Seminar 7
Introduction
to Gender
and
Sexuality
21818 Cultural Insights II
John Sibole
Take a look:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOLy945b-W8
• https://bit.ly/41pZnq3
• These videos are from the American TV series Shameless. In this
episode, Ian, who plays the gay brother in the family, meets Trevor, a
transgender character.
• In the second video, Trevor brings Ian to his LGBTQIA centre, all of
whom identify fluidly in terms of both gender and sexuality, and use
various pronouns, which they establish during their introductions.
(Nonetheless, lots of pushback on this cut for being cliché.)
Putting Studies about Gender and Sexuality in
Perspective
• After all, that was just the introduction. There have been many
complaints that by introducing the LGBTQIA community in this
manner, aside from 'Rainbow-Washing', it trivialises the day-to –
day of this community.
• Let's start again with the Quakers.
• The Quakers? Again?
• In 1652, the Society of Friends was founded in England by the
Quakers.
• The Quakers saw no distinctions between one another and
therefore do not accept any form of hierarchy between people.
The Society of Friends
• The Quaker's belief in social equality was unique for its time.
• This translated into a series of original attitudes towards race and
gender.
• Between 1755 and 1776, Quakers became active in the fight against
slavery and creating abolition societies to promote emancipation.
• In the family structure, Quakers did not differentiate between the social
roles of men and women.
• Later, Quakers would become highly educated and form the hardcore
of the female abolitionist movement in 19th century America.
Types of
Feminism
In the years to come, feminism
would evolve in waves.
It is important that we distinguish
between these waves.
The First Wave of female
abolitionists challenged women's
lack of access to education, to the
polls, unequal employment
opportunities, and unfair marriage
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la llicència CCYYSA.
The first wave was predominantly
a middle-class, white female
movement.
Types of
Feminism
The Second Wave rose out of the Cultural
Upheaval of the 1960's.
The struggles of the 1960's had various
consequences: Churchgoing declined, the
rise of the self-conscious 'counter-culture',
which was stridently opposed to the
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la llicència CCYYSA. The Second Wave was more an intersectional
movement, and challenged equality in many
cultural, economic, and social areas, as well
as sexual liberation.
The Third Wave
• The Third Wave of Feminism is essentially from the 1980s on and
when 'intersectionality' became essential.
• Gender is now in the spotlight
• People in LGBT communities begin to reclaim the word 'queer' as
either a neutral word to describe themselves, or as a positive form
of self-identity.
• Queer activism and queer theories date back from the 1980s.
Heteronormativity
• Michel Warner popularised this term in 1991
• It refers to a set of related cultural assumptions about what is
'normal':
• The normal or natural form of attraction and relationships is
between one man and one woman who:
o 1) normally embody conventional gender roles and norms
o 2) have sex involving a penis and vagina (PIV).
Heteronormality, continued
• Sexual Identity is an aspect of who we are that is fixed from birth and endures
throughout our lives.
• Sexuality is binary (straight and gay) and based on the binary gender of
attraction (to men/ to women).
• People can be divided into normal and abnormal on the basis of their sexual
attraction and sexual practices.
• You have a fixed sex (male or female) , upon which culture builds a a stable
gender (masculine or feminine) and, at the same time:
• Culture regulates a culturally acceptable gender role (masculinity or
femininity).
• Your fixed sex determines your desires (towards the 'opposite's' sex or 'same '
sex).
Alfred Kinsey
• Alfred Kinsey, the creator of the Kinsey Scale, is known as 'the father of
the sexual revolution'.
• The famous Kinsey scale (1948) unveiled a new way of thinking about
sexuality.
• Sexuality was presented as a spectrum between heterosexuality and
homosexuality, rather than a binary opposition.
• Kinsey also opened up a new distinction between what people do
(sexual practices) and what they experience (sexual attraction).
• However, Kinsey failed to address another binary opposition: gender.
• This latter omission is reflected in his two books about 'male' and
'female' sexuality, where sexuality is defined in terms of 'gender of
attraction'.
