Background
Suzanne Kessler was born on October 13, 1946 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
Kessler received a Bachelor of Arts at Carnegie Mellon University in 1968.
365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA
Kessler received her doctoral degree in social psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1972.
(Kessler and McKenna convincingly argue that gender is not...)
Kessler and McKenna convincingly argue that gender is not a reflection of biological reality but rather a social construct that varies across cultures. Valuable for its insights into gender, its extensive treatment of transsexualism, and its ethnomethodological approach, Gender reviews and critiques data from biology, anthropology, sociology, and psychology.
https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Ethnomethodological-Approach-Suzanne-Kessler/dp/0226432068/?tag=2022091-20
1978
(Kessler's interviews with pediatric surgeons and endocrin...)
Kessler's interviews with pediatric surgeons and endocrinologists reveal how the intersex condition is normalized for parents and she argues that the way in which intersexuality is managed by the medical and psychological professions displays our culture's beliefs about gender and genitals. Parents of intersexed children are rarely heard from, but in this book they provide another perspective on reasons for genital surgeries and the quality of medical and psychological management.
https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Intersexed-Suzanne-J-Kessler/dp/0813525306/?tag=2022091-20
1998
educator professor psychologist
Suzanne Kessler was born on October 13, 1946 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
Kessler received her doctoral degree in social psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center in 1972 and a Bachelor of Arts at Carnegie Mellon University in 1968.
Suzanne Kessler has taught psychology for 30 years at Purchase College, State University of New York after which she became the dean of Natural and Social Sciences and then the dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She and Wendy McKenna pioneered the application of ethnomethodology to the study of gender and sex.
Kessler and McKenna’s work was influenced by Harold Garfinkel in ethnomethodology (especially his analysis of Agnes in Studies in Ethnomethodology), Stanley Milgram, their social psychology professor, and sociologist, Peter McHugh, McKenna’s professor. Kessler and McKenna were the first to argue that the distinction between “gender” and “sex” is a socially constructed one and the latter (defined by biological markers) should not be privileged. Their articulation of what later became known as the social construction of gender, was part of the foundation for works of ultimately more well-known gender theorists, Judith Butler (1990), Anne Fausto-Sterling (1992), and Kate Bornstein (1994). Kessler and McKenna’s concept of “gender attribution” predated William Zimmerman and Candace West’s concept of doing gender and Butler’s concept of gender performativity.
Kessler's work in her book, Lessons from the Intersexed, detailed the medical treatment of intersex children, and summarized the range of medically acceptable infant penis and clitoris sizes. Kessler proved that normative tables for clitoral length appeared in the late 1980s, while normative tables for penis length appeared more than forty years before that. She combined those standard tables to demonstrate an "intermediate area of phallic length that neither females nor males are permitted to have", that is, a clitoris larger than 9mm or a penis shorter than 25mm. Her findings were then presented visually by the (now-defunct) advocacy organization Intersex Society of North America in the Phall-O-Meter. Copies of the Phall-O-Meter are now held by the Wellcome Library in London, and the Smithsonian Institution.
The importance of the work of Kessler and McKenna in feminist/gender theory was acknowledged in Mary Hawkesworth’s 1997 article in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society called, “Confounding Gender.” In it she investigates four efforts to theorize gender. Three years later, most of a 2000 issue of Feminism & Psychology was devoted to a reappraisal of their book with commentary by seven theorists (Mary Crawford, Carla Golden, Lenore Tiefer, Holly (later Aaron) Devor, Milton Diamond, Eva Lundgren, and Dallas Denny).
(Kessler's interviews with pediatric surgeons and endocrin...)
1998(Kessler and McKenna convincingly argue that gender is not...)
1978Since 2002, Kessler has been on the board of Rehabilitation Through the Arts. She has also been on the Board of The Children's Center at Purchase College, SUNY since 1986.