Schedule · Phil 2109: Love, Gender, and Sex

Date	Module	Readings	Due Dates
2026-01-21	Introduction	Course overview “Is Plato Woke? Texas A&M Professor Speaks Out after Being Banned from Teaching the Greek Philosopher,” Here & Now, broadcast by WBUR, January 14, 2026 Parker Molloy, “The Real Reason Tucker Carlson’s Talking about Your Balls” (2022)	Please complete this “Getting to Know You” survey by 7:30pm the day before our first day of class (or as soon as possible if you are joining late)
2026-01-26	Part I: Love	Remote snow day (on Zoom) In-class screening: Every Body (2023), directed by Julie Cohen, 93 min
2026-01-28	Part I: Love	Eros I Plato, Symposium, up to 194e (just before the start of Agathon’s speech) [CourseWorks > Files]
2026-02-02	Part I: Love	Eros II Plato, 195a–212c (till the end of Socrates’ speech)
2026-02-04	Part I: Love	Eros III Plato, 212c to the end Sappho, fragments 1–2, 16, 26, 31, 41, 47–48, 54, 57, 94, 102, 106, 108, 122, 126, 129–31, 138, 147, 153, 156, 160, 185
2026-02-09	Part I: Love	Politics I Collected in Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle (Untorelli, 2013) [CW: rape, police brutality]: “ ‘I’m Glad I Was in the Stonewall Riot’: An interview with Sylvia Rivera,” pp. 12–14 “Rapping with a Street Transvestite Revolutionary: An Interview with Marsha P. Johnson,” pp. 21–29 “Y’all Better Quiet Down: Sylvia Rivera’s Speech at the 1973 Liberation Day Rally,” pp. 30–31 [recording] Martha Shelley, “Gay Is Good,” RAT 2.28 (1970) [CourseWorks] Collected in Notes from the Second Year (“Notes II”) (1970): Shulamith Firestone, “Love,” pp. 16–27 Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” pp. 37–41 Kate Millet, “Sexual Politics: A Manifesto for Revolution,” pp. 111–12 Radicalesbians, “The Woman-Identified Woman” (1970), in Notes III, pp. 81–84 Marilyn Frye, “Do You Have to Be a Lesbian to Be a Feminist?” (1990) [CourseWorks]
2026-02-11	Part I: Love	Politics II Tom Léger and Riley MacLeod, Is There a Transgender Text in This Class? (Brooklyn, NY: Topside, 2013), p. 5 Red Durkin, “Why Literature?,” Topside Press, June 9, 2011 Torrey Peters, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones (pub. by author, 2016), pp. 9–39 N.B. I’ve also uploaded the first two to CourseWorks in case the Internet Archive links are unreliable.
2026-02-16	Part I: Love	Politics III Peters, pp. 40–71
2026-02-18	Part I: Love	Politics IV Auto Anon, Reverse Tomboy: A Novel (pub. by author, 2025), pp. i–ix, 98–103, 3–38 [CW: sexual assult]
2026-02-23	Part I: Love	Politics V Auto Anon, pp. 38–74 [CW: sexual assult] Author visits on Zoom!	Response paper #1 assigned
2026-02-25	Part I: Love	Class canceled
2026-02-27	Part I: Love	BCRW 50th Scholar & Feminist Conference (Day 2)
2026-02-28	Part I: Love	BCRW 50th Scholar & Feminist Conference (Day 1)
2026-03-02	Part II: Gender	The Beauvoirian Revolution I Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949; new trans., Vintage Books, 2011), pp. xviii–xx, 3–17, 21–26, 44–48, 71–75 [CourseWorks]
2026-03-04	Part II: Gender	The Beauvoirian Revolution II Fred M. Hechinger, “Sex and the Single College Girl,” New York Times, April 21, 1968 [CourseWorks] Beauvoir, pp. 283, 721–25, 683–708, 432–36, 420–22 (in this order) [CourseWorks]
2026-03-09	Part II: Gender	Gendering Sex I Kevin Roberts, foreword to Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Project 2025 (Heritage Foundation, 2023), pp. 1, 4–6 Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body (Basic Books, 2000), chap. 3 [CourseWorks]
2026-03-11	Part II: Gender	Gendering Sex II Nancy Tuana, “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance,” Hypatia 19.1 (2004), 194–219, 219–224 (skim), 224–26 [CourseWorks]
2026-03-16	Part II: Gender	Spring recess (no class)
2026-03-18	Part II: Gender	Spring recess (no class)
2026-03-23	Part II: Gender	📽 Movie night (no class) Sexing Gender I [CW: homo-/transphobia, transmisogyny] Robert Trivers to Jeffrey Epstein, Mar. 29, 2016, Data Set 9, EFTA01183881, U.S. Department of Justice “302 Sexual Deviations” in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Second Edition (“DSM-II”) (1968) (skim) [CourseWorks] Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders, Sixth Version, International Journal of Transgenderism 5.1 (2001) (skim) “302.3 Transvestic Fetishism” and “302.6/302.85 Gender Dysphoria” in DSM-V (2013) (skim) [CourseWorks] Jamey Jesperson, “Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Re-membering Trans Feminine Llife and Death in New Spain, 1604–1821,” G&H 36.1 (2024), pp. 92–94, 96–102 Host your own screening: Framing Agnes (2022), directed by Chase Joynt, 75 min
