Lisa Bowleg, PhD, MA

Founder and President &

Meredith Loui Program Assistant Intersectionality Training Institute

December 13, 2023

Lisa’s Marginalia

Hey Salonistes,It’s December.  December!  Not sure how this happened again this year; by this I mean that December rolled around so fast. Again!  But it has, and well, we at the Intersectionality Training Institute are stunned at this latest turn of calendar events. That said, we’re also terribly excited about all the wonderful things that we’re looking forward to in 2024.  Among them:
  • Our new website!  I know.  I know.  I’ve been talking about it ad nauseum, but we’re doing the final proofs and tests. We can’t wait for you to see it.  And trust me, you will know when it’s ready for viewing.
  • new newsletter, into which we plan to integrate the Salon Takeaways,
  • Intersectionality Summer Intensive 2024 and several new trainings (scroll to the end if you’re curious)
  • And of course, as always, the Intersectionality Research Salons that you’ve come to know and love.  We’re envisioning a more seamless process for you that would allow you to register just once and then get calendar invitations that you can accept or decline depending on your interests and availability.  Also, if you have ideas for guests that you would like to see (including yourself) at a future salon, please let us know.
December also brings a trip home for the holidays. I leave for home next week.  Of course, I’ve grown increasingly reluctant about disclosing that home is The Bahamas, because well, it arouses so much envy,😀 but also invitations for suitcase stowaways.  My luggage is spacious. Y’all come.  Nassau in December is fabulous!  One word: Junkanoo! Wishing you all a relaxing and productive (if you want to be productive, or have no other choice) holiday season.  If I don’t see you later this evening for Dr. Nancy Lopez’s salon, I’ll see you at my Ask Me (Us) Anything Intersectionality-Related salon on January 10, 2024.  Yep, January!  January! Our world appears to be growing ever more grim and challenging.  This fact notwithstanding, I wish you the happiest of holidays. Lisa
 

Salon Title:

What We Talked and Debated About Intersectionality and Gender/Sex at the Forum (Frankfurt, Germany, October 2024)

Salon Guests:

Lisa Bowleg, PhD, MA Founder, President, Intersectionality Training Institute Greta Bauer, PhD, MPH Co-Director of Programs, Intersectionality Training Institute Tonia Poteat, PhD Professor, School of Nursing Co-Director of the Sexual and Gender Minority Health Program Duke University Prof. Dr. Anelis Kaiser Trujillo Gender Studies in STEM University of Freiburg L. Zachary DuBois Assistant Professor of Anthropology University of Oregon Lu Ciccia Faculty Member UNAM Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Salon Date: November 8, 2023
 

Key Salon Takeaways:

Sex, Gender, and their Entanglements.  Isn’t that an intriguing title? This was the title of the October 2023 Ernst Strüngmann Forum, and the focus of our November 8, 2023 salon.  Let’s start with the entanglement piece.  But what is entanglement? For consumers of popular culture — and here, I’m outing myself as a longtime People Magazine reader — many of us credit Jada Pinkett-Smith for introducing and popularizing the term.  The term entanglement however, is actually rooted in physics, particularly quantum physics and future quantum technologies.Key takeaways from our interesting discussion on sex, gender, and their entanglements (and as you can see from the lengthy list below, it was virtually impossible to cull the gems to just 5 or 6 points):
  • In defining entanglements of sex and gender, Greta explained that in the English language, the terms sex and gender are separate, but this conceptual separation does not exist in all languages.  She explained that this separation — that sex is biological, and gender is social/cultural — is also institutionalized within scientific research.  For example, the U.S. National Institutes of Health mandates that researchers discuss sex as a biological variable.  In Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has a policy about sex and gender-based analysis that requires researchers to answer questions about the extent to which the proposed project addresses sex, and then separately how it addresses gender.
  • By contrast, the concept of entanglement as applied to sex and gender addresses how sex and gender are embodied in ways that are both biological and social.  Akin to how intersectionality theorists such as Patricia Hill Collins have discussed that intersectional positions such as racial/ethnic group and gender are mutually constituted such that racial/ethnic minority status cannot be separated from gender, sex and gender are similarly entangled as part of our neurology, endocrinology, and epigenetics.  Thus, as Greta reminded us, from an entanglement perspective, there is no pristine effect of sex or any pristine effect of gender.
  • There was consensus that it is impossible to do work related to sex and gender without an intersectional perspective.  The key question is how? Lu added that intersectionality is a necessity because it reflects the reality of our biomateriality; namely their interconnectedness . Biological expression is not over here, and sexuality over, there, and then gender identity and ethnicity are in other cells.  They are all interconnected and intertwined.
  • A recurrent question at the Forum was: what does intersectionality have to contribute to basic biology on sex and gender.  For example, do mice have intersectional positions that are important to consider in lab science?  Anelis pondered to what extent can intersectional questions generate hypotheses that might be tested in animal models.
  • There is a dire need for more interdisciplinary work on sex, gender, and their entanglements. The nature-culture dichotomy is reproduced in discipline (e.g., people working in the social sciences and humanities tend to prioritize gender, while those in the “natural” sciences tend to prioritize biology).
  • Lu noted that the biggest problem in knowledge production was not necessarily the questions we ask about sex and gender, but rather the interpretations researchers make about sex and gender.  They offered as an example, seeing a cell and talking about sex chromosomes.  That in and of itself is not problematic. What is problematic Lu offered, is to think that sex chromosomes are not social and are not affected by social and cultural practices, when we know that social practices are present at all stages of human life.
  • Tonia highlighted the historical case of Henrietta Lacks, the African-American woman from Baltimore who died of cervical cancer and whose cancer cells — extracted without her informed consent — were found to self-propagate and were used for many biomedical research and commercial purposes.  Mrs. Lacks’ cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, one of the most important cell lines in biomedical research. This research enriched many companies and people, but not the Lacks’s family who still live in poverty in Baltimore.  Tonia cited the Lacks’ example as one in our biological experiences (in this case, Mrs. Lacks’ cell lines) are inseparable from her intersectional experiences as that of a poor Black woman living in the U.S. from 1920, when she was born through her death in 1951
  • The gold standard for how to measure transgender people in research is based on the assumption that gender is different from sex.  What are the implications of this assumption for transgender health research? Put another way, if sex and gender are entangled what is the best approach for equity research with transgender and gender non-binary people?
  • Lu noted that it is problematic to conceptualize gender as universal because gender is always local.  Because different social practices imply gender, gender in Mexico City is different from gender in Argentina and in the Yucatan, for example.   This has important implications for how we understand gender in a country as diverse as the U.S.
  • Asked what researchers designing and analyzing research should consider when they develop measures of sex and gender, Zachary offered 7important recommendations for researchers:
    • First consult with key informants in the local context in the places that they conduct research to ensure that the language and response options about sex and gender reflect how those communities use them
    • Instead of deciding which sex/gender categories participants should be in, researchers should ask several questions to let participants self-identify their sex/gender using their own terms.
    • Ask whether the sex/gender categories researchers chosen (by the researcher) are even necessary for analytic purposes.
    • Introspect and be transparent about assumptions about sex and gender in relation to analyses.  He added that most researchers ask questions about sex and gender on surveys as a “knee jerk universal” because sex and gender are how we organize our societies and ourselves.
    • Link the questions to the research aims by making the questions about sex and gender explicit to participants so that participants know why they’re answering these questions
    • Define sex and gender.  Don’t assume that these are universal terms and that everyone will know what they mean.
    • Avoid these common practices: (1) failing to define sex and gender; (2)  using terms such as male, female, men, and women as if they’re synonymous; and (3) plugging these terms (e.g., male, female, men and women) into analyses with no rationale or theory.
 

