Indiana Law Journal Volume 80 Issue 2 Article 4 Spring 2005 Contesting Gender in Popular Culture and Family Law: Middlesex and Other Transgender Tales Susan Frelich Appleton Washington University in St. Louis,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj Part of the Family Law Commons, and the Sexuality and the Law Commons Recommended Citation Appleton, Susan Frelich (2005) "Contesting Gender in Popular Culture and Family Law: Middlesex and Other Transgender Tales," Indiana Law Journal: Vol. 80 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol80/iss2/4 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School Journals at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Indiana Law Journal by an authorized editor of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Contesting Gender in Popular Culture and Family Law: Middlesex and Other Transgender Tales SUSAN FRELICH APPLETON* I. CAL AND His COHORT They're everywhere: transsexuals, intersexed individuals, and others of uncertain gender classification. Transgender issues have come out of the closet as popular culture seems to have discovered a new favorite. Recently, several successful books and movies, not to mention frequent television coverage on both talk shows and science programs, have introduced the public to numerous ordinary people whose very existence challenges the notion that sex and gender provide life's fundamental organizing principles. In turn, the law's reliance on strict sex-based categories becomes increasingly fragile, indeed too fragile to withstand challenges to marriage laws requiring a male and a female.