Introduction

Abstract

The existing, oppositional categories of gender and biological sex are being increasingly challenged in social and cultural life. Intersex communities are pushing for greater self-determination and resisting the medical assignment of ‘ambiguous’ infants to dualistic sex categories (see ISNA 2013; OII 2013). In Australia, Germany, Nepal and elsewhere there are moves towards the expansion of legal sex/gender categories on official documentation, including those which offer a third option (Bibby 2013; Davidson 2014; Knight 2012; Nandi 2013). Facebook has announced the expansion of users’ gender options to an alleged 58 options (Goldman 2014). There is growing grass-roots international interest in truly gender-transcendent childrearing or the withholding of infants’ sex/gender (Green & Friedman 2013; Leonard 2011; Parafianowicz 2009) as well as encouraging ‘gender-free’ toys (Ditum 2012; Orenstein 2011). Some preschools are trying to eliminate gendering (Hebblethwaite 2011) and some countries are introducing gender-neutral pronouns (Bahadur 2013). Androgynous ‘male’ models are modelling ‘women’s’ clothes in fashion magazines and on runways (Morris 2011), and androgynous ‘female’ models are doing the reverse (Peppers 2013).