Gender & Sexuality

Week 3: Gender & Sexuality

• Until recently, gender was considered synonymous with sex, implying inherent inferiority.
• In 1674, Francois Poullain de la Barre argued in "On the Equality of the Two Sexes" that anatomical investigations reveal no differences in the brains of men and women
• Historically, perceived sex differences rooted in prejudice led to the belief that women tolerate their condition as natural due to dependency and limited thinking

Gender as a Category of Analysis

• Gender regimes like patriarchy divide people into men and women based on hierarchical power relations, imposing a social labor dichotomy, varying across time and place
• Judith Butler (1999) sees gender as social performance, culturally contingent and socially constructed
• Gender operates as an ideological system based on essentializing and functionalist thinking, understood in binary terms
• Gender systems legitimize power inequalities within society

Practice vs. Analysis

• Essentialist ontology of sex, gender, and sexuality is a binary where sex is male/female, gender is masculine/feminine, and sexuality is attraction to the opposite sex only
• Social constructionist ontology involves multiple sexes, multiple genders, and fluid sexuality

Sex and Sexuality

• Sex is a biological categorization based on reproductive organs
• Sexuality is desire, practices, and identity
• Sexual orientation is preference for sexual relationships with people of the other sex (heterosexuality), own sex (homosexuality), both sexes (bisexuality), or neither sex (asexuality)
• Heteronormativity is the idea that heterosexuality should be the norm
• Transgender individuals have a gender identity that does not match their assigned sex at birth
• Cisgender is the opposite of transgender; transsexual individuals have gender re-affirming surgery to undergo a sex change

Binary Sex

• One in 2000 babies are born intersex, presenting three sexes
• Anne Fausto-Sterling argues there are five sexes
• Sex comprises genes (X and Y chromosomes), hormones (oestrogen and androgens), gonads (ovaries and testes), genitals (clitoris and penis), and secondary signs (breasts, facial hair)
• The five sexes are males, merms, herms, ferms, and females
• Medicine and law work to maintain a binary sex system through categorization and simplification

Sex and Gender

• The justification of binary gender references binary sex, but if sex is not binary, gender cannot be binary either
• Desired gender roles are defined first, then mapped onto binary
• Sex emerges from gender, not the other way around
• Biological differences between men and women are used to rationalize the stratification of the labor force, but do not explain it
• Social construction dictates the characteristics men and women are supposed to possess

Social Constructions of Gender

• The Native American Mohave tribe recognizes four genders: man, man who acts like a woman, woman, and woman who acts like a man
• Thai Khatoye (ladyboys) take on the roles assigned to women in other societies
• Sworn virgins in Albania (burrnesha)/Macedonia live as men due to a shortage of men

Gender Precedes Sex

• Gender precedes sex because of family, schools, religion, and media
• Families and schools use color and subjects to determine the gender
• Religion says "Wives be subject to your husbands" (Ephesians 5:22-24)
• Media promotes gender norms
• Essential identities create great political leverage
• Constructs identities are seen as a choice

Social Construction of Sexuality

• Katz suggests heterosexuality is a modern invention dating to the late 19th century (1990)
• Prior, individuals weren't defined by their sexual behavior
• After, heterosexuality and homosexuality become forms of identity
• Heterosexuality becomes the norm against which acceptable and unacceptable forms of behavior are judged
• In ancient Greece, the sex of a sexual partner was less important than social class and citizenship
• In ancient China, a dichotomy between heterosexuality and homosexuality did not exist in traditional China (Tonglin Lü, 1995)

Sexuality and Institutions

• In Europe, attitudes towards homosexuality conditioned by religion, seeing it as a mortal sin
• Sodom and Gomorrah associated with negative attitudes to 'sodomy'; unnatural and non-procreative
• Biological arguments suggest homosexuality is unnatural as it does not lead to reproduction – but humans aren't the only species that have sex for pleasure, such as bonobos
• Until 1990, WHO homosexuality was treated as a disease
• Medicalisation: Richard von Krafft-Ebing says homosexuality is innate, leading to gradual decriminalization; homosexuality pathologized, seen as a disease to be cured

Gender Order in the Communist Bloc

• Capitalism intensifies patriarchy (Marxism)
• Women's liberation is equal labor force participation
• Gender norms are ideologically determined to meet the needs of a communist state
• Communist regimes are suspicious of traditional peasant gender roles
• Domestic functions transferred from the private to the public sphere
• Women are workers, mothers, and household managers
• Men are workers, soldiers, and managers
• The USSR in 1920 was the legal country to legalize abortion
• Women were emancipated but relations remained male-dominated

Politicisation of Sexuality in Communist Societies

• Attitudes towards homosexuality were initially liberal but became increasingly intolerant under Stalin
• Homosexual acts between men decriminalized after the Bolshevik Revolution, based on rationality, not religion
• Recriminalized in 1934 due to the changing nature of Party elites and a dangerous sign of individualism
• Homosexuality became illegal and invisible
• Homosexual relationships decriminalized after the collapse of the USSR partially re-criminalized in Russia in 2013

Gender and Politics

• Biopolitics (Foucault) describes how governments regulate and manage the biological lives of a population
• An extreme case was Nazi Germany with the Cult of Motherhood, marriage control measures, control over family life, and gender and sexualities at the forefront of eugenics
• Forced sterilizations and tests in concentration camps were used
• Demographic fears lead to heightened biopolitics in countries like Hungary, Russia, and the USA

Gender and Colonialism

• Colonialism encompasses political and economic structures of domination
• Gender can be a tool of coloniality by ordering human lives and cultures into Eurocentric hierarchies (Lugones 2007)
• Coloniality of knowledge establishes the European/Western worldview as dominant (Quijano 2000)
• In Yoruba, society did not have a gender system before colonization (Oyewùmí 1997)
• Categories obinrin and okunrin, meaning 'female/woman' and 'male/man', were mistranslated as binary
• Creole women commonly engaged in sexual relationships with other women (Wekker 1996)
• Gender, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and gender equality are tied to European modernity/colonization
• It can be useful can be useful categories of analysis, but use carefully to be applied to non-Western contexts

Soviet Gender Ideology and Non-Slavic Women

• Soviet gender ideology shaped politics in Central Asia, Caucasus, and Siberia
• Bolsheviks declared educational efforts were needed for women to achieve equality with men
• Non-Slavic women were considered 'backward' and in need of Russian help for their emancipation
• Some women were interested in Soviet emancipation
• Unveilings in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan resulted in mass killings of women
• Many scholars see Soviet politics in Central Asia as colonial, including gender

Soviet Emancipation and Western Feminist Politics

• Soviet women had access to paid work and education 50 years earlier than the West
• First-wave Western feminist politics (19th-20th ct) focused on the right to vote, inherit, and own property
• Suffragettes like E.C. Stanton were involved
• Second-wave feminist politics (1960s-1980s) focused on equal pay for women and men and shared family work
• Betty Frieden was one of the leading feminists
• Third-wave feminist politics (1990s-2010s) recognized gender being entangled with categories of inequality, such as ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, and health
• Fourth-wave feminist politics (today) emphasizes #metoo with cultural awareness about types of sexual harassment