SOC 107 Gender Relations Notes PDF

○ How we communicate our gender SOC 107 identity through our appearance, GENDER RELATIONS dress and behavior Exam Coverage: Gender...

○ How we communicate our gender SOC 107 identity through our appearance, GENDER RELATIONS dress and behavior Exam Coverage: Gender determinants extend up to the Introduction to Sociology of Gender to Feminist pronouns/identifiers used Theories ○ him/her, singular they, Filipinx ○ Ms., Mr., Mx. Lesson 1: Introduction Gender Identities ○ Cisgender man or Cisgender Gender-related Issues Woman Gender Discrimination ○ Transgender/trans Wage Gap Domestic Violence Gender as Individual Attribute and Gender as a Online gender-based Violence Perpetrated by people who are not stranger to the Social Construct victims: ex-partners, relatives, etc. Commonly Where do we get our ideas about gender motivated by poverty. Two-spirit ○ Nonconsensual ○ modern, pan-indian, umbrella term production/Distribution of intimate used by some indigenous north images americans. Refers to people who ○ Threats of Violence fulfill additional third-gender ○ Cyberpornography/ ceremonial and social role in their Prostitution cultures ○ Whole person that embodies fem Why do these issues continue to exist? and masc traits Culture e.g. Charlie Ballard, a a) Role-expectations two-spirit who lives in b) Conservatism Oakland and is a descendant c) Traditions of the Anishinaabe, Sac, and Political Sphere is Male-dominated Fox tribes. Hijra - culturally belong to a completely Gender in Households different section of a society Father - economic-centric ○ Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, a hijra who Mother - children value formation, is upset when called gay. Enjoys household chores womanhood but cannot consider themselves as a woman. Analyzing social institutions from a gender Dayak [West Borneo] - a ‘woman’ is a perspective person who knows how to distinguish types Farmers, Sewing, Religion, of rice, store them correctly and choose among them for diff uses Sex vs Gender Hau [New Guinea] - children become male or female at puberty then over the life Sex is biological, gender is social course, men lose masculinity with every son they father and women gain masculinity with each son they bear Lovedu [Zambia] - gender is assigned Determinants of Gender neither by genitals nor age but by status. A Gender Identity high ranking woman - a man. She might ○ Sense of oneself as male or female marry a young woman and be socially Gender expression recognized as father to their children (who  are biologically fathered by the young women’s struggle forpolitical rights, woman’s socially endorsed lover) especially the vote. Teduray [Maguindanao, Philippines] ○ Mentefuwaley lipun: Second Wave: Equal Pay one-who-became-woman began in US > Europe ○ Mentefuwalay legay: focused mainly on sexuality, reproductive, one-who-became-man and the wage gap worked to translate these basic political Gender as a Social Construct rights into economic and social equality and Genitals do not always determine gender. to reconceptualize relations between men Gender as socially constructed roles, and women with the concept “gender.” behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men Third Wave: Patriarchy or women fights for equality focusing exclusively on May refer to roles or expression: behavioral female victims of gender-neutral issues characteristics, masculine or fem in a mostly on tumblr + fb particular culture and time mostly middle/upper class us Refers to the differentiated social roles, used in two senses—to describe the behaviors, capacities, and intellectual, responses by women of color, lesbians, and emotional and social characteristics working-class women to the ideas of white attributed by a given culture to men and professional women claiming to be the voice women of Second Wave feminism and to describe the feminist ideas of the generation of “Gender is not just about differences, but of women who will live their adult lives in the inequalities.” twenty-first century (Ritzer, 2008). Lesson 2: Gender Sociologically 1) The study of gender in sociology grew out of the second wave of the women’s Development of Sociological Discourse on movement Gender a) Central to the Second Wave triumph Sociology of Women was establishing “gender” as a core ○ grew out of the second wave of concept in Sociology, women’s movement (1960s) b) Gender which is broadly understood ○ recognition of the works of Harnet as a social construction for Martineau classifying people and behaviors in ○ criticism if sociology being a “male terms of “man” and “woman,” science of society” and “science of “masculine” and “feminine,” male society” c) Charlotte Perkins Gilman provided ○ “add women and stir” approach the first conceptualization of what (Smith) will become the idea of gender in her concept of excessive sex Waves of Feminism throughout History distinction, which she defines as socially maintained differences First Wave: Suffrage between men and women that go 19th and early 20th century beyond the differences dictated by suffrage and legal rights biological reproduction. mostly active in UK, canada, us i) Criticisms of academic began in the 1830s as an offshoot of the disciplines, like Sociology for antislavery movement and focused on ignoring  ii) women (e.g. research and f)sociological focus on women activities heavily dominated i) gender scholars focused by women got less attention) more attention to women and iii) topics related to femininity d) Jessie Bernard in “My four than to men and topics revolutions: an autobiographical related to masculinity history of the ASA (1973) ii) promote more women to i) “Can sociology become a important positions in science of society rather than scientific institutions, to a science of male society encourage more women to (1) sociology as a choose careers in science science of male Sociology of Gender society 2) From sociology of women to sociology of (a) Topics: gender “power, work, occupational ○ Raewyn Connell (1995) ladder, conflict known for masculinity studies and sex – but men must be seen as not women- or gendered rather than generic women only beings as adjuncts to development that gender is men relational- what women are (b) Women- or can be requires attention usually a to what men are or can be chapter or recognition of masculinities footnote on and feminine hegemonic “the status of masculinity (Raewyn women” Connell) (c) Machismo element in Recognition of masculinities and femininities research: multiple rather than singular expressions of agentic gender research emerged because some forms of (masculine); masculinity or femininity are more socially communal valued than others (e.g. hegemonic (feminine) masculinity is more “culturally exalted” ) relations between particular kinds of masculinity (or particular kinds of femininity) are understood as relations of domination and subordination. Intersectionality of Gender ○ concern with the relations between gender and other bases of distinction and stratification (e.g. (2) sociology as a male race, class, gender, sexuality, science of society religion, ethnicity, and age e) Smith (1974) – “add women and stir ○ challenges the notion that women approach” led to the (or men) represent a homogenous  category, whose members share d) Daughters being trained by mothers common interest on women’s roles while sons trained ○ intersectionality by fathers on men’s roles. ○ This research have been especially e) Rule of succession by sons valuable in demonstrating the ways f) Too much deviation from these roles that these categories – acting or overlap causes an imbalance in together – shape how people the family system. experience the world. g) Criticisms Gender Skepticism Does not account for a ○ raises the possibility of gender is a variety of existing family convenient fiction, a product of systems language rather than social relations Used by conservatives to of organization justify and maintain male ○ Caution on overgeneralization- may dominance and gender occur when one assumes that stratification conclusions based on one group of Tends to support women or men can be automatically white-middle class families extended to all men and women. 2) Conflict Theory ○ a) Main premise: The society is a stage Gender at the center of sociological on which struggles for power and thought dominance are acted out. ○ Transforming sociological knowledge b) Whatever stability is achieved by a – rethinking of taken-for-granted society is caused by the dominance sociological concepts and ideas (e.g. of one class over the another gender neutral practices and c) Mirror image of functionalism institutions such as law, work and 3) Symbolic Interactionism formal organization) a) Explains social interaction as a ○ putting gender at the center of dynamic process in which people sociological thought rethinking of the continually modify their behavior as taken-for-granted sociological a result of the interaction itself. concepts and ideas b) Society, its institutions and its social MAJOR SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN structures exist only through human UNDERSTANDING GENDER interaction. 1) Structural functionalism c) The social construction of reality- the a) Main premise: society is made up of shaping of perception of reality by interdependent parts, each of which the subjective meanings brought to contributes to the functioning of the any experience or social interaction whole. d) “Doing Gender”- gender emerges b) Functionalists ask how any given not as an individual attribute but element of social structure something that is “accomplished” in contributes to overall social stability, interaction with others. balance, and equilibrium (e.g. the e) Examples: ‘complementary roles’ performed by Dating/courtship scripts women and men both in the Courtesy of children to father pre-industrial and contemporary and mother society are functional necessities) c) Mother-expressive role; father Feminist Sociological Theory –instrumental role  A theory is feminist if it can be used to other people reimforce activities tht challenge a status quo that is conform to the expectations of disadvantageous to women. masculinity and femininity. Feminist theory “accurately describes the ○ Modeling social realities of women’s subordination; it children develop sex-typed would provide a deep explanation of how behaviors because they those realities came to be; and it would offer choose to model or copy recommendations for transforming those behaviors of other males or realities that would reflect feminist values, females provide a guide in most situations, and be attention-encode-imitate the efficacious in ending women’s behavior of models subordination” (Pineda-Ofreneo, Narciso-Apuan & Estrada-Claudio, 1997, p. 2. Cognitive Developmental Theory 25). examines the connections between sex Seeks to answer: category membership and the meaning ○ “And what about the women?” people attach to that membership ○ “Why is all this as it is?” interested in how children gather and make ○ “How can we change and improve sense of information about gender and how the social world so as to make it a their understanding of gender changes over more just place for all people?” time ○ “And what about the differences ○ Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of among women?” gender development LESSON 3: GENDER SOCIALIZATION Socialization to one’s culture Political socialization Religious socialization Occupational socialization Gender socialization processes through which individuals take on 3. Gender Schema Theory gendered qualities and characteristics and children actively construct mental acquire a sense of self representations about which defines males process by which we learn that people are amd females by observing individuals im the classified into male/female/queer; the roles culture in which they live. and characteristics attributed to each such schemas are incorporated into the gender; gender ideologies, norms, are child’s self concept, aid in the search and therefore learned assimilation of subsequent information that the child deems schema-relevant, and are 1. Social