Exam 1

Question 1

Opposite sex

Answer 1

*We tend to use the word “opposite” when describing the relationship between men and women.
*Without distinguishing males from females, there would be no basis for difference or inequality.
*Seventeenth-century Europeans and early Americans believed in superior and inferior versions of personhood.
*They believed females were inferior, “males turned outside in.”
*Today we know that female and male bodies are neither the same nor absolute opposites

Question 2

Foundational concepts

Answer 2

*Sex refers to the biological differences in primary and secondary sexual characteristics.
*Gender refers to the primary way we naturalize and justify inequality.
*Describing people as male-bodied or female-bodied helps capture the fact that the shape of a body may not extend to how a person feels or acts

Question 3

The gender binary

Answer 3

The gender binary argues that there are only two types of people, male-bodied people, who are masculine, and female-bodied people, who are feminine.

Question 4

The personal expectation theory

Answer 4

• Many of us don’t believe we, personally, conform to a stereotype; we are personal exceptions. It applies to others

Question 5

Gender ideologies

Answer 5

• Some societies or cultures believe there are more than just two genders, or they see gender as more fluid.
  *The Navajo have a fifth, gender-fluid category for a person whose gender is constantly changing, a nádleehì.
  *Feminine men are a third gender in some cultures

Question 6

Sex switching

Answer 6

• In Afghanistan where biological girls (and women) are not allowed to leave their homes without a male family escort sex-switched children are accepted.

Question 7

Gender Ideologies Differ by Culture

Answer 7

• In Albania, girls can live as boys and grow up to be socially recognized men.
  *The Dutch don’t teach children that men have “male” hormones and women have “female” hormones, but that hormone levels vary among men and among women and that these levels rise and fall in response to different situations and as people of both sexes age.

Question 8

Gendering examples

Answer 8

• Associative memory: the way cells in our brains process and transmit information to make literal connections so that some ideas are associated with other ideas in our minds.
  *This makes the gender binary seem more real than it is.
• We constantly overlook, misremember, or forget any exceptions to the gender binary.

Question 9

Managing gender expectations

Answer 9

• Gender rules: culturally specific instructions for how a male or female of a certain social status should appear and behave.

Question 10

Doing gender

Answer 10

• This term describes the ways in which we actively obey, and actively break gender rules of our society.

Question 11

Socialization

Answer 11

• Kids absorb gender rules while they’re busy learning all the other rules life teaches. The way kids do gender is more rigid and binary than adults because they’re still learning the rules in all their complexity.

Question 12

Injection Socialization

Answer 12

The “injection” idea of socialization fails on these fronts:
* The model suggests that socialization is finished by the time we’re adults.
* It leaves no room for the possibility that we actively consider and resist gender rules.
* It fails to acknowledge that people resist and change gender rules.
*It ignores how the gender rules change, not only as children grown up but as societies change. There is not one coherent set of gender rules children learn and apply throughout their lives.
* It suggests that socialization is provided in greater or lesser doses, and we must live with what we’ve been

Question 13

Learning Model of Socialization

Answer 13

of socialization suggests that socialization is a lifelong process of learning and relearning gendered expectations and how to negotiate them.

Question 14

Pleasure

Answer 14

• Following gender rules can be quite pleasurable.

Question 15

Gender policing

Answer 15

• Sociologists use the term gender policing to describe responses to the violation of gender rules aimed at promoting conformity.

Question 16

How to break the rules

Answer 16

• People don’t usually defy gender rules outright because confronting them head-on can cause conflict.
  *Instead, if the rule breaker affirms the legitimacy of the rule, the one asking for an account will usually be satisfied, and thus conflict will be avoided. In fact, rule breaking will only be understood as rebellion if the rule breaker doesn’t provide accounts for breaking the rules.

Question 17

Intersectionality

Answer 17

• Gender is not an isolated social fact but instead intersects all our social locations to make up our identity. People are complicated and have unique and multi-layered identities.
• Intersectionality is a concept that acknowledges that people are often disadvantaged by various social locations, which can result in inequality or oppression.

Question 18

Gender Designations and Strategies

Answer 18

• Some gender designations or strategies based on income and class are:
  *Breadwinner
  *Wonderful Wife and Mother
  *Career Woman
  *Supermom
  *Super Dad
  *Blue Collar Guy
  Country Boys

Question 19

Economic Class and Place of Residence

Answer 19

The people with more money and class status have more gender strategies available to them.
*Wonderful Wife and Mother gender strategy is more likely for women who have limited job opportunities who are married to men with high-paying jobs.
*Breadwinner gender strategy is more likely for men in high-paying work who have wives losing their jobs.

