Men who paint their nails, gender-neutral toilets, and people who no longer identify within the binaries of ‘male’ and ‘female’. In the past years, this has become the mainstream in many Western countries. This to the dismay of some conservative voices who lambast these ‘untraditional’ and ‘modern’ developments. But are these really such new developments, or has gender identity a more fluid history than most of us presuppose?
During Revolution! we dove into the history of gender identity with professor Geertje Mak. An expert on gender identity and its politics, she showed how our historical ideas about gender do not always match with the historical facts. How has our conception of gender changed over the past 100 years? What is the difference in our understanding of ‘male’ and ‘female’ now and then? And what about the political implications of these changes?
Prof. dr. Geertje Mak is professor of gender and its political history at the University of Amsterdam. Her research has focused on the understanding of the history of gender (identity), sexuality, and their political implications.
