Chapter 1

Question 0

What is the social construction of reality?

Answer 0

This idea gets at the historical process by which our experiences of the world become put into categories and treated as real things

Question 1

Seeing Genders means…..

Answer 1

To begin to reveal the invisible ways in which gender works

Question 2

What two approaches can we take to understand Social Construction?

Answer 2

Historical Comparison

Cross-Cultural Comparison

Question 3

Thomas Principle

Answer 3

If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences

Question 4

Think about what is “appropriate” to wear in public in Europe versus Sub-sharan african?

Or how about even in the same country?
In Eugene, Oregon- it perfectly legal to for women to walk down the streets topless

 In Indianapolis, Indiana- not so much

Answer 4

Cross Cultural Comparison

Question 5

Think back to race and the Census that most people filled out in 2010

In the beginning of the Census, there was only “white and Noe white”

Then it moved to “white, Black and other”
And today, we have a diverse set of choices in terms of race and ethnicity

Answer 5

Historical Comparison

Question 6

The biological differences between people that we classify as male and female (biological meaning)

Answer 6

Sex

Question 7

The social meanings that are layered onto these sex differences (social meaning)

Answer 7

Gender

Question 8

What is the Biosocial approach?

Answer 8

the study of gender acknowledges that much of what we experience regarding gender is socially constructed

Question 9

What is Sexual Dimorphism?

Answer 9

the claim that sex marks a distinction between two physically and genetically discrete categories of people; can only be one or the other -man or female

Question 10

What is Intersexed?

Answer 10

Individuals who have any of a wide number of conditions that cause ambiguity in regard to sex category

Question 11

Biosocialists believe……

Answer 11

sexual dimorphism is true and therefore that sex by and large precedes and therefore cause gender

Question 12

What are Biosocialists limits?

Answer 12

the degree to which gender can be socially constructed, set forth by the biological reality of sex

Question 13

Strong Social Constructivists believe….

Answer 13

the causal arrow is reversed.

it is culture that dictates how we understand sex

Question 14

Biosocialists believe sex indicates the

Answer 14

existences of two different kinds of people, male/female

Question 15

Strong social constructivists believe sex infers…

Answer 15

a belief in two kind of people, male/female

Question 16

Essentialist perspective on sex and gender….

Answer 16

is similar to Biosocial in that they believe there is an identifiable essence that makes people male or female

Question 17

Constructionists see sex and gender as….

Answer 17

things that society has made; changing with time

Question 18

Why study gender?

Answer 18

Gender matters

By looking at theoretical perspectives in regards to gender, we can start to question how gender affects society as we know it and how society affects gender as well

Question 19

What are the three main goals of the text?

Answer 19

1. Building and understanding of the ways in which gender is socially constructed in a global and historical context.
2. Debunk any ideas about what is normal and abnormal in regard to gender
3. Understating gender in light of the fact that while gender may be socially constructed, it is also a system of inequality