Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters
Document Type
Poster
Publication Date
Spring 5-6-2026
Faculty Advisor(s)
Dr. Ian Barnard, Dr. Jared Rubin
Abstract
This project takes an interdisciplinary economic and gender studies approach to explain subversion, sexual equality, and the marginal nature of sexual rights. The project uses advanced economic game theory to derive the Marginal Sexual Equality Game Formula. The formula explains the various political-economic incentives for a minority gender/sexual identity’s subversion of dominance, a dominant sex's incentive to suppress, the impact of cooperation versus division among minority genders/sexual identities, incentives and impacts of cooperation between sects of minority genders/sexual identities and the dominant gender/sexual identity, and the various consequences of various social mobility and elasticity. Additionally, the formula proves and showcases the effects of sexual variability and the fallibility of original sex as argued by Judith Butler in their book Gender Trouble. The project justifies this game by drawing on real-world, historical, and fictional societies, ranging from the United States, Ancient and Modern Asia, to Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as modern ephemeral identities such as drag personas and immemorial identities such as transgender and non-binary. From there, the project argues in favor of a marginal view of sexual equality, in which the extractive power of a dominant sex versus the general extractive authority and Gini coefficient of a society dictates the consequence with high variability. Using a diverse array of queer, trans, sociological, and economic theory, the project creates a clear framework for predicting the consequences of rights, presence of diverse sexes, state extractive capacity, Gini coefficients, and the elasticity coefficient of rights.
Recommended Citation
Bowers, Blaise, "The Marginal Sexual Equality Game: Defining the Incentives for Sexual Equality using Economic Game Theory and Butler’s Gender Trouble" (2026). Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters. 806.
https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cusrd_abstracts/806
Included in
Business Commons, Economic Theory Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Political Economy Commons, Public Economics Commons, Work, Economy and Organizations Commons
Comments
Presented at the Spring 2026 Student Scholar Symposium at Chapman University.