Breaking The Bowls: Degendering And Feminist Change

by Judith Lorber

In Breaking the Bowls , the sequel to Paradoxes of Gender , Judith Lorber shows the cracks, anomalies, and resistances that are breaking down the gendered social order in Western post-industrial societies and lays out how we can take this process further by deliberate degendering. Lorber argues that it is time to rebel against gender as a social institution―to challenge its basic processes and practices. Feminists have tried to restructure and change the dynamics of interaction between women and men, but they have not pushed their agenda to the point of calling for the abolition of gender boundaries and categories. Breaking the Bowls explores why undoing gender must be the ultimate feminist goal and how that goal can be reached.

Breaking the Bowls is part of the Contemporary Societies series.

Genres: Gender, Sociology, Nonfiction

236 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2005

About the author

Judith Lorber is Professor Emerita of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is a foundational theorist of social construction of gender difference.

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Breaking the Bowls explores why undoing gender must be the ultimate feminist goal and how that goal can be reached." What a short-sighted and prejudicial way of approaching gender! Embrace your gender identity, wherever it happens to lie on the spectrum. Insofar as authority figures shouldn't force others to conform to gender stereotypes, I agree with Lorber, but gender in general does not need to be "undone."

[Esther Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really quite good honestly. A little bit outdated for sure but a very comprehensive idea of degendered society. Sorta bomb. I would rather read one of Lorber's more well known works on gender though because I feel like it could be a little more cohesive / peer reviewed lol