Iván Villanueva Jordán (Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas)
<aside> 📖
How to cite in APA 7: Villanueva-Jordán, I. (20xx, xx de mes). Introductory Readings on Gender and Sexuality. https://trujamancia.com/blog/
</aside>
This is a brief introductory reading list that I usually recommend to students of translation who want to work on gender or sexuality. I prefer to begin with the foundational concepts developed in academic scholarship rather than with the operational definitions found in administrative documents or activist guides. Those resources are important in their own contexts, but for research I usually start with Gayle Rubin's concept of the sex/gender system as a point of departure.
Connell, Raewyn W., & Pearse, Rebecca. (2015). Gender: In World Perspective (3rd ed.). Polity.
<aside> 💡 Connell and Pearse provide a clear and accessible introduction to gender as a social, cultural, political, and economic phenomenon from a global perspective. Drawing on examples from different regions of the world, they examine how gender shapes institutions, identities, inequalities, and everyday life while highlighting the diversity of gender experiences across societies.
</aside>
There is a translation into Spanish of this book published by the Press of the Universitat de València (more information here).
Scott, Joan W. (1986). Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis. The American Historical Review, 91(5), 1053-1075. https://doi.org/10.2307/1864376
<aside> 💡 Scott argues that gender should be understood as a fundamental category for analysing history, rather than simply as a topic concerning women. She shows how gender structures social relationships, institutions, and systems of power, while also shaping historical knowledge itself.
</aside>
Rubin, Gayle. (1975). The Traffic in Women. Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex. In R. R. Reiter (Ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women (pp. 157–210). Monthly Review Press.
<aside> 💡 Rubin examines how societies organise gender and sexuality through systems of kinship, exchange, and social norms rather than through biology alone. She introduces the concept of the sex/gender system, arguing that gender roles are socially produced and historically variable.
</aside>
Butler, Judith. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge.
<aside> 💡 Butler questions the assumption that gender is a fixed or natural identity, proposing instead that it is repeatedly produced through social practices and performances. The book critiques binary understandings of sex and gender and explores how these categories are maintained and contested.
</aside>
Butler, Judith. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". Routledge.
<aside> 💡 Butler revisits the arguments of Gender Trouble to examine how bodies and biological sex are produced through social and discursive processes rather than existing outside them. She argues that materiality and discourse are not opposites but are mutually constitutive.
</aside>
Rubin, Gayle. (1984). Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. In C. Vance (Ed.), Pleasure and Danger (pp. 267–319). Routledge.
<aside> 💡 Rubin argues that sexuality should be analysed as a distinct system of social and political organisation rather than simply as an extension of gender. She examines how societies establish hierarchies of sexual value, distinguishing between practices that are considered legitimate and those that are marginalised or stigmatised.
</aside>