The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s
• The 1960s witnessed a 'sexual revolution'
• The introduction of the birth control pill in 1960 made unwanted
pregnancies easier to avoid and sexual appetites easier to satisfy.
• It is important to point out that even into the 1960s, the sale and
distribution of condoms was outlawed in some towns, cities, and
states.
• Sigmund Freud also popularised the idea that the main purpose
for sex was for pleasure, not reproduction.
• The Stonewall Revolution at New York's Stonewall Inn in 1969
proved to be a turning point.
The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s
• The upheaval of the1960s attributed to
the three P's:
• Population bulge: There was an explosion
of younger generations (Now lumped into
what is called the 'Boomers'.
• Protest: The 1960s witnessed protest
against racism and the Vietnam War, as
well as more women's and gay rights
demonstrations as well.
• Prosperity: The apparent permanence of
prosperity. The debts and consequences
of the Vietnam War and the fall of the US
in global industrial hegemony would not
surface until the 1970s.
Sexuality and Gender as Discursive Constructs
• Distinction between sex as a biological construct, and gender as a cultural
construction, is broken on the grounds that there is no access to biological
'truths' that lie outside cultural discourses (Viz Pare Palou's Yokuts).
• In other words, there can be no biological sex that is not also cultural as well.
• For poststructuralists, the cultural variations suggest that there is no
universal cross-cultural category of 'woman' and 'man', but multiple modes
of femininity and masculinity.
Foucault: Subjectivity and Sexuality
According to Foucault, subjectivity is a discursive production.
•Through discourse, cultural agents are offered subject positions to make
sense of the world.
•Foucault broke the binary representations of male / female, homosexual/
heterosexual; by rewriting the the history of sexuality from ancient Greece
in his book: The History of Sexuality.
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•For Foucault, body, gender and desire are disconnected categories as
well.
•More importantly, Foucault distinguishes between sexual orientation,
sexual preferences and sexual orientation, as these are all aspects that
that are not necessarily connected.
Nancy Chodorow: Masculinity and Femininity
• Nancy Chodorow, an American sociologist, feminist psychoanalyst, and
professor, has written several influential books in contemporary feminist
writing.
• Chodorow argues that Freudian theory suppresses women.
• However, this theory also provides evidence for how people have become
gendered, how femininity and masculinity develop, and how sexism
through sexual inequality is reproduced.
• Chodorow (1978, 1989) argues that boys' separation involves identification
with the father and the domain of the symbolic phallus as the domain of
social status, power and independence.
• This comes at the price of covering over the emotional dependence on
women and having weaker skills of emotional communication.
On to the Video:
• Wife's Soap
Comment:
• By using his wife's soap, and by extension, a feminine product, his
masculinity is immediately in danger, so he enacts several cultural
practices culturally associated with masculinity.
• Are there any biological or universal explanations that would lead
us to consider these practices as masculine practices?
• No.
• Such practices are cultural constructs hegemonically addressed
to men, in opposition to women.
Further Comment:
• What is more dangerous in the video is the following assumption:
Any possible relationship with feminine roles or attitudes poses a
threat to masculinity, so femininity is instantly perceived as
negative.
• Researchers have found that men respond to 'threats' to their
manhood by engaging in stereotypically-masculine behaviours
such as supporting hierarchy, espousing homophobic beliefs,
supporting aggression, and choosing physical tasks over
intellectual ones.
• What did we see in the video?
Hey, What about the other way around?
• https://bit.ly/3ZvaXxx
My apologies for the horrible accents and the absence of
resolution. The analogue 480i field has no resolution. It wasn't until
with digital technologies that we received the information in
concrete integrals, pixels, and truly sharp pictures only came
gradually with HD. Furthermore, HD has real-time screen refresh,
so it is constantly redefining a sharper image.
It makes one wonder what sort of visual input that we were
receiving and processing in those times.
Like:
ThePhoto feta per PhotoAuthor està subjecta a la llicència
CCYYSA.