2026-03-25	Part II: Gender	Gendering Sex III Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis, “Ovulation,” in Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography (HUP, 2019) Diane Tomalty et al., “Should We Call It a Prostate?,” Sexual Medicine Reviews 10.2 (2022)	Movie night assignment due by midnight
2026-03-30	Part II: Gender	Sexing Gender II Sandy Stone, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” in Body Guards (Routledge, 1991), selections TBD [CourseWorks] Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” GLQ 1.3 (1994)
2026-04-01	Part II: Gender	Sexing Gender III E. M. Hernandez and Rowan Bell, “Much Ado About Nothing: Unmotivating ‘Gender Identity,’” Ergo (2025)
2026-04-06	Part III: Sex	The 1982 Barnard Conference I [CW: rape, transmisogyny] Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (Simon & Schuster, 1975), pp. 11–30 Carole Vance, preface and acknowledgements (skim), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (“P&D”) (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984) [CourseWorks] Sharon Olds, “Outside the Operating Room of the Sex-Change Doctor” (1980), in P&D [CourseWorks] torrin a. greathouse, “In an Operating Room outside of the Cis Woman’s Imagination” (Radical Paper, 2019)
2026-04-08	Part III: Sex	The 1982 Barnard Conference II [CW: rape, domestic violence, incest, genital mutilation] Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5.4 (1980), pp. 631–42 (skim pp. 633–36, 638–40), 647–48 [CourseWorks] Catharine MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory” (“FMMS-I”), Signs 7.3 (1982), pp. 528–41 [CourseWorks] MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence” (“FMMS-II”), Signs 8.4 (1983), pp. 644–55 [CourseWorks] MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (HUP, 1989), pp. 135–36, 154 [CourseWorks]
2026-04-11	Part III: Sex	The 1982 Barnard Conference III In Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Beacon, 1992) [CourseWorks]: Preface (1991), pp. xiii–xvii (skip pp. xiv–xv) “The Category of Sex” (1976), pp. 1–8 “The Mark of Gender” (1985), pp. 76–81 “One Is Not Born a Woman” (1981), pp. 9–20 (skim pp. 14–17) “The Straight Mind” (1980) pp. 21–32 (skim pp. 23–24)
2026-04-13	Part III: Sex	Being Trans in Philosophy Zine Reading + Launch Party (room TBD, 3–5pm)
2026-04-15	Part III: Sex	The 1982 Barnard Conference IV Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex” (1984), in P&D [CourseWorks] Olivia Newsome (Barnard Archives) visits class!
2026-04-20	Part III: Sex	The 1982 Barnard Conference V Lorna Bracewell, “Beyond Barnard: Liberalism, Antipornography Feminism, and the Sex Wars ,” Signs 42.1 (2016)	If you are interested in pursuing your own final project, please meet with either of us by this day
2026-04-22	Part III: Sex	The 1982 Barnard Conference VI [CW: rape, transmisogyny] Angela Davis, “Rape, Racism and the Capitalist Setting,” The Black Scholar 12.6 (1978) Joss Greene, “The Insurgent Agency of Incarcerated Trans Women of Color,” Signs 48.4 (2023)	Response paper #2 assigned
2026-04-27	Part III: Sex	Between Love, Gender, and Sex I Susan Stryker, “Dungeon Intimacies: The Poetics of Transsexual Sadomasochism,” parallax 14.1 (2008) Florence Ashley, selections from Gender/Fucking (CLASH, 2024) Guest lecture by Ry?
2026-04-29	Part III: Sex	Between Love, Gender, and Sex II Mira Bellwether, selections from Fucking Trans Women (pub. by author, 2010) Florence Ashley, selections from Gender/Fucking
2026-05-04	Part III: Sex	Between Love, Gender, and Sex III Ding, “On Our Own Terms: Trans Women Crafting the Meaning of ‘Woman’ ” (manuscript)
2026-05-06	Part III: Sex	Reading day (no class)
2026-03-13	Part II: Gender	Response paper #1	Response paper #1 due to CourseWorks by midnight
2026-05-08	Part III: Sex	Response paper #2	Response paper #2 due to CourseWorks by midnight
2026-05-13	Part III: Sex	Final project	Final project due to CourseWorks by midnight

