Sex on the margins: centering intersex, transgender, and sexually fluid voices in religious and scientific discourse

ABSTRACT

This collection of essays arose from the conference “Sex on the Margins: Navigating Religious, Social, and Natural Scientific Models of Sex Differences,” February 24–26, 2017, at Boston University. Scholars examined how our growing knowledge of sex, gender, and sexual diversity impacts binary models of sex that continue to hold sway in most religious and natural scientific examinations of human nature, including their practical application in medical approaches to differently sexed and gendered bodies. The authors call for a nuanced, interdisciplinary approach to sex difference which respects and protects minorities without eliding statistically significant binary patterns of human experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersex
• transgender
• gender
• religion and science
• medicalization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Megan K. DeFranza is a Research Associate at the Center for Mind and Culture and Visiting Researcher at Boston University School of Theology. She is the author of Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God (Eerdmans 2015), co-founder of Intersex and Faith, and co-director of the documentary film Stories of Intersex and Faith with Lianne Simon and Paul Van Ness.

Stephanie N. Arel is an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the September 11 Memorial and Museum and a visiting researcher at New York University. She is the author of Affect Theory, Shame and Christian Formation (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) and co-editor of Post-Traumatic Public Theology (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).

Kate Stockly is a Ph.D. student studying Religion and Science at Boston University. She employs neuroscience, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology to study religious ritual, affect, and gender/sex.

ORCID

Stephanie N. Arel http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9864-6915

Notes

1 See Wesley, Science and Religious Anthropology, 144, where Wildman labels this as “non-strict dimorphism”.