BOOK REVIEWS 179
than men if work truly stinks and staying home
is such a great choice. She also challenges stu
dents to think about the economic costs and
benefits of "opting out of the work force" for
periods of time.
But what happens when they choose a life that takes
away their ability to make any further independent choices? Then
choice bites its own tail. The women of the Times?and the more than
50 percent of all women the census says are not working full time
are not independent anymore. They are dependent on the productivity
and continuing goodwill of the men they married. They cannot
support themselves or their children. They cannot decide where
the
family is going to live. (P p. 34-5)
Hirshman goes on to tell the stories of women
who were left by their husbands and of those who stayed with
their husbands but commuted tremendous distances to work and
ultimately ended up dropping out of the workforce because the
demands at home coupled with the commute
were too great. She clearly makes the point that
choice may be an incorrect way to describe the
decision many women make to stay home with
small children.
To sum up my recommendations concerning these two books, I would
recommend both books
to professors who are veteran teachers of sociol
ogy of gender classes or sociology classes that
focus on race, class, sexuality and gender. While
neither book works as a foundational text they both are
wonderful devices for injecting feminist theory and propositions
into sociology courses.
Both books are hard to ignore. Gendered Bodies presents at least
three differ
ent ideas worth developing in any class. The first
is the way in which our physical, human body is developed
according to gender role norms. A
second idea is that body development is not just physical. The
development of the body often involves work of the mind. The final
idea is that
physical bodies are social bodies both in how they are developed
and in how they are recog nized and proscribed by communities.
Gendered
Bodies will elicit discussion and further explora tion into the
topics of gender, bodies, disabilities and sexuality.
Get To Work is a nice compendium of recent sociological research
on work and family issues.
It also draws students and others into the on
going debate about the future of the women's
movement. It offers at least three great topics for
debate. The first topic is the question of how one best fulfills
his/her human potential. The author
thinks that work outside the home provides a
better avenue for fulfillment than the daily work of keeping
house and raising children. Students
will want to debate this issue. The second topic is the question
of choice. Do women in US soci
ety have freedom of choice to the same degree as
men? Finally, the issue of needs at a micro level can be
examined against the needs of many at the
macro level. When Hirshman talks about women
staying home and opting out of the workforce she makes the point
that the labor and intelli
gence of some of our best and brightest is lost to society. She
claims that the small losses faced by children of intelligent,
resource-rich women who
choose to work may easily be offset by the socie
tal gains produced by their labor. The content of
the book and style of Hirshman's writing are
sure to inspire debate but it is a debate best han
dled by seasoned professors who are knowledge able about
feminist theory and sociology of gen der and family.
REFERENCES
Friedan, B. (1964). The Feminine Mystique. New York: Dell
Publishing.
Plato. Republic. Available free online at http://classics.
mit/edu/Plato/republic. html.
Lissa J. Yogan Valparaiso University
The Transgender Studies Reader. Susan Stryker and Stephen
Whittle, eds. New York: Routledge. 2006. 752 pages. $95.00.
The growing interdisciplinary field of trans gender studies is
well represented by the new Transgender Studies Reader. Instructors
of trans
gender issues until now have had to use a combi
nation of obscure sources in hard to find places to teach the
basics of this growing field. How
ever, this lucid, well organized reader may solve that problem
for both instructors and researchers
within transgender studies; this reader may also
play a key role in the solidification of trans
gender studies as a coherent field of study. In
her introduction from "the study of transgender
phenomena" (p. 3), Stryker establishes the roots
of transgender studies in the social sciences and
humanities, along with the close connections
between transgender community and academic
research. Both of these characteristics are well
reflected in this anthology. The first three sections of this
reader locate
transgender studies within sexology, feminist
studies, and queer theory. The first section of the book focuses
on sex, gender and science, pri
This content downloaded from 91.229.248.152 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014
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180 TEACHING SOCIOLOGY
marily the connections between classical sexolo
gists like Krafft-Ebing and Hirschfeld and more
contemporary work such as Donna Haraway's
piece on cyborg studies. The inclusion of these older pieces
creates a deeper history of trans
gender studies than is often portrayed by contem
porary scholars. The second section on feminist
investments includes several significant lesbian
feminist debates, including the debates around
Janice Raymond's rantings in The Transsexual
Empire, along with early and contemporary feminist musings about
gender identity, expres sion and performance. The third section,
Queer
ing Gender, provides several short articles that
contextualizes transgender studies within and
apart from queer theory; this section is signifi cant in its
inclusion of activists such as Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg and
Sandy Stone, as
well as scholars such as Jacob Hale and Jay Prosser.