2026-01-21

Introduction

Course overview

“Is Plato Woke? Texas A&M Professor Speaks Out after Being Banned from Teaching the Greek Philosopher,” Here & Now, broadcast by WBUR, January 14, 2026
Parker Molloy, “The Real Reason Tucker Carlson’s Talking about Your Balls” (2022)

Please complete this “Getting to Know You” survey by 7:30pm the day before our first day of class (or as soon as possible if you are joining late)

2026-01-26

Part I: Love

Remote snow day (on Zoom)

In-class screening: Every Body (2023), directed by Julie Cohen, 93 min

2026-01-28

Part I: Love

Eros I

Plato, Symposium, up to 194e (just before the start of Agathon’s speech) [CourseWorks > Files]

2026-02-02

Part I: Love

Eros II

Plato, 195a–212c (till the end of Socrates’ speech)

2026-02-04

Part I: Love

Eros III

Plato, 212c to the end
Sappho, fragments 1–2, 16, 26, 31, 41, 47–48, 54, 57, 94, 102, 106, 108, 122, 126, 129–31, 138, 147, 153, 156, 160, 185

2026-02-09

Part I: Love

Politics I

Collected in Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle (Untorelli, 2013) [CW: rape, police brutality]:
- “ ‘I’m Glad I Was in the Stonewall Riot’: An interview with Sylvia Rivera,” pp. 12–14
- “Rapping with a Street Transvestite Revolutionary: An Interview with Marsha P. Johnson,” pp. 21–29
- “Y’all Better Quiet Down: Sylvia Rivera’s Speech at the 1973 Liberation Day Rally,” pp. 30–31 [recording]
Martha Shelley, “Gay Is Good,” RAT 2.28 (1970) [CourseWorks]
Collected in Notes from the Second Year (“Notes II”) (1970):
- Shulamith Firestone, “Love,” pp. 16–27
- Anne Koedt, “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm,” pp. 37–41
- Kate Millet, “Sexual Politics: A Manifesto for Revolution,” pp. 111–12
Radicalesbians, “The Woman-Identified Woman” (1970), in Notes III, pp. 81–84
Marilyn Frye, “Do You Have to Be a Lesbian to Be a Feminist?” (1990) [CourseWorks]

