Abstract

Speaker: Professor Sally Hines, Chair of Sociology, University of Sheffield

Chair: Professor Sarah Franklin, Professor of Sociology, University of Cambridge.

Drawing on Sally’s past and current research on gender diversity, recognition and social change, the talk will consider both the gains and the losses in understandings and practices of gender fluidity in the contemporary UK.

The talk speaks to the recent tide in the UK of anti-transgender activism within some sections of feminism and aligned conservative movements, and critically unpacks the current wave of so-called ‘culture wars’. Moreover, the talk locates these UK-specific developments as part of a wider pushback against the rights of gender and sexual minorities at European and International levels and argues for the urgent need of a collective intersectional politics centred around social justice and a politics of difference.

Despite worrying trends, the talk considers the many gains in understanding gender and sex as fluid and thus positions ‘anti gender’ thought as representative of a conservative panic in the face of significant social, cultural and legal change.

Professor Sally Hines

Professor Sally Hines is Chair of Sociology the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield. She was Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at the University of Leeds, developed interdisciplinary networks in sexuality studies at Newcastle University.

Sally’s research falls across the interdisciplinary fields of sociology, gender studies, social policy, law, politics, health studies, and science and technology studies.

Sally’s previous Research Council funded research centred on gender diversity and identity practice, gender and social/cultural change, and gendered citizenship and recognition.

She has published in the area of transgender, gender and sexuality theory, gender and sexual citizenship, sociologies of the body, sociologies of intimacy, intersectionality, and theories of recognition and difference. She is currently developing work on gender and a politics of difference.

Sally is committed to public sociology and has done consultancy work on issues around the Gender Recognition Act. She has acted as a legal expert in relation to trans reproductive rights and parental recognition. She frequently appeared in the media around the relationship between trans and feminism.