Published in 2009
324 pages
Sally L. Kitch is Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University. Her books include Higher Ground: From Utopianism to Realism in American Feminist Thought and Theory.
What is this book about?
Genealogy of the formation of race and gender hierarchies in the U.S.
Theories of intersectionality have fundamentally transformed how feminists and critical race scholars understand the relationship between race and gender, but are often limited in their focus on contemporary experiences of interlocking oppressions. In The Specter of Sex, Sally L. Kitch explores the “backstory” of intersectionality theory—the historical formation of the racial and gendered hierarchies that continue to structure U.S. culture today. Kitch uses a genealogical approach to explore how a world already divided by gender ideology became one simultaneously obsessed with judgmental ideas about race, starting in Europe and the English colonies in the late seventeenth century. Through an examination of religious, political, and scientific narratives, public policies and testimonies, laws, court cases, and newspaper accounts, The Specter of Sex provides a rare comparative study of the racial formation of five groups—American Indians, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and European whites—and reveals gendered patterns that have served white racial dominance and repeated themselves with variations over a two-hundred-year period.
Helpful goodreads review from Quin Rich:
Somewhat disappointing, The Specter of Sex does indeed attempt to lay out the gendered foundations of racial formation. However, it does so in an often superficial, underwhelming, and at times inaccurate manner. To be sure, many of the points it makes are true and important (racial stereotypes are gendered/sexualized, gender dichotomy and patriarchy have been used as standards of “civilization” and tools of white supremacy, women’s sexual/reproductive lives and labor have been key sites if racial formation); yet these points have been made with greater depth, poignancy, and force elsewhere. Most disturbingly, the conclusion attempt to rework the concept of intersectionality in ways that are neither “novel” (women of color feminisms have long adopted the practices advocated by Kitch, yet she fails to mention this) nor a true reworking (her claims that intersectionality reifies difference is much more a matter of misapplication of the theory than endemic to it).
As such, The Specter of Sex serves best as an extended literature review, a brief (and lackluster) historical summary, and an annotated bibliography. At MOST, it should be considered a starting point for further reading, not an authoritative or exhaustive source. Other key texts of interest are Angela Y Davis’ “Women, Race, & Class”, Andrea Smith and Winona LaDuke’s “Conquest,” Patricia Hill-Collins’ “Black Feminist Thought,” the anthology “This Bridge Called My Back,” and any of the work of Critical Race Feminists such as Mari Matsuda and Kimberlé Crenshaw.
