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Gender: Beyond Fixed Categories and Social Norms

Explore the complexities of gender, including scientific discourse on biological sex, patriarchy and heteropatriarchy, performative aspects of gender, and the fluidity of the sex-gender system. Discover the possibilities when we challenge fixed categories and societal expectations.

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Gender: Beyond Fixed Categories and Social Norms

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Presentation Transcript

  1. Counting Past Two Bodies and Genders

  2. Agenda • Scientific discourse, gender, and biological sex • Patriarchy and heteropatriarchy • Gender as a) performative b) a work process c) a regulatory and normalizing category • The sex-gender system (fixed vs. fluid) a) historical b) contemporary • Queer and transgender theory and politics a) queer theory b) transgender theory c) transsexuality d) intersexuality

  3. Gender The social meaning assigned to being a woman or a man. Typical view: Gender categories describe the social roles assigned to corresponding anatomical sex characteristics. Alternative view: The social meanings given to gender shape our understanding of anatomical sex.

  4. Patriarchy A system in which social, economic, and political privilege and entitlement is conferred upon men, over women and children, regardless of the presence or absence of privilege in other areas of men’s lives, and regardless of if/how they act upon that privilege.

  5. Heteropatriarchy An ordering principle that privileges heterosexual masculinity, through which heterosexual men’s experiences give shape to the normative social order.

  6. Gender as Performative

  7. Gender as a Work Process List the everyday/everynight practices that you engage in that are part of the constitution of gender. Without these social practices, would women and men appear more alike than different?

  8. Gender as a regulatory and normalizing category

  9. So far…..

  10. Next, we need to think about why the notion of a fixed and stable sex-gender-sexuality system holds such social significance, and explore why this sex-gender-sexuality system is so reductionist. It is reductionist because it blurs and reduces the range of people and people’s possibilities, much the way that racial categories do.

  11. Anatomical Sex-Gender-Sexuality Male = Man/Masculinity = Sexual attraction to women Female = Woman/Femininity = Sexual attraction to men

  12. The sex-gender-sexuality system (Fixed)

  13. The sex-gender-sexuality system (Fluid) What if anatomical sex, gender, and sexuality are not fixed, but fluid? What if it is only the social meanings attached to them that make them appear to be fixed? And what if the relation between sex, gender and sexuality is also fluid? What are the possibilities (and is this scary to you, or intriguing?)

  14. Anne Fausto-Sterling: Sexing the Body “…labeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision. We may use scientific knowledge to help us make the decision, but only our beliefs about gender ---- not science ---- can define our sex…our beliefs about gender affect what kinds of knowledge scientists produce about sex in the first place.” p.3

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