Sex Gen Lab

We will never forget Ruth Bader Ginsberg; how we remember her depends on who we are and how her extraordinary life touched ours. Starting from her early career as a lawyer arguing cases to her many years and decisions on the Supreme Court, the effects of her contributions reverberate through the law of the land to enhance the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that everyone deserves. Our country is now feeling the impact of a court without RBG, as the ideological balance has shifted and human rights for which she fought are now at risk in multiple cases. The rollback of abortion rights in several states, and the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear challenges to these laws, is a stark reminder of the vital role that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had on the Court.

With s*xual and reproductive rights under attack, as well as other laws that are braided into these freedoms, we at S*xGenLab are focusing our tribute to her commitment to enlist strong arguments and claims supported by evidence. Now more than ever, we honor her belief in science and her commitment to ensure or bring attention to a fully inclusive view of what equality means. In this spirit, we bring our mission, to translate and disseminate research on gender and s*xuality, spotlighting how her work impacted, improved and safeguarded so many people’s lives (Boertien & Vignoli, 2019; Parker, 2020; Stotland, 2017) . We will be posting research bites, infographics, a video and a podcast over the next few days to highlight research that was impacted by her decisions addressing inequalities. We underscore how these impacts have been proven through science --a vital part of her legacy within and beyond the Court, at this crucial moment when these rights and gains are at risk with every decision made by our courts, in a demand that our justice system pay attention to science and the impacts it has on all of our lives.


Boertien, D., & Vignoli, D. (2019). Legalizing same-s*x marriage matters for the subjective well-being of individuals in same-s*x unions. Demography, 56(6), 2109-2121.

Parker, W. J. (2020). The moral imperative of reproductive rights, health, and justice. Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 62, 3-10.

Stotland, N. L. (2017). Reproductive rights and women’s mental health. Psychiatric Clinics, 40(2), 335-350.

Ep 6 of S*xcavation is out now! Check out Dr. Alison Norris and our talk on reproductive healthcare and access. Link in bio, and found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

SAMS is conducting a webinar on the 18th. You can register and submit a question here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8ViH5ik8TWyr2jVZdpiBuw

We are excited to share this summer course! The 1st Summer Session in Gender/S*x/uality In/Justice! The topic is "Relating Against the State: Decolonial and Anti-Imperialist Approaches to Gender/S*x/uality." The Session will meet for 2hrs/week for 8 wks this summer, and you can find out all the info here (https://www.queensu.ca/psychology/van-anders-lab/summersession2021.html) including the course description, syllabus, facilitator, structure, and how to apply (due date May 20th!). Cost is free! :) https://www.queensu.ca/psychology/van-anders-lab/summersession2021.html

van Anders lab Topic Summary: The goal of this summer session is to address de/colonial and anti/imperialist thinking and approaches to s*xuality and gender, and to approach s*xuality and kinship through an anti-racist lens. Participants in the seminar will learn about the epistemic roots of contemporary Western s...

We all deserve to live safely in our bodies, feeling connected to our bodies, trusting of the knowledge and desire we find therein. Some are encouraged to have silent bodies. Confused bodies. This leaves us diminished. This is what Audre Lorde alluded to when she wrote that in this society, women have been systematically kept from@the power of the erotic, because it makes women dangerous. Women so empowered will challenge an oppressive status quo (1984).

Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: and ...that second slide 🗣

"The women I interviewed for a research project and book expected men to ask for, plan, and pay for dates; initiate s*x; confirm the exclusivity of a relationship; and propose marriage," writes Ellen Lamont. "Almost none of my interviewees saw these dating practices as a threat to their feminist credentials or to their desire for egalitarian marriages. But they were wrong." (From 2020.)

If You Want a Marriage of Equals, Then Date as Equals

Distinguished Professor and sociologist Patricia Hill Collins helps us to understand what she calls “intersecting oppressions.” She is principally concerned with the relationships among empowerment, self-definition, and knowledge. Black women sit at a theoretically interesting point. Collins argues that black women are uniquely situated in that they stand at the focal point where two exceptionally powerful and prevalent systems of oppression come together: race and gender. Being able to understand this position as something she calls “intersectionality” opens up the possibility of seeing and understanding many more spaces of cross-cutting interests.
That is, understanding the social position black women ought to compel us to see, and look for, other spaces where systems of inequality come together. Intersectionality motivates us to look at just how our identities are constructed at the expense of others: “These examples suggest that moral positions as survivors of one expression of systemic violence become eroded in the absence of accepting responsibility of other expressions of systemic violence” (Collins, 2000, p. 247).

