The Shape of Sex

By Leah Devun,

Book cover of The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance

Book description

The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of nonbinary sex, focusing on ideas and individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender categories from 200-1400 C.E. Ranging widely across premodern European thought and culture, Leah DeVun reveals how and why efforts to define "the human" so often hinged…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Shape of Sex as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

We might think that ideas about nonbinary gender identifications are a recent phenomenon, but Lead Devun does an amazing job of exploring the deep history of this kind of sexuality between the fifth and fifteenth centuries in Europe. Just as our society now finds embracing non-binary gender identification challenging at times, Devun shows how attitudes towards and practices of nonbinary sexuality changed dramatically over the course of the medieval millennium.

From Julie's list on the history of sex.

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When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…

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