The second half of this reader highlights vari ous nuclei of
transgender studies in its investiga tion of identity, masculinity,
embodiment, and
gender/nationality/race. The section on the con
struction of transgender selves within identity and community
interrogates this topic from mul
tiple perspectives, including the historical devel opment of
transsexuality, linguistic understand
ings of desire and gender, and intersections be
tween the transgender and lesbian/gay communi
ties. The next section on transgender masculin
ities reflects the increasing academic work con
ducted by masculine transgender studies schol
ars, including Gay le Rubin, Henry Rubin and Jason Cromwell. The
final two sections on em
bodiment and multiple crossings provide a win
dow into the future of transgender studies, with the breadth of
literature from examination of race to an understanding of
transgender aesthet ics. This section includes work by notable gen
der scholars such as Judith Halberstam, Vivian
K. ?amaste, and Marjorie Garber.
One strength of this reader is the size and breadth of the
excerpts, along with the inclusion of difficult to find pieces. For
example, in the section on feminist investments the editors in
clude Janice Raymond's well known critique of the "transsexual
empire", contextualizing it for
readers as the impetus for transgender articula
tion. This is a much more complex rendering and inclusion of
Raymond, who is often referred to in contemporary transgender
studies literature as representative of early lesbian feminism
but
yet rarely read by scholars and students. There are also many
treats usually only found in ar
chives or difficult to find books, such as Carol
Riddell's pamphlet in response to The Transsex ual Empire and
Lou Sullivan's letter to a femi nist.
In order to integrate the variety of excerpts within the reader,
the editors have prefaced each
chapter with an excellent contextualization of
that piece of work, including the history of the author, their
disciplinary or activist background, the effect of the piece, and
it's omissions or
criticisms. This contextualization is incredibly helpful for an
instructor using this reader. One
thing that would increase the usability would be the inclusion
of the year of authorship of each piece; the excerpts included span
a considerable
period of time and the transgender studies disci pline is
constantly changing.
This reader would be an excellent primary or
secondary text for a Sociology of Gender, Trans
gender Studies, Queer Studies, or LGBT Studies course for
advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Although the reader
includes theoretical
yet lucid chapters, it may be too advanced theo
retically for a lower division or introductory undergraduate
course. For a course specifically on transgender studies,
instructors will want to
include additional materials on non-Western
transgender subjectivity, several examples of which are included
in the "Further Reading" section at the end of the reader. The
editors de
scribe their intentional exclusion of these pieces due to the
inability to cover that literature in enough detail.
Overall, The Transgender Studies Reader is an
excellent teaching resource that provides a
breadth of readings that are in direct dialogue with each other
and that bridge the humanities and social sciences.
Amy L. Stone
Trinity University
The Cult of Thinness. 2nd ed. Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber. New
York: Oxford. 2007. 271 pages. $25.75.
The Cult of Thinness is a revision and extension of
Hesse-Biber's 1996 book, Am I Thin Enough Yet?: The Cult of
Thinness and the Commerciali zation of Identity. Often diagnosed
and treated as an individual problem, Hesse-Biber expands our
understanding of the factors that contribute to the
development of eating disorders in American girls and women. She
argues that current esti mates suggest there are between five and
ten
million girls and women in the U.S. with eating disorders, a
number that cannot be fully ex
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11:24:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Article Contentsp. 179p. 180
Issue Table of ContentsTeaching Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Apr.,
2008), pp. i-ii, 95-196Front MatterThe Converging Landscape of
Higher Education: Perspectives, Challenges, and a Call to the
Discipline of Sociology [pp. 95-107]How Sociological Leaders Teach:
Some Key Principles [pp. 108-124]Deep Reading, Cost/Benefit, and
the Construction of Meaning: Enhancing Reading Comprehension and
Deep Learning in Sociology Courses [pp. 125-140]NotesIntegrating
the Complete Research Project into a Large Qualitative Methods
Course [pp. 141-149]The Bottom Line: An Exercise to Help Students
Understand How Social Inequality Is Actively Constructed [pp.
150-160]
Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 161-162]Review: untitled [pp.
162-163]Review: untitled [pp. 163-165]Review: untitled [pp.
165-167]Review: untitled [pp. 167-169]Review: untitled [pp.
169-171]Review: untitled [pp. 171-173]Review: untitled [pp.
173-174]Review: untitled [pp. 174-176]Review: untitled [pp.
176-179]Review: untitled [pp. 179-180]Review: untitled [pp.
180-182]Review: untitled [pp. 182-183]Review: untitled [pp.
183-184]
Film and Video ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 185-186]Review:
untitled [pp. 186-187]Review: untitled [pp. 187-189]Review:
untitled [pp. 189-191]Review: untitled [pp. 191-193]Review:
untitled [pp. 193-195]
Back Matter
