Tey Meadow
How do social institutions respond to challenges to gender and sexual classification schemes?
Since the 18th century, there has been a veritable explosion of scientific categories put into use in social and political contexts. Classification systems, ready tools for bureaucratic organization, reflect the larger structure of society. They grow out of and are maintained by social institutions. Because of this, they are often sites of political and personal struggle. Markers of gender and sexuality feature among the many indicia of human difference enforced and installed within institutional practices. From legal gender markers on government identity documents, to laws governing marriage and intimate family relationships, to the intricate medical taxonomies underlying the very identity practices of individuals, gender and sexual classifications structure social life in meaningful ways. In my work, I look at moments where these classifications conflict with or fail to account for the lived realities of individuals. My research to date addresses this in a study of how U.S. courts cope with individuals who seek to alter their legal gender, a comparative study of the law and politics of same-sex marriage in South Africa and the U.S., and my current book project on how contemporary families and institutions respond to extreme gender atypicality in children. As medicine, schools, religious communities, the state and others develop increasingly nuanced scripts about what gender is, individuals find themselves beholden to account for their gender in ever more detail. My work reveals the ways in which securing a comprehensible gender and sexuality in individuals is central to projects of social integration across a host of contexts.
Selected Publications:
Tey Meadow. Forthcoming, 2012. “Law’s Boundaries: and the Challenge of Transgender.” In Edges. Edited by Craig J. Calhoun and Richard Sennett. New York: NYU Press.
Tey Meadow. Forthcoming, 2011. “Deep Down Where the Music Plays: How Parents Account for Childhood Gender Variance.” Sexualities, 14(6).
Tey Meadow. 2010. “’A Rose is a Rose’: On the Production of Legal Gender Classifications” Gender & Society, 24(6): 814-837.
Joel Baum, Stephanie Brill and Tey Meadow. 2010. “Institute of Medicine, LGBT Health Research Gaps and Opportunities Report: Gaps in Research on Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Children and Adolescents,” Commissioned by the National Institutes of Health.
Judith Stacey and Tey Meadow. 2009. “New Slants on the Slippery Slope: The Politics of Polygamy and Gay Family Rights in South Africa and the United States.” Politics and Society, 37(2): 167-202. [ Abridged translation: Judith Stacey and Tey Meadow. 2008. "Mariage de même sexe et polygynie en Afrique du Sud et aux Etats-Unis.” In Mariages et Homosexualities dans le Monde: L’Arrangement des Normes Familiales. Edited by Descoutures, Virgines, Marie Digoix, Eric Fassin and Wilfried Rault. France: Autrement.]
Tey Meadow and Judith Stacey. 2008. “The Race to Marriage,” available online at The Immanent Frame, an SSRC Blog:http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/2008/06/18/the-race-to-marriage/.
Tey Meadow and Judith Stacey. 2008. “Keywords: Families” in Contexts: Understanding People in Their Social Worlds, 5(4). { Reprinted in Goodwin, Jeff and James M. Jasper. 2007. The Contexts Reader. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.]