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>> 167 8 Sex Segregation, Masculinities, and Gender-Variant Individuals David S. Cohen Dee Farmer was born a man but “underwent estrogen therapy, received silicone breast implants, and submitted to unsuccessful ‘black market’ testicleremoval surgery” in an effort to become a woman (Farmer v. Brennan 1994, 829). When she was convicted of credit card fraud, the Federal Bureau of Prisons assigned her to the general male population, where she wore clothes “in a feminine manner” and projected “feminine characteristics” (ibid.). There, she was brutally raped and beaten (ibid.). Steven Kastl was also born a man and taught at the Maricopa County Community College. After being diagnosed with gender identity disorder, Steven began taking hormones to transition to a woman, legally changed her name to Rebecca, and began living as a woman. However, her employer forbade her from using the women’s restroom at the college until she had completed sex reassignment surgery. Nonetheless, Kastl insisted on using the women’s restroom and was fired (Kastl v. Maricopa County Community College District 2006). Miki Ann DiMarco is an intersex individual with a penis but no testicles who identifies as female. When she was arrested for violating probation, local officials 168 > 169 The Stubborn Persistence of Sex Segregation In 1963, Congress passed the first federal civil rights law covering women, the Equal Pay Act, which required that men and women receive the same pay for the same job (Equal Pay Act). Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination in employment based on sex, among other categories, came a year later (Title VII). The 1970s brought Title IX and its prohibition on discrimination based on sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding (Title IX). The Supreme Court also took up the mantle of nondiscrimination based on sex during the 1970s, finally expanding the coverage of the Fourteenth Amendment ’s Equal Protection Clause in 1976 to prohibit most forms of government discrimination based on sex (Craig v. Boren 1976). Thus, over the course of 13 years, women’s status under federal law drastically changed, and the elimination of some of the most severe forms of sex discrimination followed. Yet, almost four decades later, sex segregation is alive and well. In fact, it has persisted in ways that affect most people throughout their lives. In an article that sets the stage for this chapter, I extensively detailed the various forms of sex segregation that continue to exist (Cohen 2011). Here, I will only briefly summarize these forms of sex segregation and the various areas of life that are segregated. The most obvious form of sex segregation is mandatory sex segregation . Mandatory sex segregation is required by law, such as the exclusion of women from direct ground combat roles in the military or the requirement that only men register for the draft. Within the criminal justice system, prison and jail populations are frequently required by law to be segregated based on sex. State laws also sometimes require transportation, searches, and employment within prisons, jails, and criminal courts to be segregated based on sex. Restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and the like are also regularly required by law to be segregated based on sex. Many states also have laws that require segregation based on sex in the medical context, either segregating those who receive treatment or requiring those who provide treatment to be of the same sex as the patient. Other contexts in which state laws mandate sex segregation include outdoor youth programs, elections, drug and alcohol testing in the private sector, honors, housing, identification card photography , jury sequestration, massage parlors, nudism, schools, and sexual violence programs. Administrative sex segregation occurs when government-run institutions are not required by law to sex segregate but nonetheless do so in their operating capacity. For instance, government buildings of all types, whether open to the public or not, are likely to have sex-segregated bathrooms and, if 170 > 171 segregation continues in almost all walks of life, from requirements imposed by law to everyday choices made by individuals in how to organize their own affairs. Gender, Antiessentialism, and Masculinities There are countless theories of gender (Connell 2009). On one extreme is the generally held notion that gender and sex are fixed notions that are inherently linked: men are, or should be, masculine, and women are, or should be, feminine. Under this theory, both sex and gender consist of binaries. Your sex is biologically determined and is either male or female. And, based on which sex you are, your gender is the set...

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