Chapter 3 - The Meanings of Sexual Difference (Weeks)

Question 1

Problems with Evolutionary Diversions

Answer 1

• new prestige of genetic/genetic research
• evolutionists argue genes exist to explain all social phenomenon
• if true, resolves nature/nurture debate
• evolutionary theories provide clarity, support status quo, common sense about naturalness of sexual divisions

Question 2

What are the 3 basic biological modes of Argument

Answer 2

• argument by analogy
• tyranny of averages
• the ‘black hole’ hypothesis

Question 3

Argument by analogy

Answer 3

• look to animals in the wild to explain sex behaviors in people
• seeing nature through our already socialized lend
• ex. “heterosexuality is natural”

Question 4

Tyranny of Averages

Answer 4

• ex. on average, men are more sexual than women
• creates permissiveness - justifies certain behaviors

Question 5

The ‘Black Hole’ Hypothesis

Answer 5

• mysterious things that happen and there is a scientific explanation for it
• don’t need to wait around for science to link behaviors to biology when socialization offers perfectly good reasons and explanation

Question 6

Social Historical Explanations

Answer 6

• social explanations are more fluid and flexible
• different ways of being men and women
• sexuality given meaning in social situations
• BUT social explanation is not determinism

Question 7

What are some Challenges towards Sociological Essentialism?

Answer 7

• sexuality is not completely shaped by deterministic social imperatives
• society is not a unified whole with coherent and consistent rules
• society does not determine sexuality

Question 8

What is Social Constructionism?

Answer 8

• sexuality is constructed through complex social relations with different vies of what is appropriate sexual behavior
• organized sets of meaning (discourse) of sexuality are anchored in a network of social activities

Question 9

Define ‘Gender’

Answer 9

the term is conventionally deployed to describe the social condition of being male or female

Question 10

Define ‘Sexuality’

Answer 10

the cultural way of living out our bodily pleasures and desires

Question 11

John Money

Answer 11

• American Sexologist
• did a lot to distinguish ‘sex’ (assumed biologically given) from ‘gender’ (socially defined)

Question 11

What is peculiar about the gender/sexuality nexus?

Answer 11

• certain differences have seen as so fundamental that they become divisions and even antagonisms
• at best, there is the argument that though men and women may be difference they can still be equal
• at worst, assumptions about the forceful nature of the male sexual drive have been used to legitimize male violence and domination over women

Question 12

Sociobiology

Answer 12

• defined by E.O. Wilson
• the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior

Question 13

What does Sociobiology aim to do?

Answer 13

aims to bridge the gap which had opened between traditional biological theories and social explanations by attempting to demonstrate that there was a key mechanism linking both

Question 14

The fundamental law of gene selfishness

Answer 14

• key mechanism in sociobiology
• that genes exist for every
  social phenomenon, so that the random survival of the genes could explain all social practices from economic efficency and educational attainment to ethnic and racial differences, gender divisions and sexual preference.

Question 15

How are social institutions, like marriage, parenting and social bonding viewed through the lens of sociobiology?

Answer 15

they are adaptive, in a key term of evolutionary theory, products not of history or social development but of ‘evolutionary necessity’

Question 16

Why are there only two sexes in the eyes of sociobiology?

Answer 16

• two sexes are just enough to ensure the maximum potential for genetic recombination
• two sexes also ensure health and hardiness by mixing the chemical constituents sufficiently to produce immunity against disease

Question 17

Why do evolutionary theories provide a great intellectual attraction?

Answer 17

the provide clarity where social scientists may see complexity, certainty where others recognize only contingency

Question 18

What is the political logic in the evolutionary theories?

Answer 18

they provide an explanation for certain apparently unsolvable social problems in a conservative cultural climate
- ex. why men are so reluctant to change