LGBT200 Exam 1 Study Guide Introduction o Definitions of sex and gender o Sex a personal quality determined by biological and genetic characteristics Variations between XX and XY o Gender a social symbolic construction that expresses the meanings a society associates with biological sex Varies across cultures overtime in relation to other genders a process stratification and structure o Gender as a process o Gender as an ascribed and avowed identity Construction of boundaries Shifts overtime o Gender stratification o Power o Gendered ideology is central to the process of stratification Constructions of symbols and images that explain express reinforce and sometimes oppose gender divisions Legitimating Valuation Patriarchal System of ranking Individual level Societal level o Gender as a structure o Society and institutions are built upon gendered stratification o Gender is a social institution o Gendered structure is culturally specific o Gender functions as a major way we organize our lives o Non normative gender identities homosexual and performances challenge the gendered binary and boundaries o Boundaries have consequences implications o Theories of performance o Contrary to notions of fixity and deterministic theories of gender o Gender as something we do o Why consider gender here o Culture norms associated with gender assume heterosexual desire o Assumed linear path Sex gender sexual desire Sex cisgender hetero desire Sex is going to match gender cis with i e sex and gender are a pair that match o male has a male gender and vice versa o Anything outside of path is deviant o Both in terms of Gender identity Sexuality Jeffery Weeks The Challenge of Gay and Lesbian Studies o How does Weeks define LGBT studies o Identities experience of oppression struggles for recognition through history and in literature and so on o It is easier to say what it isn t o Not a single discipline o No single object of study o No single theoretical position o No common methodology o No common politics apart from common political root o It is hard to unify lesbian and gay studies o What is the paradox facing lesbian and gay studies o Deconstruction vs Common themes o Deconstruction showing differences divisions tensions o Monographs readers articles suggest that we need to find a space where common themes are discussed o Where are the commonalities between gay and lesbian studies o Affirming differences using democratic dialogue o Rooted in broad support of sexual justice o Contesting existing knowledge and transforming modes of interpreting the world o Creating space o Phases in LGBT studies o Impacted by disciplines of study Anthropology history sociology Communication and media studies Geography and English Corber and Valocchi Queer Studies o What have queer studies scholars offered LGBT studies scholars o LGBT is sexuality o Queer odd acts i e cross dressing race class o How do the authors define and or use the term queer o Page 1 left paragraph Queer names or describes identities and practices that foreground the instability inherently in the supposedly stable relationship between anatomical sex gender and sexual desire o Transforming queer from negative to positive o Reclaim the term o Queer studies and the category of queer has generated or continued a series of debates o Questioning identity based models o Re interrogating the relationship between sex gender and sexuality queer studies and feminism o Power and agency o Destabilizing the subject via psychoanalysis o Debate 1 Limits of identity o What is the social construction argument The way a man matures is constructed by society The studies demonstrated the inability to recover a continuous history of a subordinate group homo and heterosexual categories are a product of the late 19th century Lesbian and gay identities are socially constructed that they are products of historically specific economic political and social conditions 1 o How can we describe the minority model of homosexuality Comparing gays to minorities According to this model gays and lesbians constitute an oppressed minority similar to other oppressed minorities such as Jews and African Americans 2 o What does it mean when queer studies moves us from identities to practices Practice men in relationship with men but do not identify as gay Identity socially constructed considered stable o What is heteronormativity Heterosexualism is the norm o Debate 2 Gender and feminism o Central tension how to theorize the relationship between sex gender and sexuality Queer studies relationship to women s studies is even more complicated than its relationship to LGBT studies 6 o How had women s studies scholars and or feminists typically theorized the above relationship Women s studies conflate the three constructs Men oppressor Women oppressed Queer studies opinion masculinity has no necessary link to maleness and the belief that it does serves to legitimate patriarchal social arrangements 7 o Lesbian feminists 1970s and shared experience of homophobia Any woman could become lesbian by simply making women central to her life and by developing a lesbian consciousness 7 o What does Butler mean when she argues that sex itself is a gendered category We read bodies through a gendered lens Butler was born with ambiguous genitals o Spaces opened up Sex gender and sexuality have no causal or necessary relation to each other but are mobile that is they can be configured in a variety of ways none of which is natural or biologically mandated 8 i e butches experience their masculinity as an essential part of their identity but have no desire to be anatomically male To study wide ranging non normative genders and sexualities from a feminist perspective To recognize a wide range of subcultural identities and practices Link between queer studies race and class Articulating the need for intersectionality o Debate 3 Queering Power o Focusing on conception of power and agency of the subject o How did Foucalt theorize conceptualize this power For Foucalt power involved more than domination and repression it is also productive in the sense that it opens up possibilities for action and is constitutive of the self 10 Individuals internalize the norms generated by the discourses of sexuality as they are circulated by social institutions such as schools clinics and the mass media in so doing become self regulating subjects or subjects who police their own behavior so they will appear normal 11 o What does