The Contents of Sex, Gender & Sexuality Ford Hickson PhD, BA, BSc, FHEA

All staff and PGRs are welcome to this seminar

The popular maxim “Sex is between your legs, gender is between your ears and sexuality is what you do in bed” suggests sex is limited to bodies, gender to subjectivity and sexuality to (bed) behaviour. However, each of these ways of categorising people (sex, gender, sexuality) can draw on all three facets of persons (bodies, subjectivities, behaviour). Using a conferralist framework of social categories, this talk considers the range of base properties used by selves and others to allocate sex, gender and sexuality, and considers the importance of conceptual clarity in research designs generating data about them.

About the speaker

Dr Ford Hickson is an Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. After graduating BSc Psychology in 1988, Ford worked at Terrence Higgins Trust and Frontliners. He joined Sigma Research in 1990 and LSHTM in 2011. His research has focussed on patterns of sex between men, particularly with reference to HIV/STI transmission, and the meaning of LGBTQI+ Health. Between 1997 and 2008 he led the design of the National Gay Men’s Sex Survey and was centrally involved in the European MSM Internet Survey in 2010 and 2017. Ford’s doctoral thesis (Portsmouth University, 2008) was on Authority, HIV and Sex between Men in England. He has co-authored over 70 peer reviewed journal articles, two books, numerous monographs and several book chapters. He also holds a BA in Opera Studies (Rose Bruford College, 2014).