ThePhoto feta per PhotoAuthor està subject a a la llicència CCYYSA.
The Caveat :
• The previous video acknowledges that masculinity and femininity
can be reinforced or derided by specific gender-oriented and
conscious practices.
• Thus, gender expression can be understood as a conscious
performance.
Judith Butler: Performativity of Gender and
Sexuality
• Best known for her books: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the
Subversion of Identity (1990), and Bodies that Matter (1993).
• In her books, she challenges the conventional notions of gender
and develops her theory of gender performativity.
• This theory had a major influence on feminist and queer
scholarship.
Judith Butler: Performativity of Gender and
Sexuality
• According to Butler, gender is essentially a performative repetition
of acts associated with the male or the female.
• Nowadays, actions appropriate for men and women have been
transmitted to promote a social atmosphere that both maintains
and legitimises a seemingly natural binary gender.
• Butler argues that the performance of gender itself creates
gender.
Now let's watch The Big Bang Theory
• What conventions do you see?
• What else is conveyed?
• Complicity of Masculinity in the Big Bang Theory
Gender, Sexuality and Femininity
in the U.S. Case Study:
Transamerica (2005).
Cultural Insights into the English Speaking World
John Sibole
While we're still talking about boys...
• What about testosterone?
• Testosterone has been both celebrated and chastised for driving a host
of human attributes and actions.
• These include aggression, risk-taking and sexual potency.
• However, Jeffery Zajaz, endocrinologist and researcher says evidence
linking testosterone and aggression is weak.
• According to Zajaz, for instance if one was a female-to-male
transgender individual, who was administered testosterone, they
would "masculinise nicely". -"Would you be an aggressive individual?
Not unless your personality was an aggressive personality." (Lewis and
Zajac, 2013)
Sex and the Brain
• Structural differences between the two sexes have been identified in
every area of the brain.
• However, there is a dispute to over what are the cases and functions of
these differences.
• It is possible that brains are just simply complex structures, and two
people may reach the same result by very different neural activities and
pathways.
Controversy:
• Neurologist Simon Baron-Cohen argued in his book The Essential Difference
(2003) that female brains are essentially hard-wired for empathy while male
brains are predominantly cabled for understanding and building systems.
• Australian neuroscientist Lesley J. Rogers has pushback for Baron-Cohen's
findings.
• While not denying that sex differences in the brain exist, she just questions
the causes of these differences.
The Controversy Lesley J. Rodgers
• Points out that girls and boys are treated differently form
Simon Baron-Cohen
the day of birth. Parents, even nursing staff interact
• Bases his claims on human sex differences on:
differently with new-borns.
• The age at what these differences appear
• Most "sex-difference" testing begins at the ages of 1-3,
• The lack of apparent variation across cultures "ample time for cultural influence"
• The existence of sex differences in animals • Sex roles may be explained by culture and not by genetic
determinism: Inuit women have been shown to have
superior spatial abilities than Inuit males.
• Sex roles in animals might also be learned rather than
inherited.
So, are there any differences?
• Psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde (2005) argues that there are not many and
her "gender similarities" hypothesis argues that in searching for "differences",
researchers have overlooked many similarities. Females and males are
similar on most psychological variables.
• She reports that:
• Nearly 80% of the classic "gender" differences are small or close to zero,
including mathematics performance, verbal ability, self-disclosure, ability to
process facial expressions, helpfulness, leadership, activeness, interrupting
and moral reasoning.
• Only a few gender differences belong in the moderate or long- range
categories, including throwing velocity or distance, and masturbation
frequency. Gender differences in terms of aggression are only moderate in
magnitude.
Janet Shibley Hyde concludes:
• Researchers as well as a broader society should consider the costs of
continuing to over-inflate claims of gender differences.
• "Arguably, they cause harm in numerous realms, including women's
opportunities in the workplace, couple conflict and communication,
and analysis of self-esteem problems among adolescents. Most
consistent, these claims are not consistent with scientific data."
