These 32-pages notes include detailed summaries of the two-block course, except for week 8 on intersectionality (otherwise full attendance). They state the lectures' slides' content and what was discussed in the seminars plus definitions and interesting facts added.
week 1
Introduction
-> three core texts that introduce gender and sexuality as
structures of power and inequality – in interaction with race
lecture September 4
power and inequality
-> “The minor Gender & Sexuality studies power relations based on gender and sexuality from an
interdisciplinary social science perspective. It examines how such power is structured and how it
shapes social and political life, both in the public and in the private sphere.”
§ gender pay gap
§ cultural representation = issue in itself
æ films with gay love and happy ending, e.g. Love, Simon
æ part of a bigger system of power and inequality
Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
- one of the most famous female philosophers
- most famous book “Le Deuxième Sexe” (1949)
§ “Now, what peculiarly signalises the situation of woman is that she – a free and autonomous
being like all human creatures – nevertheless finds herself living in a world where men compel
her to assume the status of the Other” (17).
æ “status of the Other” as central concept, saying that women is not the norm, not the normal,
to an extent not a full being
æ also has to do with the notion of who can speak, a man can speak for humanity when he
speaks, can speak truths and speak for everybody, a woman, however, speaks as a woman, as
something different, special (although that could imply something good)
æ women always connected to her reproductive function
§ resistance to womanhood as destiny (biological, psychological)
§ womanhood is not an essence but a social construct:
“On ne nait pas femme, on le devient”
(“One is not born a woman, one becomes one”)
æ distinction between activist and intellectual work is not easily made, science understand it but
as soon as you understand it you want to do something about it
æ she resists womanhood as destiny
§ 1975 television interview
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmEAB3ekkvU
æ formula as basis of all her theories
æ no biological or physiological destiny but product of a history
æ go back in time: baby girls are manufactured to become women, e.g. the way they
are held
æ social context around them determines everything
æ pretext around which the feminine condition is built
æ biological differences don’t actually explain this difference that men and women have in our
society
1
, Introduction to Gender and Sexuality
Notes
§ Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique (1963)
- American journalist
- also credited to spur on second wave of feminism
æ first wave of feminism: around 1910s where women got access to education, were able to
participate in politics
æ 1930s/1940s women had been going to school and after second world war, ideology was for
women to be home and housewives (gender or der had to be restored after the war)
æ feminine mystique: idea/ideology that a true women/ a good woman finds fulfilment in being
at home, with a good education, a hardworking husband, a true woman then finds happiness
in her work at home
æ in reality, especially college-educated women were going crazy at home, Friedan
says “there’s nothing wrong with you individually, it’s the idea that’s bad”
§ e.g. Mad Men Betty Draper Shoot scene: looks like anger/frustration that has nowhere
to go, there’s not vocabulary to express those feelings
Jackson (2006): core concepts
§ gender
æ “Gender is thus a social division and a cultural distinction, given meaning and substance in the
everyday actions, interactions and subjective interpretations through which it is lived. If
gender categories have no natural existence they cannot pre-exist the division and distinction
through which they are constituted” (106)
æ world view is that gender is binary, most scholars work with that framework as well
§ sexuality
æ “While ‘sex’ denotes carnal acts, ‘sexuality’ is a broader term referring to all
erotically significant aspects of social life and social being, such as desires,
practices, relationships and identities. This definition assumes fluidity, since what
is sexual (erotic) is not fixed but depends on what is socially defined as such and
these definitions are contextually and historically variable. Hence sexuality has no
clear boundaries – what is sexual to one person in one context may not be to
someone else or somewhere else.” (106)
æ genderbread person à still takes gender as line and respective sexuality
§ sex
bell hooks
-> tells story about how she goes to college in the US, coming from segregation areas, made it to Ivy
League, joined feminist reading groups, in the concepts she learned about, work was emancipatory,
however, she says that where she comes from, women have always worked (inside and outside of
the house), nothing about that work was emancipatory though, e.g. working in rich white women’s
houses
§ womanhood takes many different forms, i.e. women’s oppression takes many different forms,
we can’t just look at white middle-class women’s ”problems”, there’s different kinds of
oppression and marginalisation
æ white women were not expected to do any manual/hard work, which was normal for her and
actually expected from her
à womanhood is racialised and classed
à i.e. gender is racialised and classed
§ the devaluation of black womanhood
æ difference in how black and white women are sexualised, white women as fragile, black
women as “free”, promiscuous
æ part of ideological system of US society at that point in time, made enslavement of black
women possible (also violations to their husbands)
æ it’s a political issue, ideology sustains power
æ these images actually haven’t disappeared
2
, Introduction to Gender and Sexuality
Notes
§ celebrating black womanhood: interview
æ it’s sad that we’re barely able to enjoy for instance a fashion magazine due to what culture
has done, everyone has the right to be exactly who they want to be
æ Beauvoir says that emancipation should be liberation, according to bell, emancipation should
be about joy, she wants to be a person of the mind, she is very much about opening up and
what it means to be a scholar, she talks about the scholarly practice
à definitely big difference between the two authors (background, class)
§ intersectionality (coined by Kimberly Cranshaw)
æ different power systems (different forms of power and inequality) all interacting and shaping
each other
æ intersectionality is context-dependent and there will always be discussion on what to include
and exclude
§ intersectional feminism, which is about not only taking care of what position you’re in but
looking at other perspectives
æ e.g. Women’s March in March, lots of issues being brought up connecting to feminism, e.g.
