Jeff Hearn

Gender and Sexualities

Gender, and indeed sexuality, are central issues in and across societies, and have figured a lot in my writing and research for a long time. Earlier work on gender developed a materialist analysis of patriarchy based a lot on reproduction, in the widest sense, as in The Gender of Oppression: Men, Masculinity and the Critique of Marxism. I found Mary O’Brien’s work especially helpful. Though much of my work on sexuality has been focused on sexuality in the world of work and organisations (see ‘Work and Organisations’ section), conceptualising more broadly both the overlaps and the separations of sex, gender and sexuality has become a more central concern. More recently, important influences have been around intersectionalities, information and communication technologies, and ambiguities and overlaps between sex and gender, as in the concept of gex.

Selected Works

  1. ‘Gender: biology, nature and capitalism’, in T. Carver (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Marx, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1991, pp. 222-245.
  2. ‘The implications of information and communication technologies for sexualities and sexualised violences: contradictions of sexual citizenships’, Political Geography, Vol. 25(8), 2006, pp. 944-963. Link
  3. ‘The construction of sexual meaning: the sexualization of corporal punishment’, with Trevor Butt, Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society, Vol. 1(2), 1998, pp. 203-227.
  4. ‘Sexualities future, present, past … Towards transsectionalities’, Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society, Vol. 11(1), 2008, pp. 37-46.
  5. ‘Neglected intersectionalities in studying men: Age/ing, virtuality, transnationality’, in Helma Lutz, Maria Teresa Herrera Vivar and Linda Supik (eds.) Framing Intersectionality: Debates on a Multi-faceted Concept in Gender Studies, Ashgate, Farnham, UK, 2011, pp. 89-104.
  6. ‘Understanding gender: Some implications for science and technology’, with Liisa Husu, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 36, 2011, pp. 103-113.
  7. ‘The materiality of men, bodies, and towards the abolition of “men”’, in Martina Läubli and Sabrina Sahli (eds.), Männlichkeiten denken. Männlichkeitskonzepte aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Sicht [Thinking Masculinities: Concepts of Masculinities from a Socio-cultural Perspective], Transcript, Bielefeld, Germany, 2011, pp. 195-215. Link
  8. ‘Male bodies, masculine bodies, men’s bodies: the need for a concept of gex’, in B.S. Turner (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Body Studies, Routledge, London, 2012, pp. 307-320.
  9. ‘Sexualities, organizations and organization sexualities: future scenarios and the impact of socio-technologies (A transnational perspective from the global “North”)’, Organization: The Critical Journal of Organization, Theory and Society, Vol. 21(3), 2014, pp. 400-420.
  10. ‘Theories of diversity and intersectionality: What do they bring to diversity management?’, with J. Louvrier, in Regine Bendl, Inge Bleijenbergh, Elina Henttonen and Albert J. Mills (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Diversity in Organizations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015, pp. 62-82.
  11. ‘Where are the boundaries of sexuality? Hovering in a zone of uncertainty between sexualities and non-sexualities’, Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society, Vol. 21(8), 2018, pp. 1368-1373. Link
  12. “This is my cheating ex”: Gender and sexuality in revenge porn’, with Matthew Hall, Sexualities, Vol. 22(5–6), 2019; pp. 860–882. Link
  13. ‘Motherhood 2.0: slow progress for career women and motherhood within the ‘Finnish Dream’, with Charlotta Niemistö, Carolyn Kehn and Annamari Tuori, Work, Employment and Society, Vol. 35(4), 2021, pp. 696-715. Link