2026-02-11

Part I: Love

Politics II

Tom Léger and Riley MacLeod, Is There a Transgender Text in This Class? (Brooklyn, NY: Topside, 2013), p. 5
Red Durkin, “Why Literature?,” Topside Press, June 9, 2011
Torrey Peters, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones (pub. by author, 2016), pp. 9–39

N.B. I’ve also uploaded the first two to CourseWorks in case the Internet Archive links are unreliable.

2026-02-16

Part I: Love

Politics III

Peters, pp. 40–71

2026-02-18

Part I: Love

Politics IV

Auto Anon, Reverse Tomboy: A Novel (pub. by author, 2025), pp. i–ix, 98–103, 3–38 [CW: sexual assult]

2026-02-23

Part I: Love

Politics V

Auto Anon, pp. 38–74 [CW: sexual assult]

Author visits on Zoom!

Response paper #1 assigned

2026-02-25

Part I: Love

Class canceled

2026-02-27

Part I: Love

BCRW 50th Scholar & Feminist Conference (Day 2)

2026-02-28

Part I: Love

BCRW 50th Scholar & Feminist Conference (Day 1)

2026-03-02

Part II: Gender

The Beauvoirian Revolution I

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949; new trans., Vintage Books, 2011), pp. xviii–xx, 3–17, 21–26, 44–48, 71–75 [CourseWorks]

2026-03-04

Part II: Gender

The Beauvoirian Revolution II

Fred M. Hechinger, “Sex and the Single College Girl,” New York Times, April 21, 1968 [CourseWorks]
Beauvoir, pp. 283, 721–25, 683–708, 432–36, 420–22 (in this order) [CourseWorks]

2026-03-09

Part II: Gender

Gendering Sex I

Kevin Roberts, foreword to Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Project 2025 (Heritage Foundation, 2023), pp. 1, 4–6
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body (Basic Books, 2000), chap. 3 [CourseWorks]

2026-03-11

Part II: Gender

Gendering Sex II

Nancy Tuana, “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance,” Hypatia 19.1 (2004), 194–219, 219–224 (skim), 224–26 [CourseWorks]

2026-03-16

Part II: Gender

Spring recess (no class)

2026-03-18

Part II: Gender

Spring recess (no class)

2026-03-23

Part II: Gender

📽 Movie night (no class)

Sexing Gender I [CW: homo-/transphobia, transmisogyny]

Robert Trivers to Jeffrey Epstein, Mar. 29, 2016, Data Set 9, EFTA01183881, U.S. Department of Justice
“302 Sexual Deviations” in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Second Edition (“DSM-II”) (1968) (skim) [CourseWorks]
Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Standards of Care for Gender Identity Disorders, Sixth Version, International Journal of Transgenderism 5.1 (2001) (skim)
“302.3 Transvestic Fetishism” and “302.6/302.85 Gender Dysphoria” in DSM-V (2013) (skim) [CourseWorks]
Jamey Jesperson, “Trans Misogyny in the Colonial Archive: Re-membering Trans Feminine Llife and Death in New Spain, 1604–1821,” G&H 36.1 (2024), pp. 92–94, 96–102
Host your own screening: Framing Agnes (2022), directed by Chase Joynt, 75 min

2026-03-25

Part II: Gender

Gendering Sex III

Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis, “Ovulation,” in Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography (HUP, 2019)
Diane Tomalty et al., “Should We Call It a Prostate?,” Sexual Medicine Reviews 10.2 (2022)

Movie night assignment due by midnight

2026-03-30

Part II: Gender

Sexing Gender II

Sandy Stone, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” in Body Guards (Routledge, 1991), selections TBD [CourseWorks]
Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” GLQ 1.3 (1994)

