NOT A YES OR NO QUESTION: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SEX AND GENDER IN FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY

For the forensic anthropologist, the estimation of sex comprises the first step in the process of identification of human skeletal remains. This study employs the use of third-wave and post-structural feminist, and queer theories in order to analyze how processes of inequality interact with our understanding of human biolologies, specifically surrounding the notions of sex and gender, and to assess the impacts of these inequalities on the methodologies and discourses in the discipline. Through the use of critical discourse analysis, I demonstrate how forensic anthropology ideologically conceives of sexual difference in four ways: 1) as reducible to only biology; 2) as natural, a given distinguishable by genotypic and phenotypic traits; 3) as classifiable into binary oppositions, where ambiguity refers to a researcher\u27s degree of certainty and not sex-gender fluidity; and 4) as static and unchanging