Welcome back! Today we are moving onto a new topic — and our final one. The topic is gender and sexuality. We’re going to be exploring how differences of gender and sexuality are constructed and maintained. So today’s session is just an introduction.
Thinking Gender
- What are the first three words you associate with “man” and “woman”? Put them on the whiteboard.
Let’s look at these. Which of these words express differences of:
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Biology?
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Social roles?
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Personality / psychology?
How do they reflect your own experience?
Writing exercise
We’re going to be thinking about gender not as something that just arises “naturally”, but instead as something that is tangled up with culture, and that is learned. For the next exercise, think about when you were growing up. How did you learn gender? Write in response to these questions:
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What is your earliest memory of being told or shown what was expected of your gender?
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When did you first become aware that societal rules for boys/men and girls/women were different?
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Can you identify a specific “agent of socialization” (family, school, peers, media) that had a strong influence on your understanding of gender?
We’ll discuss this in breakout groups.
Gender and Society
Our next topic is gender and society.
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Why does you think the binary (man/woman) remains so powerful as a social institution?
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What are the social consequences for individuals who exist outside of this binary?
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How does this binary intersect with other social categories like race or nationality?
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What cultural examples are there of gender non-conformity in your own society? What are the consequences of this non-conformity?
Gender Trouble
We’ll be starting to realise that gender always involves some kind of trouble. So this is a good time to read Judith Butler’s introduction to her book Gender Trouble, which is a significant landmark in shifting approaches to thinking through gender.