Learning Theory constantly changing as the child develops. Albert Bandura Schema - cognitive structure used to Regards gender identity and role as a set of organize information abouy a particular type behaviors that are learned from the of object, person or situation. People make environment sense of new information by matching it to Two modes of social learning: the schemas. Ex: How do you picture out a ○ Reinforcement - reward and nurse? punishment; children can develop gender specific behaviors because Sandra Bem’s Gender Schema Theory  children, after labeling themselves, seekout LESSON 4: FEMINISM AND GENDER activities, actions, or behavior that fit their EQUALITY gender schema differentiation of in-group and out-group Observations in American society: gender polzarization - belief that what is acceptable or appropriate for females is not acceptable or appropriate for males (and vice versa) and that anyone who deviates from these standards of appropriate femaleness and maleness is unnatural pr immoral. androcentrism - belief that males and masculinity are superior to females and Feminism femininity, and that males and masculinity the main point feminists have stressed are the standard or the norm about gender inequality is that it is not an 4. Peer group interaction and the culture of individual matter, but is deeply ingrained in childhood the structure of societies. boys and gorls tend to behave differently gender inequality is built into the depending upon whether they are with other organization of marriage and families, work boys, and the economy, politics, religions, the arts Children reinforce each other for behaviors and other cultural productions, and the very that are deemed either appropriate or lanuage we speak. inappropriate in terms of gender. three broad categories that reflect their Children's activities involve a "culture of theories and political strategies with regard childhood"- a pattern of games, activities, to the gendered social order: roles, norms and even jokes and folklore ○ gender reform feminisms, that are passed on from generation to ○ gender resistant feminisms, generation of children with little, ifany, active ○ and gender revolution feminisms. Involvement by adults. This culture is highly gendered. Gender Reform Feminism Liberal Feminism Eleanor Maccoby: ○ Theoretically, liberal feminism claims Girls find boys' more rough and tumble play that gender differences are not styles and orientation toward competition based in biology, and therefore that and dominance aversive, and thus, try to women and men are not all that avoid it. different -- their common humanity Given the girls' different intéractive styles, supersedes their procreative girls find it difficult to influence boys, for their differentiation. characteristic style of polite suggestion does ○ If women and men are not different, not match the style of direct commands then they should not be treated more often adopted by boys. differently under the law. Boys are far more concerned with gender ○ Women should have the same rights segregation than are girls. as men and the same educational Girls receive less punishment from their and work opportunities. peers for cross-sex behaviors than boys. ○ Their activist focus has been concerned with visible sources of gender discrimination, such as  gendered job markets and home maintains bosses and workers inequitable wage scales, and with and reproduces the next generation getting women into positions of of bosses and workers (and their authority in the professions, future wives). government, and cultural institutions. ○ Furthermore, if a bourgeois husband ○ Liberal feminist politics took falls on hard times, his wife can do important weapons of the civil rights genteel work in the home, such as movement --antidiscrimination dressmaking, to earn extra money, legislation and affirmative action -- or take a temporary or part-time job, and used them to fight gender usually whitecollar. inequality, especially in the job ○ And when a worker's wages fall market. below the level needed to feed his ○ Addressing gender imbalance: family, as it often does, his wife can Encouraging men to train for such go out to work for wages in factories jobs as nursing, teaching, and or shops or other people's homes, or secretary, and women for fields like turn the home into a small factory engineering, construction, and police and put everyone, sometimes work. including the children, to work. ○ The main contribution of liberal ○ The housewife's labor, paid and feminism is showing how much unpaid, is for her family. modern society discriminates ○ Marxist and socialist feminisms against women. severely criticize the family as a ○ In the United States, it was source of women's oppression and successful in breaking down many exploitation. barriers to women's entry into ○ If a woman works for her family in formerly male-dominated jobs and the home, she has to be supported, professions, helped to equalize and so she is economically wage scales, and got abortion and dependent on the "man of the other reproductive rights legalized. house," like her children. ○ But liberal feminism could not ○ If she works outside the home, she overcome the prevailing belief that is still expected to fulfill her domestic women and men are intrinsically duties, and so she ends up working different. twice as hard as a man, and usually ○ It was somewhat more successful in for a lot less pay. proving that even if women are ○ How they addressed the issue: different from men, they are not maternity leave inferior. Development Feminism Marxist and Socialist Feminisms ○ The gendered division of labor in ○ Bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat developing countries is the outcome ○ Capitalism of a long history of colonialism. ○ Exploitation ○ Development feminism made an ○ Alienation important theoretical contribution in ○ Revolution equating women's status with control ○ CHANGE THE SYSTEM! of economic resources. ○ Marxist feminism put housewives ○ In some societies, women control into the structure of capitalism. significant