This week, we cover a range of topics on gender including the evolution of ideas about gender, the history of gender in the U.S. workplace, and key theories of gender from the 1970s to the present.

This week, we provide a brief overview of the historical and emerging understanding of sexuality and sexual identity. We then explore the history of sexuality and sexual identity discrimination in the workplace (early days of allowed discrimination against LGB people; larger issue of job insecurity for LGB folks; advent of ENDA, controversies around ENDA –how that has played out to pit LGB people and trans* people against one another).

This week, you will learn about the evolution of understanding about transgender people’s lives and identities, exploring the long history of gender transgression across different cultural contexts, and talk about the ways we understand gender transgression to function. We then discuss how those who identify outside the gender binary present important challenges to fixed ways of being/thinking about gender. Finally, we examine the ways that transgender individuals have faced and surmounted oppression in the workplace (also known as genderism, a term coined by Riki Wilchins), and the kinds of laws that are designed to protect their rights.