This set of readings examines the institutionalization of gender and the imposition of a gender binary, with the Wade/Ferree chapter focusing largely on sports. I've added an article about a transgender boy, Mack Beggs, who won the women's state wrestling championship in Texas last year; I think Wade and Ferree would have mixed comments about the story.

The Booth article details a matriarchal society. I offer the article on the Mosuo as a countersystemic example – that is, an example of gender order that departs dramatically from the arrangement we have here in the US, one that values femininity and women over masculinity and men in its institutional structure.

Please speak to one of the following:

• the contrast between the American and the Mosuo gender orders, using concepts from the Wade/Ferree text to support your discussion,
• the implications of the Mack Beggs article on the material in the Wade/Ferree chapter, or
• one of the issues that Wade and Ferree raise in Chapter 08.

Feel free to incorporate personal experiences to the extent that they help interrogate or elaborate on the issues at hand, and if the texts have left you with compelling questions that perhaps your classmates can answer, that is welcome, too. Please make sure that you have overt references to the Wade/Ferree text in your post, regardless on what discussion topic you choose.