2004) work reveals how the control of women’s bodies was central to the development of capitalism, particularly through the regulation of reproduction. Fraser (2016) extends this into the present, arguing that modern capitalism depends on care labour while simultaneously devaluing and invisibilising it. Would it give birth to a contradiction? That the most essential forms of labour—care, childbirth, emotional support—are systematically excluded from recognition?
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.
Week 4
Manufactured desire: Sex, media, and representation
Inquiry
This week challenges that assumption by examining how desire is structured through representation. Mulvey’s (1975) concept of the “male gaze” reveals how visual culture positions women as objects to be seen, while implicitly aligning the viewer with masculine power. This goes beyond the concept of representation but also about training desire itself. What is seen repeatedly becomes what is desired.
MacKinnon (1993) pushes this further, arguing that pornography does not merely depict inequality, but actively produces it. Meanwhile, hooks (1992) complicates the framework by introducing the “oppositional gaze,” foregrounding how race disrupts who gets to look and how.
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.
Week 5
Consent and coercion: The unstable line between agency and power
Inquiry
This week resists that simplicity by situating consent within broader systems of inequality. Pateman’s (1988) sexual contract reveals how liberal ideas of freedom are built on underlying structures of domination. Rubin’s (1984) work complicates moral hierarchies around sex, showing how certain practices are legitimised while others are stigmatised. Sex work and sexual violence become key sites of analysis as points where autonomy, survival, coercion, and power intersect. The question shifts from “did they consent?” to “under what conditions does consent become meaningful?” The outcome of this week is that students don’t only see this issue as a discussion of moral clarity, but also an analytical precision.
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.
Week 6
Beyond the system: Queer and trans disruptions of sexual order
Inquiry
Queer and trans identities are often treated as deviations from the norm. This week reverses that logic: what if they are not exceptions, but analytical means that reveal the instability of the system itself? Sedgwick (1990) shows how modern sexuality is structured through binaries that cannot fully contain lived experience. Stryker’s (2017) work traces how trans histories expose the limits of biological determinism, while Halberstam (2018) reframes failure and non-conformity as forms of resistance. What emerges is a fundamentally different question: what if gender and sexuality were not organising principles of power at all?
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.