
The End of Binaries
How Gender and Sexuality Come in Degrees
Kevin Richardson(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 19. December 2025
Book
Hardback
296 pages
978-0-19-781222-8 (ISBN)
Description
We live in a world in which the boundaries of gender and sexual orientation are increasingly being contested. Gender categories like man and woman cannot do justice to non-binary, genderqueer, and trans people. Common categories of sexual orientation, like heterosexual and homosexual, are unhelpful for understanding a new generation of people whose sexual identities do not neatly fit within those categories. These various social binaries-man/woman, heterosexual/homosexual--are now a fraught way to understand social identity.
At the same time as there is resistance to these binaries, there are also those who reinforce and protect them. Across the United States and other countries, there has been a wave of legislation targeting perceived threats to the gender binary system. Books with trans characters are being removed from the shelves of public libraries. There is a surge of legislation prohibiting trans women from using women's restrooms. There is legislation that challenges the legality of drag performances. All of these efforts are attempts to preserve the dominant gender and sexuality binaries.
The End of Binaries articulates a philosophical alternative to these binary ways of thinking about gender and sexuality. It proposes a spatial theory of gender and sexuality, where a person's gender or sexuality should be understood as a location within a multidimensional space. Just as the boundaries of countries divide up geographical territories, social boundaries divide up regions of gender and sexuality space. And just as each person has an exact location represented by a GPS coordinate, each person has a gender and sexual location that represents their distinctive way of being gendered or sexually oriented. The spatial approach to gender and sexuality fundamentally understands gender and sexuality as complex, diverse, and continuous. The spatial framework is a more accurate (and more just) way to understand the diversity of gender and sexuality.
At the same time as there is resistance to these binaries, there are also those who reinforce and protect them. Across the United States and other countries, there has been a wave of legislation targeting perceived threats to the gender binary system. Books with trans characters are being removed from the shelves of public libraries. There is a surge of legislation prohibiting trans women from using women's restrooms. There is legislation that challenges the legality of drag performances. All of these efforts are attempts to preserve the dominant gender and sexuality binaries.
The End of Binaries articulates a philosophical alternative to these binary ways of thinking about gender and sexuality. It proposes a spatial theory of gender and sexuality, where a person's gender or sexuality should be understood as a location within a multidimensional space. Just as the boundaries of countries divide up geographical territories, social boundaries divide up regions of gender and sexuality space. And just as each person has an exact location represented by a GPS coordinate, each person has a gender and sexual location that represents their distinctive way of being gendered or sexually oriented. The spatial approach to gender and sexuality fundamentally understands gender and sexuality as complex, diverse, and continuous. The spatial framework is a more accurate (and more just) way to understand the diversity of gender and sexuality.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
590 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-781222-8 (9780197812228)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
approx. 03/2026
Oxford University Press Inc
€36.00
Not yet published
Person
Kevin Richardson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. He is also secondary faculty in Duke's Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. His current research focuses on philosophical questions concerning gender, sexuality, and race, and he has also published papers on truth, explanation, and vagueness. His papers have been published in journals such as Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research and Ergo, among others.
Author
Associate Professor of PhilosophyAssociate Professor of Philosophy, Duke University
Content
Introduction I The Gender Binary: Definition and Stakes 1. The Gender Binary 2. Gender Critical Feminism: Making Feminism Great Again II The Complexity of Gender 3. What is a Woman? The Quest to Define Gender 4. No Fact of Matter: the Case for Gender Indeterminacy III The Spatial Theory of Gender 5. Gender Prototypes 6. Gender by Degree 7. Negotiating the Binary IV The Spatial Theory of Sexual Orientation 8. From Non-Binary Gender to Non-Binary Sexual Orientation
9. Sexual Orientation in Context 10. "Just a Little Gay": How Sexual Orientation Comes in Degrees V Binary Abolition 11. Spatial Abolition Acknowledgments
9. Sexual Orientation in Context 10. "Just a Little Gay": How Sexual Orientation Comes in Degrees V Binary Abolition 11. Spatial Abolition Acknowledgments