Gender Lecture

• Sex


  Emphasizes male and female differences in chromosomes, anatomy, hormones, reproductive systems and other physiological components
• Sex


  Makes us male or female
• Sex


  An ascribed status because a person is 'born with it'
• Gender


  Refers to the social, cultural and psychological traits linked to males and females through particular social contexts
• Gender


  Makes us masculine or feminine or somewhere in between
• Gender


  An achieved status because it must be learned
• Gender is not something we have but something we do (West and Zimmerman 1987)
• Gender is something we perform (Butler) /performative
• John Money


  Undertook doctoral research on human hermaphroditism at Harvard University
• John Money


  Offered the term "gender" as part of a framework for understanding hermaphroditism, as a rationale for clinical practices, and as a conceptual device for understanding human subjectivity
• For Money, gender was not separate or distinct from sex, and assumed a fully interactive relation between physiologies and experiences, since the latter are always mediated through the central nervous system
• John Money and colleagues

  1. Laid out their theories of gender acquisition

  2. Promoted a set of guidelines for the clinical mediation of hermaphrodite bodies

  3. Offered a measurement tool for assessing the degree of a person's adaptation to a gender
• Money provided a complete package that included a theory that served as a rationale for a set of clinical practices and a means of measuring not the efficacy of those practices but rather people's capacity to be the gender to which they were assigned
• David Reimer


  A Canadian man who was born biologically male but was sexually reassigned and raised as female after his penis was accidentally destroyed during circumcision
• Psychologist John Money oversaw the case and reported the reassignment as successful and as evidence that gender identity is primarily learned
• Academic sexologist Milton Diamond later reported that Reimer failed to identify as female since the age of 9 to 11, making the transition to living as a male at age 15
• Reimer later went public with his story to discourage similar medical practices. He later committed suicide, owing to suffering years of severe depression, financial instability, and a troubled marriage
• Sex/gender system


  The set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied
• Sex is sex, but what counts as sex is equally culturally determined and obtained. Every society also has a sex/gender system -a set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social intervention and satisfied in a conventional manner, no matter how bizarre some of the conventions may be
• Gender


  May refer to roles or expression: the behavioral characteristics, masculine or feminine in a particular culture and time
• Gender


  May also refer to identity: internal sense of ourselves as man, woman or transgender
• Gender


  Refers to the differentiated social roles, behaviors, capacities, and intellectual, emotional and social characteristics attributed by a given culture to women and men
• Gender roles


  The set of attitudes and behaviors socially expected from the members of a particular gender identity
• Gender roles are socially constructed and therefore, the product of socialization experiences
• This contrasts with other models of gender that assert that gender differences are "essential" to biological sex
• Gender role


  Although our sex defines whether we are male or female, our gender role describes how we act out our maleness or femaleness (femininity)
• Traditional gender roles


  • Men: competitive, athletic and aggressive
  • Women: want to have and take care of children
• Gender roles have expanded in recent years for both men and women (e.g., house husbands; women Presidents)
• Where do gender roles come from?

  Gender roles are imposed from a variety of social influences, formed during the socialization phases of childhood and adolescence, and influenced and reinforced by parents, toys children play with, school, peer pressure and a culture's traditional gender roles
• Sex-role socialization theory


  Child is taught her or his sex-role by, usually, one central adult, but is also 'pressed' into maintenance of that role by a multitude of others (peers, media, etc)
• Sex-role socialization in the Philippines

  • Children are socialized into specific tasks assigned to their particular gender (farm work, housework, childcare)
• Bodily inscription


  Girls are taught to sit in quite unnatural and submissive postures, with knees always together. Boys in contrast, are free to sit more naturally with knees apart and they look dominant and assertive in doing so
• Habitus


  A set of dispositions (person's inherent qualities of mind and character) that incline agents to act and react in certain ways, providing individuals with a "practical sense" of how to act in their lives, giving guidance for actions, but not strictly determining them
• The inculcation of these embodied dispositions occurs throughout our lives especially in early childhood
• Habitus


  • In many cultures, boys and girls are habituated to walk and talk in certain ways (gender and class attributes)
• SOGIESC


  Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and sex characteristics
• At times, a person may have a feminine gender expression, but will identify as a lesbian (identity) or bisexual (sexual orientation)
• Status


  A category or position that a person occupies that determines how he/she will be defined and treated
• Ascribed status


  Born into it or involuntarily attained (e.g., sex, race, caste, social class)
• Achieved status


  Attained by own effort, skills, abilities (e.g., 'iskolar', doctor, lawyer, teacher, social class)