2026-04-01

Part II: Gender

Sexing Gender III

E. M. Hernandez and Rowan Bell, “Much Ado About Nothing: Unmotivating ‘Gender Identity,’” Ergo (2025)

2026-04-06

Part III: Sex

The 1982 Barnard Conference I [CW: rape, transmisogyny]

Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (Simon & Schuster, 1975), pp. 11–30
Carole Vance, preface and acknowledgements (skim), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (“P&D”) (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984) [CourseWorks]
Sharon Olds, “Outside the Operating Room of the Sex-Change Doctor” (1980), in P&D [CourseWorks]
torrin a. greathouse, “In an Operating Room outside of the Cis Woman’s Imagination” (Radical Paper, 2019)

2026-04-08

Part III: Sex

The 1982 Barnard Conference II [CW: rape, domestic violence, incest, genital mutilation]

Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” Signs 5.4 (1980), pp. 631–42 (skim pp. 633–36, 638–40), 647–48 [CourseWorks]
Catharine MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory” (“FMMS-I”), Signs 7.3 (1982), pp. 528–41 [CourseWorks]
MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Jurisprudence” (“FMMS-II”), Signs 8.4 (1983), pp. 644–55 [CourseWorks]
MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (HUP, 1989), pp. 135–36, 154 [CourseWorks]

2026-04-11

Part III: Sex

The 1982 Barnard Conference III

In Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other Essays (Beacon, 1992) [CourseWorks]:
- Preface (1991), pp. xiii–xvii (skip pp. xiv–xv)
- “The Category of Sex” (1976), pp. 1–8
- “The Mark of Gender” (1985), pp. 76–81
- “One Is Not Born a Woman” (1981), pp. 9–20 (skim pp. 14–17)
- “The Straight Mind” (1980) pp. 21–32 (skim pp. 23–24)

2026-04-13

Part III: Sex

Being Trans in Philosophy Zine Reading + Launch Party (room TBD, 3–5pm)

2026-04-15

Part III: Sex

The 1982 Barnard Conference IV

Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex” (1984), in P&D [CourseWorks]

Olivia Newsome (Barnard Archives) visits class!

2026-04-20

Part III: Sex

The 1982 Barnard Conference V

Lorna Bracewell, “Beyond Barnard: Liberalism, Antipornography Feminism, and the Sex Wars ,” Signs 42.1 (2016)

If you are interested in pursuing your own final project, please meet with either of us by this day

2026-04-22

Part III: Sex

The 1982 Barnard Conference VI [CW: rape, transmisogyny]

Angela Davis, “Rape, Racism and the Capitalist Setting,” The Black Scholar 12.6 (1978)
Joss Greene, “The Insurgent Agency of Incarcerated Trans Women of Color,” Signs 48.4 (2023)

Response paper #2 assigned

2026-04-27

Part III: Sex

Between Love, Gender, and Sex I

Susan Stryker, “Dungeon Intimacies: The Poetics of Transsexual Sadomasochism,” parallax 14.1 (2008)
Florence Ashley, selections from Gender/Fucking (CLASH, 2024)

Guest lecture by Ry?

2026-04-29

Part III: Sex

Between Love, Gender, and Sex II

Mira Bellwether, selections from Fucking Trans Women (pub. by author, 2010)
Florence Ashley, selections from Gender/Fucking

2026-05-04

Part III: Sex

Between Love, Gender, and Sex III

Ding, “On Our Own Terms: Trans Women Crafting the Meaning of ‘Woman’ ” (manuscript)

2026-05-06

Part III: Sex

Reading day (no class)

2026-03-13

Part II: Gender

Response paper #1

Response paper #1 due to CourseWorks by midnight

2026-05-08

Part III: Sex

Response paper #2

Response paper #2 due to CourseWorks by midnight

2026-05-13

Part III: Sex

Final project

Final project due to CourseWorks by midnight