Resources from the Salon Discussion & Zoom Chat

Note: Because most of the articles that we highlight during the salons and chats are copyrighted, we are not able to provide active links, just citations. Please let us know if you are having trouble locating an article (info@intersectionalitytraining.com) and we’ll do our best to try and get you a copy.Study about male pheromones (mentioned when Tonia discussed the study about how the researcher’s gender was associated with different outcomes) Sorge, R. E., Martin, L. J., Isbester, K. A., Sotocinal, S. G., Rosen, S., Tuttle, A. H., Wieskopf, J. S., Acland, E. L., Dokova, A., Kadoura, B., Leger, P., Mapplebeck, J. C. S., McPhail, M., Delaney, A., Wigerblad, G., Schumann, A. P., Quinn, T., Frasnelli, J., Svensson, C. I., Sternberg, W. F., & Mogil, J. S. (2014, 2014/06/01). Olfactory exposure to males, including men, causes stress and related analgesia in rodents. Nature Methods, 11(6), 629-632. https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2935 Best practices resources about how to ask questions about transgender identity and gender minority status: https://prevention.ucsf.edu/transhealth/education/data-recs-long Book and movie about Henrietta Lacks:
  • Skloot, R. (2011). The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. Crown.
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  HBO movie starring Oprah Winfrey and Rose Byrne, based on the book by Rebecca Skloot.
Insightful question from the chat: “[In criticizing the limitations of sex and gender], how do we ensure that the health experiences of transgender people and gender expansive people are not silenced by the lack of data?”
 

Other Things Y’all Need to Know

  • Consider applying to develop your own Ernst Strüngmann Forum.  We were delighted to welcome Julia Lupp, Director of the Forum to the salon.  She told us that the Forum was founded in 1974 to give researchers a safe space in which to discuss unresolved topics. The Forum typically convenes 40 to 45 researchers and facilitates dialogue with the goal of expanding understanding on a particular topic.  The Forum serves as a “pressure cooker” for ideas, and requires discussants to write and produce a book based on the unresolved topic. Consensus is not a requirement of the Forum, just dialogue and documentation. The book on this year’s Forum will be published in 2025. by MIT Press. Check out the Forum’s website for more information. If you think you might have a good unresolved topic for a future Forum, email Julia Lupp at lupp@esforum.de
  • The Intersectionality Training Institute’s 2024 Trainings. We hope you will forgive us for further crowding your inboxes about the great trainings we’ve got coming down the pike in 2024.  We’re so excited about them and want to be sure that you and other people could benefit from them, know about them.  Please share the news with those in your networks, and we thank you for doing so.

Intersectionality Summer Intensive 2024 Applications Open!

Passionate about intersectionality, social justice, and health equity research? Each summer, the Intersectionality Training Institute hosts its premier weeklong, in-person program in Philadelphia, PA: The Intersectionality Summer Intensive(tm). The Intensive gathers a small group of multidisciplinary researchers and practitioners, and graduate students who share a commitment to building or enhancing their capacity to apply intersectionality to qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods health equity research, with fidelity to core themes of intersectionality. We are now accepting applications for our 2024 cohort.
Application window closes February 9th, 2024 at 11:59pmET