[ID: over blue green yellow gradient background with flowers, images of Patricia Hill Collins. Text that reads “Most activism is brought about by us ordinary people. -Patricia Hill Collins. “The power of a free mind consists of trusting your own mind to ask the questions that need to be asked and your own capacity to figure out the strategies you need to get those questions answered. Over time, this requires building communities that make this kind of intellectual and political work possible.”― Patricia Hill Collins, On Intellectual Activism.]

Discrimination doesn’t exist in a bubble, and neither do we. Recognizing how different types of discrimination intersect and increase biases will help us ensure that everyone benefits from the principles of equality and equity. ✨

[image description: over blue green and yellow gradient background, text reads: Let’s define: Intersectionality. Intersectionality describes how oppressive institutions of power are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another. Though this idea was not new (e.g. Sojourner’s Truth Ain’t I a Women speech), Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced this term in 1989 to address the ways in which the experience of multiply marginalized individuals intersect and cannot be adequately explained through the sum of race and gender. First introduced through legal context to address the ways in which laws fail to address discrimination against black women and other women of colour in the U.S., the term has since been taken up by different disciplines and organizing spaces.” Graphs and illustrations of this concept followed by photo of man holding sign that reads “the future is intersectional” and a quote from Audre Lorde “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”]

How do we Debunk the Gender Polarity? Dr. Pani Farvid offers these five steps:

1. AWARENESS— that men and women are actually not that different from each other. Our gendered and polarized system is not natural, but it has become normalized for us. Once we realize that gender is much more fluid and changeable, we will realize the freedom this provides all of us.

2. CHALLENGE SEXISM— We need to challenge everyday s*xism, in the workplace, at home, within our institutions and in our media representations.

3. CHANGE CONSUMER PATTERNS— We should change our consumer patterns and reward companies that don’t promote s*xist ideas.

4. GENDER-NEUTRAL PARENTING— We need to raise our kids differently and in a more gender-neutral way, to challenge the status quo.

5. GENDER EQUALITY EDUCATION— We urgently need gender- equality education within schools, from day one.

[image description: over blue and pink gradient circle, text reads “The basis of gender inequality is the idea that there are two discrete and distinct genders and that one of these genders is inferior to the other. In order to achieve gender equality in New Zealand and globally, it’s time to focus on primary prevention. That is, approaches that stop s*xism happening before it takes hold, through gender equality education and the debunking of gender polarity.” “Our binary gender system does not work for boys or girls, and we need to teach our kids they don’t need to be defined by the rigid gender expectations of our society.” -Dr. Pani Farvid]

Dr. Pani Farvid is a dazzlingly brilliant professor and critical scholar who works with interdisciplinary research teams, community organizations and policy makers across the globe in the area of social psychology, psychology of gender and s*xuality, technology and intimacy, and social justice.

Her work seeks to redress social injustices affecting women, LGBTQI+, migrants, and other marginalized groups.

“Our binary gender system does not only lead to gender inequality— something that we’ve known for a long time— but it feeds into a whole host of individual and social problems that we have within our society. And even if men as a whole group might benefit from the current system, it limits opportunities for both boys and girls within our culture.”

-From her amazing TEDx Talk “Saying goodbye to binary gender”

This widespread assumption may seem normal, but it is recent in human history and becomes problematic for people of all s*xualities, for how it shames, distorts, and informs systems of power. According to Thomas Keith in Masculinities in Contemporary American Culture, the longstanding cultural assumption that male–female dualities are "natural and immutable" partly explains the persistence of systems of and in modern society. It leads to erasure of people who don’t fall strictly within these assumed gender identities. Gender binarism creates institutionalized structures of power, and people who identify outside traditional gender binaries may experience discrimination and harassment.

[image description: over blue and pink gradient background, text reads “Let’s define the gender binary. The classification of people’s s*x and gender as either masculine or feminine. Masculinity and femininity are considered opposite and based in biology. This binary works to excludes and punish anyone who does not conform to conventional gender roles and appearance. Moving beyond this gender binary system would mean moving towards an acknowledgement of the multiplicity of gender. Funneling every person into only one of two categories (man or woman) doesn't work.” Additional slide from urban dictionary defining “Gender Binary.”]
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