LGBTQ or racial issues
heteronormativity
“the privileging of heterosexuality through its normalization” (Jackson 2006: 109)
“Heterosexuality depends upon and guarantees gender division” (Jackson 2006: 105)
æ for instance asking a kid whether its mom or dad is coming to pick it up, makes the kid feel
like it has to explain and maybe even justify if its family situation is different
æ normalisation includes the normal and the norm, normative evaluation suggests a “good”
form
“The couple is a fundamental unity with its two halves riveted together, and the cleavage of society
along the line of sex is impossible. Here is to be found the basic trait of woman: she is the Other in a
totality of which the two components are necessary to one another.” (De Beauvoir, 15-16)
æ very heteronormative approach
§ notion that women and men are the two halves of a whole, supposed to be
complementary, bringing them together creates a whole, powerful structure in thinking
about this
“Heterosexuality is, by definition, a gender relationship, ordering not only sexual life but also
domestic and extra-domestic divisions of labour and resources” (Jackson 2006: 107)
æ heterosexuality as a norm/an institute is about more than who has sex with who or falls in
love with who, it’s more a way of organising society in units (men, women and their children),
not even thinking of e.g. extended families
§ it’s also about what characteristics are attributed to people
“Pink or Blue” by Holly McNish
-> https://vimeo.com/223503242
æ gender norms push people in certain directions, states what right or wrong
+ optional reading: Betty Friedan (1963), The feminine mystique
- widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the US
- Friedan challenged the widely shared belief in the 1950s that "fulfillment as a woman had only one
definition for American women after 1949—the housewife-mother."
- The phrase "feminine mystique" was created by Friedan to show the assumptions that women
would be fulfilled from their housework, marriage, sexual lives, and children. It was said that women,
who were actually feminine, should not have wanted work, get an education, or have political
opinions. Friedan wanted to prove that women were unsatisfied but could not voice their feelings.
3
, Introduction to Gender and Sexuality
Notes
week 2
Making Gender
-> essentialism vs constructivism
à What does it mean when someone says that certain behaviour is “natural” for women or men?
How important is biology to our social world? In the second week, we discuss constructivist
critiques on biological determinism and other essentialist perspectives on gender and sexuality.
lecture September 11
key concepts
essentialism
æ ““Any form of thinking that characterizes or explains aspects of human behaviour and identity
as part of human ‘essence’: a biologically and/or psychologically irreduciable quality of the
individual that is immutable and pre-social” (Rahman & Jackson 2010: 16-17, italics in the
original)
æ essence: something inside of you that determines everything
æ immutable: this core is unchangeable
æ pre-social: it was before the social, it’s a given
essentialism can be
æ historical: essentialism that comes from time
æ spiritual: God-given or other religious form
æ cultural: mostly applied to marginalized cultures by people outside of such
æ biological determinism: it’s in your body, it’s determined
biological determinism
= assumption that biological differences explain and justify social differences
æ “For efficient subordination, what’s wanted is ... that it appear natural“ (Frye 1983: 34,
quoted in West & Zimmerman; italics added)
æ e.g. role of mother and father
æ do you draw conclusions going further?
...applied to race and class
æ it’s also about equality: quote on slide -> stating in a debate that something is “natural” is
dangerous, it’s a very powerful normative term, connotation is that anything not natural is
wrong and that the natural way is the only right way and that it shouldn’t change
æ (humanity divided, difference in value, literally in people’s bodies) and class (e.g. physical
shape such as rating a person’s head size, earlobe etc)
...applied to gender
æ “Taking all these facts together, we can say with certainty that there are substantial sex
differences in cognitive functions like spatial rotation ability, mathematical reasoning, and
verbal memory; and in motor skills requiring accurate targeting and finger dexterity.
...Evidence for socialization influences on such differences between the sexes is meagre.”
(Kimura 2000: 181)
æ e.g. notion that there’s a particular type of work that only women can do, e.g. saying women
are too weak (physically) to contribute to politics and in turn that men are emasculated by
women taking over such a role; e.g. believing that men are better at mathematics
because of how their brain is wired (neurological studies) or simply better at
physical activities such as shooting; e.g. googling mood hormones shows
prominently results related to women
alternative/counterapproach:
social constructivism
“All variants of feminism are constructionist at some level, as none would accept that extant gender
arrangements are either natural or unchangeable” (Marshall 2008: 288)
à gendered inequalities are not natural:
they can be changed
4
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