ABSTRACT
Gender studies, for its part, advertises its accomplishments using thoroughly time-ridden notions such as fresh, new, subversion, and a moving something called a cutting edge. Gendered inequalities remain intractable not because they are immovable or solid—if that were the case, gender theorists could stop looking for different tools and simply hammer away with renewed vigor. The sex/gender distinction seemed an excellent tool to pull out when someone invoked biological differences to justify inequality. Tools of stasis and tools of movement in gender theory oscillate in synchrony when they make capitalism fast, both by battening down capitalism’s productive relations and accelerating its effects. Analyzing gender in the “real time” of the requires something more. In order to understand gender in the context of a global economy, one has to understand the norm as a social invention and a standardization device carried across the world by cargo ships, radio waves, planes.