(2005:590)
Reconciling nature and nurture
• Summing up, we know there are differences between men and
women, but we do not always understand:
• What causes these differences?
• The extent of their influence in terms of behaviour. Are they
shaped by culture or are they something we were born with?
• In either case, nature and nurture interact with each other to the
point where distinctions between biological sex and socially
constructed gender become impossible to fathom.
Reconciling nature and nurture (Cont.)
• Setting up issues related to nature and nurture is not a useful way to
approach the subject of sex and gender.
• It is also worth remembering that:
• Cultural difference operates "on top of " genetic similarity and
difference;
• Biological predispositions have different outcomes in divergent
contexts;
• Human culture and human biology have co-evolved and are indivisible;
• The language of biology and the language of culture have different
purposes and achieve highly different outcomes.
The Language of Biology:
• Gives us limited ability to make bodily and behavioural predictions.
• At the same time, what means to be gendered remains a cultural question.
• On one hand, there is a small predictability between the range of male and
female capabilities and behaviour that stems from genetics.
• On the other hand, there are clear indications that masculinity and femininity
are changeable.
• We can make a distinction between identity as a social construction, with
what we emotionally identify, and those human capacities and behaviours
that correlate highly between certain biochemical structures of the brain.
Questions of Sex and Culture Remain of Central
Significance in Understanding Sex and Gender.
• At stake are cultural questions of "What is a woman?" and "What
is a man?".
• Make two lists under the following headings:
• How to identify a man
• How to identify a woman
• Score each item with a 1-10 for the degree to which the
characteristic is changeable, where 1 equals the most plastic and
10 the least. Discuss your work with others in the group and class.
Results: Put down the results form your group
here. Do not forget to also add them to the
glossary on the Aula Digital.
• How to identify a woman How to identify a man
Women's difference
• Andrée Collard and Joyce Contrucci's (1988) ecofeminist Rape of the Wild relies on
biological essentialism.
• They argue that women are linked by childbearing bodies and intitiate ties to the natural
Earth that support egalitarian, nuturance-based values.
• Like-wise, Adrienne Rich celebrates women's differences form men and celebrates its
source in motherhood.
• This is condemned in its historical modes of oppression but celebrated for its female power
and potentialities.
• Mary Daly's (1987) Gyn/Ecology links women to nature, stresses the material and
psychological oppression of women, and argues for a separate women-culture. Much of here
argument is centred around language.
Irigaray and Womanspeak
•A psychoanalytically inspired route to understanding the
difference comes from Luce Irigaray .
•She theorises a pre-symbolic "space" or "experience" for
women that is unavailable to men.
•This domain is constituted by a feminine jouissance or sexual
pleasure, play and joy, which is outside of intelligibility.
•Irigaray speculates on what she understands to be the
"Otherness" of the feminine, and she seeks to ground this in the
female body.
The Social Construct of Sex and Gender:
Linda Alcoff
• Unlike Irigaray, Linda Alcoff regards that any emphasis on a
special and benign female character is mistaken.
• This Alcoff argues, is "in danger of solidifying an important bulwark
for sexist oppression: the belief in "innate" womanhood" to which
we must all adhere least we be deemed either inferior or not "true"
women. (Alcoff, 1989: 104)
The Social Construct of Sex and Gender:
Linda Alcoff
•She turns to the mother-daughter relationship of pre-Oaedipal imaginary as the
source of the feminine that cannot be symbolised -Because it precedes entry into
the symbolic order and the Law of the Father
•For Irigaray, woman is outside of the specular (visual) economy of the Oedipal
movement and thus outside of representation.
•Given that this symbolic lacks a grammar that could articulate the mother-daughter
relationship, the feminine can only return in its regulated form as man's "Other".
Transamerica
• In this film, the protagonist, Bree , is about to get permission from
her psychiatrist for her gender reassessment surgery, when she
recieves a phone
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPbGIErXKpE
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAcmj_w-3Uk
