SOC100BGender and SexGender roles and expectationsPhysical vs. mental genderHeteronormativityNorms- rules that guide our behaviorSouthern Comfort (in-class film)- Robert and Lola are both transgenderIntersex people- as many as one in every 1,500 babies is born with genitals that cannot easily be classified as male or femaleSimone Beauvoir- wrote The Second Sex on how women are perceived as “the other” inpatriarchal society (You are born with a sex, but you learn to be a man or a woman)Sojourner Truth- Abolitionist and advocate for black women's rights who made connection between race and genderGender is performativeMainstream view: men and women have different abilities, concerns, and interests which limit and define their social norms; sex is biologically determined but gender is socially constructedIt is hard and costly to be a lady and pressuring and time-consuming to be a manHow do people respond to those who defy gender norms?Social rejection, punishment from authority/family/peers, hegemonyThe Idea of Sex Changed:Before 1860: body is solely means of reproductionLate 1800’s: consumerism→ pleasure ethic1880’s: creation of the new “normal sex”1900’s: debate over acceptance of homosexualityWomen who work- nicknamed a man in apronIdea that working for a living made a woman less of a woman- Discourse makes us think about what it is appropriate to doIdea that manhood and womanhood are not constant overtimes within a society or across space. There is nothing natural about these two terms. Both are socially constructed.- Women desire what men can do. But when men do womanly things, it is usually looked down upon- Job professions that women specialize in become undervalued over time because of the underlying belief that men are of higher statusThe idea of sex is also socially constructed. We are born with variations in genitalia but these variations are “fixed” in order to match a specific sex- Binary sexual system forces us to fix variations in the sex continuum- Gender ideologies determined binary understanding of sexGender- knowledge of sexual differences and the meaning we ascribe to these differences● how we treat facts (knowledge) is how we create human historyGender discourse- shaped by structure, agency, and historical contextsFemininity, associated with weakness, is not tolerated. It is not okay for males to be
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