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Books

Recreating Sexual Politics by V.J. Seidler

A review by Geoff Wade.

I found Seidler’s book interesting, wellinformed, controversial and lucid, if somewhat repetitive. The focus, largely, is on our inheritance of the metamorphosis that occurred in feminist (and other) theories during the heady days of the late Sixties, when notions of gender underwent a rigorous scrutiny, and ‘gender’ was redefined. This resulted in the proposition that our sex may be biologically determined, but our ‘gender’ (masculinity and femininity) is socially and culturally determined. Also – at least for many feminists – women are not just women, as opposed to being just men (men and women have more similarities than differences): they may also be rich or poor, black, Caucasian or Jewish etc.; they may be sexually experienced, or not sexually experienced; they may or may not be mothers, and so on.

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