Breaking the Binary: Sex, Gender Identity, and Gender Presentation is a multivolume series that presents U.S. case law with questions and comments. The series covers the difficulties and rights faced by people who do not fit neatly into either/or categories of male or female, masculine or feminine. The people in these cases tell their stories through the courts of being intersexed, transgendered, genderqueer, transsexual, and gender nonconforming. The series presents both current and older cases to provide readers with an overview of the history of case law, sexuality, and gender. The edited opinions reveal the ways that the judicial system can both inhibit and enable a culture that is tolerant of diversity in gender and gender expression.

Gender and sexuality are complex discursive forces that are in action and enacted on a daily basis in people lives through the United States. How we navigate these complex forces takes shape in a variety of ways, often unknowingly and with our complicit consent. Popular cultural studies is one vehicle by which scholars, theorists and others assess both the extent and impact that these discursive forces have on us and the degree to which we interpret, adapt, internalize and accept or reject our participation and engagement. Thus this volume possesses a number of interesting essays which look to a variety of popular cultural phenomenon that illustrate the complexity of our position in the world in relationship across the wide spectrum of genders and sexualities. The essays included in this collection examine the construction of masculinity through celebrity status; transsexuality in literature and the pyschotherapeutic modalities of transsexual counseling; polyamourous sexualities; discourses of fertility/infertility; gender identity and feminine warrior spirit in various literatures; as well as critical gender analyses of a variety of films. It is the editorâ (TM)s hope and the hope of the contributors to this volume, that the reader finds within these pages some intellectually exciting and theoretically challenging ideas that push the boundaries of what and how we know gender and sexuality is and can be in our society today.

Gender is an often misunderstood subject area, even within the discipline even to those who teach and write about it. One of my presenters, when she first approached me to present at the conference, asked, “What does my paper really have to do with gender”? To me the answer was obvious; everything has to do with gender. Gender is everywhere from the cradle to the grave. What color blanket are we given at birth? What clothes are we laid out in at death? We are bombarded with advertisements specifically targeted at our gender, either male, female, or somewhere in between. We are judged by our gender, which is often synonymous with our sex, although in many of the presentations through the years it is becoming evident that more and more people understand the difference. Our clothing, food, entertainment, and reading material are all tied to gender, in one form or another. Gender is like the air. It is all around us, seldom thought of, but always present. In an area that spans literature, politics, sex, religion, and personal choices it is hard to get finite and clear cut delineations. The contributors are the main focus here and I have just been the ringmaster of this incredible circus of ideas. Without them this could never have gone to press and it is all our hopes that you enjoy the volume and take something away from it that you did not anticipate.