Midterm Theories Review Flashcards
Identify the concepts of Gender Essentialism (common thinking about sex & gender).
- There is an identifiable essence that makes people male or female;
- Sex and gender are timeless, unchanging, and unchangeable;
- All members of the two sex/gender categories have certain unchangeable characteristics.
(All of this has been rejected)
Identify concepts of early social science thinking of sex vs. gender.
- Sex is biological, there is biological criteria used to assign people into categories of male or female.
- Gender is social, there are cultural meanings and identities attached to sex categories.
- Sex causes gender (gender behaviors and norms reflect biological realities).
Identity concepts of the social constructionist perspective on sex and gender.
- Sexual dimorphism is a claim, not a truth.
- Gender and sex interact and mutually reinforce each other. We attach social meanings (gender) to sex, which leads us to believe that there are really essentialized categories of male and female. Gender norms can result in changes in human bodies; thus gender can cause sex.
Explain the meaning behind “gender can cause sex”.
Sex and gender are so tied up in each other that gender actually causes changes in the physical embodiment of sex (basically the gender you are born into determines how your sexual behavior is because how social people address you).
Identify key concepts regarding gender.
- Gender is not sex (biology os insufficient for understanding gender and gender inequality).
- Gender is embodied (gender influences our bodies).
- Gender is a human invention (a way to sort and organize people).
- Gender has real consequences: social, political, economic.
Explain interactionist theory about “doing gender”.
- Gender occurs through interaction.
- Gender is a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment that reinforces the idea of sexes.
- Others hold us accountable to how we “do” gender based on our gender performance.
Identify the social constructionist perceptive on sexuality.
Erotic desire is strongly influenced by social processes.
What are the core precepts of sexology?
- All humans are born with a sexual nature.
- Sexuality is core to being human.
- Sexuality is a driving force of human behavior.
- Sexual instinct is naturally heterosexual.
- Seeks to identify universal laws of sexual behavior.
Identify critiques of sexology.
- Sexological knowledge is historically and culturally specific and highly political (more focus on men - women seen more as vessels than sexual beings).
- Sexology, like all science, is not neutral, but reflects the intersects of dominant groups (science is used to regulate and discipline bodies).
- Science reinforces gender inequalities.
- Science relies on claims of what is nature/natural, but fails to recognize how nature/natural are themselves social constructs.
Identity Freud’s claims on sexuality.
- Asserts that the entire psyche is grounded in erotic desire (Personality emerges from the negotiation between libido and social constraint).
- Unlike sexologists, believes sex is about pleasure and desire, not basic biological need.
- Children have sexual desire.
Identify Marxist perspective on sexuality.
- In a capitalist economy, repressing desire is central to profit accumulation.
- Sex for procreation is a central need of capitalism.
- In late industrial society, sex is used to sell commodities.
- Commercialization of sex places value on sex as a source of pleasure.
- Emphasis on sexual performance makes sex = work.
- Focus on personal happiness and satisfaction distracts us from the real inequalities of capitalism.
Identify feminist perspective on sexuality.
- Intimate relationships are a key site for women’s subordination and domination.
- Discourses about women’s sexuality justify women’s sexual (and other) subordination and domination.
- Dominant norms of sexuality are used to maintain gender, race, and class inequalities (compulsive heterosexuality enforced through celebration of heterosexual sex and denigration of same-sex sex.
- Rubin’s “charmed circle”.
Identify key concepts of Foucault’s Queer Theory.
- The discourse of sexuality creates what we know as sex/sexuality.
- Sexuality is at the center of modern systems of social control.
- We need to free ourselves from the idea of sexuality.
Identify key concepts of Butler’s Queer Theory.
- Social and political processes shape gendered selves.
- Gender is not a reflection of our core identity, but rather a performance of images (the repetition of gender performance makes it seem real).
Identify the core ideas of the complexity of gender.
- Gender is complex and varies across contexts.
- Gender intersects with other socially constructed categories of difference (especially of race and class).
- Differences in power, prestige, and privilege result in variations in how gender is organized and experienced.