Question 20

African American men

Answer 20

• This Gentle Black Man gender (and racial) strategy is used to avoid being stereotyped as a Dangerous Black Man.

Question 21

African American men doing feminity

Answer 21

• Since femininity is seen as implicitly white, doing femininity can feel like doing whiteness.
• This makes the Girly Girl strategy seem like embracing white standards of beauty and speech and internalizing racist views of blackness. Using this strategy might lead to being regarded as “sellouts” and feel like performing whiteness.

Question 22

Asian American men

Answer 22

• men have a model American stereotype, who is hardworking and smart, attached to them, but it is also a de-masculinized stereotype.
• In the 1800s, Chinese men lived together without wives and performed domestic tasks for themselves.

Question 23

Gender strategies for white Americans

Answer 23

• The All-American Girl strategy is available to many attractive middle-class white women (while not easily available to black and Asian women, based mostly on how people look)

Question 24

Sexual orientation terms

Answer 24

• Compulsory heterosexuality: feeling on the part of some sexual minorities that they must hide their sexual orientation because this rule says that only sexual attraction and relationships between one man and one woman are normal and anything else is deviant

Question 25

Immigration

Answer 25

• Reconfigured families: Gender roles and marital arrangements may have to change for immigrants. Such changes can be negative or positive.
  *Downward mobility: Declines in income, class, and status often result from immigration. Breadwinner/Wonderful Wife and Mother strategies are often not implemented in favor of economic interdependence.

Question 26

Revisiting questions

Answer 26

If gender is just one part of who we are, why isn’t it crowded out by all the other things about us that are meaningful and consequential?
*Gender intersects with our other socially salient identities, inflecting them all with gendered meanings

Question 27

Revisiting questions

Answer 27

If gender is just one part of who we are, why isn’t it crowded out by all the other things about us that are meaningful and consequential?
*Gender intersects with our other socially salient identities, inflecting them all with gendered meanings

Question 28

Patriarchal Power

Answer 28

• is “the rule of the father.” It refers to the control of female and younger male family members by select adult men.

Question 29

Relations of inequality

Answer 29

Sexism is prejudice and discrimination against people based on their perceived biological sex.

• Androcentrism is gender-based prejudice favoring whatever is seen as masculine compared to what is seen as feminine. Masculine traits and activities are seen as more important and valuable than feminine ones. Rewards of hierarchy can go to all people, regardless of gender. Can include women embracing masculine traits/activities, and males avoiding female traits/activities.*

Question 30

Hegemony

Answer 30

•This term refers to a state of collective consent to inequality secured by the idea that it is inevitable, natural, or desirable.
•Hegemony, then, means widespread consent to relations of systematic social disadvantage.

Question 31

Hegemonic Masculinity

Answer 31

This term refers to a type of masculine performance, idealized by men and women alike, that functions to justify and naturalize gender inequality (unattainable).

Question 32

Sexual Dimorphism

Answer 32

This term refers to typical differences in body type and behavior between males and females of species

Question 33

Definition 4:Sex differences are real if they are biological
and immutable

Answer 33

An immutable sex difference would have a known biological cause and could not be easily overcome by social interventions.
Biological differences are mutable if they respond to external influences.
Gene- environment interaction refers to the influence of environmental factors on our gene expression

Question 34

Definition 4:Sex differences are real if they are biological
and immutable

Answer 34

An immutable sex difference would have a known biological cause and could not be easily overcome by social interventions.
Biological differences are mutable if they respond to external influences.
Gene- environment interaction refers to the influence of environmental factors on our gene expression

Question 35

E.g. Standardized Test results for a Country Almost identical:
What would this tell us?

What would this tell us?

Answer 35

The test took place in relatively genderequal society.
Ability is not defined as gendered in this country.
There were no gender differences in the teaching and learning of said topic in this country.

Question 36

Researchers find differences in visual-spatial abilities:
What is the most reasonable cause of such differences?

Answer 36

Instruction and practice affective cognitive skills.
Males are more likely than females to engage in activities that develop these cognitive skills.

Question 37

Nature (human biology) vs. Nurture (socialization):

Answer 37

It’s inaccurate to think of biological causes of gender differences as more immutable than social ones because our bodies are perpetually adapting and responding to our social and physical environment
Nature and nurture are inseparable: they work together to produce observed sex differences.

Question 38

Brain Plasticity

Answer 38

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s lifelong ability to respond to its environment.