Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been studying language and gender since I started graduate school in 1990. I’m an odd gender scholar in some ways in that I am a white cisgendered heterosexual masculine person. I think I’m interested in the topic because conversation and ‘being a man’ has always seemed hard and like a lot of work to me. So, I started studying these things in the 1990s with a project on language use in a college fraternity in the US. Since then I've published many articles on language and masculinities, including a 2004 article on the word dude, which is still popular in introductory linguistics courses today.


I wrote...

Language, Gender, and Sexuality: An Introduction

By Scott F. Kiesling,

Book cover of Language, Gender, and Sexuality: An Introduction

What is my book about?

This book is a gentle introduction to the field of language, gender, and sexuality. It leads the reader through thorny…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Sex/Gender

Scott F. Kiesling Why did I love this book?

A scientist shows that the science of sex is not as biologically binary as everyone thinks. Before reading this book, even though I had understood gender to be socially constructed, I thought gender was ‘built’ on a clear biological sex difference.

Fausto-Sterling explains, in language that my high-school biology could understand, how the biology of sex is much more complicated and socially constructed than I had realized. The rug was pulled out from under me.

By Anne Fausto-Sterling,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sex/Gender as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Sex/Gender presents a relatively new way to think about how biological difference can be produced over time in response to different environmental and social experiences.

This book gives a clearly written explanation of the biological and cultural underpinnings of gender. Anne Fausto-Sterling provides an introduction to the biochemistry, neurobiology, and social construction of gender with expertise and humor in a style accessible to a wide variety of readers. In addition to the basics, Sex/Gender ponders the moral, ethical, social and political side to this inescapable subject.

An interview with the author! WOMR - The Lowdown with Ira Wood - Sex…


Book cover of The Left Hand of Darkness

Scott F. Kiesling Why did I love this book?

Le Guin is my favorite author, and all of her power is on display in this science fiction novel about an emissary who visits a planet (Gethen) where, most of the time, the people have no sex differentiation. Sex traits only become apparent in the two days per month of “kemmer,” and Gethenians may kemmer as male or female (and which is not completely predictable).

Because of Le Guin’s skill as a novelist, the implications of this arrangement are explored in subtle but powerful ways, more as the warp and weft of the cultural background than the main feature of the plot (although it is definitely significant). The book shows how deeply gender and sex infuse our own culture through the contrast with Gethen. The bonus is that this is a masterpiece of a novel, one often mentioned on lists of the best science fiction novels of all time. Le Guin’s style is beautiful, and the plot is compelling. 

By Ursula K. Le Guin,

Why should I read it?

22 authors picked The Left Hand of Darkness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION-WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS

Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction-winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants' gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an…


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Book cover of The Birthright of Sons: Stories

The Birthright of Sons By Jefferey Spivey,

The Birthright of Sons is a collection of stories centered around the experiences of marginalized people, namely Black and LGBTQ+ men. Although the stories borrow elements from various genres (horror, suspense, romance, magical realism, etc.), they are linked by an exploration of identity and the ways personhood is shaped through…

Book cover of Testosterone

Scott F. Kiesling Why did I love this book?

We all think testosterone is the ‘male hormone’–it’s what makes men, well, men. It’s what is measured to decide who is a woman in the Olympics, and it is injected or ingested by some people to become more masculine. But ‘T,’ as this book and many others refer to it, is not as straightforwardly any of the things we think it is–all of these views of T come from how society and ideology have constructed it, sometimes in contradiction to clear fact.

Across 223 detailed but surprisingly engaging pages, the authors show how T has been mythologized and misunderstood, and moreover how these myths and misunderstandings have affected not just popular conceptions of T and masculinity, but the very science of T, as well.

By Rebecca M. Jordan-Young, Katrina Karkazis,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Testosterone as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal Winner

"It's stimulating fun when the assumptions and interpretations of scientific findings must undergo major revision. It's more than just fun when that revisionism concerns a subject...at the intersection of masculinity, gender, aggression, hierarchy, race, and class. This subtle, important book forces rethinking not just about one particular hormone, but about the way the scientific process is embedded in social context."
-Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Behave

Testosterone is a familiar villain, a ready culprit for everything from stock market crashes to the overrepresentation of men in prisons. That's a lot to pin…


Book cover of Female Masculinity

Scott F. Kiesling Why did I love this book?

When talking about how gender can be disconnected from bodies, I like to tell the story of when my very young son called a Hummer truck ‘masculine’ and then wondered aloud how a car can be masculine. In that vein, this book shows how the idea of masculinity is something much wider and more complicated than a ‘trait of men’ connected to the bodies of men.

With grounded and deeply researched examples, Halberstam shows how these masculine traits not only can be ‘de-linked’ from the ‘male body,’ but how they have been so throughout history. He also shows how female masculinity has often been hidden or forgotten. This book is a classic in gender studies, and once you have read it, it’s impossible to think of gender in the same way as before.

By Jack Halberstam,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Female Masculinity as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this quintessential work of queer theory, Jack Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two centuries. Demonstrating how female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility, but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag king performances.

Through detailed textual readings as well as empirical research, Halberstam uncovers a hidden history of female masculinities while arguing for a more nuanced understanding…


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Book cover of Lightning Strike Blues

Lightning Strike Blues By Gayleen Froese,

One summer night in a small prairie city, 18-year-old Gabriel Reece accidentally outs himself to his redneck brother Colin, flees on his motorcycle, and gets struck by lightning on his way out of town.

He’s strangely fine, walking away from his melted pile of bike without a scratch. There’s no…

Book cover of The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do men and women really speak different languages?

Scott F. Kiesling Why did I love this book?

This book thoroughly debunks one of the biggest gender myths that have emerged over the last 50 years. It takes as its jumping-off point the media empire that started from John Gray’s books (based on an idea first argued for, less essentially, by linguist Deborah Tannen), books which have been one of the main forces in perpetuating the myth that men and women are categorically different from one another in terms of interactional behavior and temperament.

The reality is that there is more difference between women and other women and between men and other men than there is between women and men.  It is, in fact, the myth that creates the differences by pointing us to see gender differences while ignoring other reasons for difference. Cameron is forceful and witty, and the book is an enjoyable read even as it does its work of revealing the powerful effects of gender ideology.

By Deborah Cameron,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Myth of Mars and Venus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Popular assumptions about gender and communication - famously summed up in the title of the massively influential 1992 bestseller Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus - can have unforeseen but far-reaching consequences in many spheres of life, from attitudes to the phenomenon of 'date-rape' to expectations of achievement at school, and potential discrimination in the work-place.

In this wide-ranging and thoroughly readable book, Deborah Cameron, Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at Oxford University and author of a number of leading texts in the field of language and gender studies, draws on over 30 years of scientific…


Explore my book 😀

Language, Gender, and Sexuality: An Introduction

By Scott F. Kiesling,

Book cover of Language, Gender, and Sexuality: An Introduction

What is my book about?

This book is a gentle introduction to the field of language, gender, and sexuality. It leads the reader through thorny issues of how language creates categories of gender and sexuality, how gender and sexuality enter into how we interact with one another, and how different ways of speaking, such as accents, are connected to gender and sexuality.

Some questions addressed include: Is language sexist? Why is the language used for sexual violence important? Why are pronouns so political in English? Are men less polite than women? Do women really gossip more than men? What is the language of flirting? Why is there a ‘gay voice’ (and what is it), but not really a ‘lesbian voice’? Why do men use more non-standard language than women?

Book cover of Sex/Gender
Book cover of The Left Hand of Darkness
Book cover of Testosterone

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