In Defense of Sex

Christopher Breu (he/they) is Professor of English at Illinois State University. He is the author of Insistence of the Material: Literature in the Age of Biopolitics and Hard-Boiled Masculinities. He is also co-editor (with Elizabeth A. Hatmaker) of Noir Affect (Fordham).

Preface: "This ain't by design, girl" xi Introduction: Sex for the Twenty-First Century 1 1 The Ascent of Gender and Decline of Sex 39 2 Sex as Extimacy 67 3 Bioaccumulation and the Dialectics of Embodiment 101 4 The Sexual and Bodily Commons 134 Epilogue: Following in the Steps of the Hermaphrodite 173 Acknowledgments 177 Notes 181 Index 205

As gender categories fabulously expand and multiply, what does, what can, sex mean now? Departing from both sex negativity and the relative lack of attention to the category of sex, Breu articulates a new understanding of sex for the 21st century. Ambitiously intermingling several theoretical terrains, Breu forges a position that is nonbinary but also materialist, as he calls for relational collectivities, desire, flourishing, ecological "transspecies being," and the creation of a transindividual, sexual, bodily commons. This is a bold, inventive, and theoretically capacious vision that grapples with emerging problematics of sex, gender, embodiment, justice, scale, transformation, wild visions, and more.---Stacy Alaimo, author of Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times In Defense of Sex offers a novel, rigorous, creative, and timely intervention. By grounding his theoretical contribution in lived experience and connecting it to those of other multiply marginalized subjects and communities, Breu advances and intertwines scholarly and activist dialogues in vital new ways.---David A. Rubin, author of Intersex Matters: Biomedical Embodiment, Gender Regulation, and Transnational Activism