Gender, Sexuality, and the Law

Study Notes

Sexuality and Gender Identity

Capacity to bear children has been deemed so important that it has hindered advancement in other fields
Criminalization of sexuality is still common in many countries, often using laws inherited from British colonial regimes or on religious grounds
Female same-sex relations are not often officially criminalized, but sexual assault to 'cure' women of being lesbian is common in some countries
Criminalization of gender identity has emerged as an issue, with offenses created to prohibit use of gender-based facilities that are different from one's gender designation at birth
Some societies formally or informally recognize more than one gender or allow people to move between genders
Medical intervention in intersex children without their consent is based on the idea that it is best for a person to be either male or female

Intersectionality

Social inequality traverses several dimensions, including class, race, and gender
When a person experiences more than one dimension of inequality, they are often multiply disadvantaged

Understanding Justice and Egocentrism

Our understanding of justice is influenced by our society, culture, and history
Egocentrism is being uninterested in others' beliefs, interests, and attitudes, and applying one's own experiences as the standard for everything else
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one's ethnic or cultural group is superior to others, and judging everything from that perspective

Tools to Destabilize Our Certainties

Three tools to destabilize our certainties: sociological imagination, cultural ethnography, and history
These tools provide different perspectives on our experiences and how we see our own society

Sociological Imagination

The sociological imagination moves from personal space to social space, connecting biography and society
It is impossible to understand the social world using only our own experiences
C. Wright Mills promoted sociology as an imaginative way of thinking and understanding the social world
Examples of sociological imagination include studying high divorce rates to understand broader social phenomena and linking individual suicide rates to social relations

Cultural Ethnography

Culture includes shared products of human society that impact how societies are arranged
Culture encompasses both material (institutions, art, literature) and non-material (language, ways of doing things) artefacts
Clifford Geertz argues that 'non-cultural' human beings do not exist, and Marcel Mauss studied cultural practices such as eating and walking

Description

This quiz explores the intersection of gender, sexuality, and legal interventions, including the criminalization of same-sex relationships and the impact of colonial and religious laws on gender identity.