economic resources and ○ Housewives are vital to capitalism, so have a high status. In contrast, in indeed to any industrial economy, societies with patriarchal family because their unpaid work in the structures where anything women  produce, including children, belongs inferior -- is deeply embedded in to the husband, women and girls most men's consciousness. have a low value. ○ Radical feminism turns ○ Development feminism's theory is male-dominated culture on its head. that in any society, if the food It takes all the characteristics that women produce is the main way the are valued in male-dominated group is fed, and women also control societies -- objectivity, distance, the distribution of any surplus they control, coolness, aggressiveness, produce, women have power and and competitiveness -- and blames prestige. If men provide most of the them for wars, poverty, rape, food and distribute the surplus, battering, child abuse, and incest. women's status is low. ○ It praises what women do -- feed ○ Whether women or men produce and nurture, cooperate and most of the food depends on the reciprocate, and attend to bodies, kind of technology used. Thus, the minds, and psyches. mode of production and the kinship ○ The important values, radical rules that control the distribution of feminism argues, are intimacy, any surplus are the significant persuasion, warmth, caring, and determinants of the relative status of sharing -- the characteristics that women and men in any society. women develop in their handson, ○ Development feminism addresses everyday experiences with their own the political issue of women's rights and their children's bodies and with versus national andcultural the work of daily living. traditions. ○ Men could develop these ○ At the United Nations Fourth World characteristics, too, if they Conference on Women Forum held "mothered," but since few do, they in Beijing in 1995, the popular are much moreprevalent in women. slogan was "human rights are ○ Radical feminism claims that most women's rights and women's rights men have the potential to use are human rights." physical violence against women, ○ The Platform for Action document including rape and murder. that came out of the UN Conference ○ They point to the commonness of condemned particular cultural date rape and wife beating, of practices that are oppressive to murders of ex-wives and former women - infanticide, dowry, child girlfriends. marriage, female genital mutilation. ○ The commercial side of this systemic misogyny, or women-hating, is the Gender Resistant Feminisms way women are depicted as sex Radical Feminism objects in the mass media and as ○ Radical feminism's theoretical pieces of meat in pornography, and watchword is patriarchy, or men's the global exploitation of girls and pervasive oppression and young women in prostitution. exploitation of women, which can be ○ Even more insidious, they argue, found wherever women and men are sexual exploitation is the common in contact with each other, in private downside of romantic heterosexual as well as in public. love, which itself is oppressive to ○ It argues that patriarchy is very hard women. The threat of violence and to eradicate because its root -- the rape, radical feminism theorizes, is belief that women are different and  the way patriarchy controls all intellectual companionship and women. emotional support. ○ Solutions: The radical feminist ○ One theoretical lesbian feminism political remedies -- women-only concept is that of the lesbian consciousness-raising groups and continuum, where a lesbian can be alternative organizations -- were vital any independent, woman identified in allowing women the "breathing woman. space" to formulate important ○ This lesbian metaphor transforms theories of gender inequality, to love between women into an identity, develop women's studies programs a community, and a culture. in colleges and universities, to form ○ Lesbian imagery is not a mirror communities, and to produce opposite of men's sexuality and knowledge, culture, religion, ethics, relationships, but a new language, a and health care from a woman's new voice. point of view. ○ Lesbian feminism praises women's ○ However… sexuality and bodies, mother ○ Radical feminism's critique of daughter love, and the cultural heterosexuality and its valorization community of women, not just of mothering produced a schism sexual and emotional relationships among feminists, offending many of between women. those who were in heterosexual Psychoanalytic Feminism relationships or who didn't want ○ Freud's theory of personality children. development centers around the ○ Its praise of women's emotionality oedipus complex -- the detachment and nurturing capabilities and from the mother. condemnation of men's violent ○ Psychoanalytic feminism claims that sexuality and aggressiveness has the source of men's domination of been seen as essentialist -- rooted in women is men's unconscious deep-seated and seemingly two-sided need for women's intractable differences between two emotionality and rejection of them as global categories of people. potential castrators. Lesbian Feminism ○ Women submit to men because of ○ Lesbian feminism takes the radical their unconscious desires for feminist pessimistic view of men to emotional connectedness. These its logical conclusion. If heterosexual gendered personalities are the relationships are intrinsically outcome of the oedipus complex -- exploitative because of men's social, the separation from the mother. physical, and sexual power over ○ Why is there a need to separate? women, why bother with men at all? ○ Because women are the primary ○ Women are more loving, nurturant, parents, infants bond with them. sharing, and understanding. Men Boys, however, have to separate like having women friends to talk from their mothers and identify with about their problems with, but their fathers in order to establish women can only unburden to other their masculinity. women. ○ They develop strong ego boundaries ○ "Why not go all the way?" asked and a capacity for the independent lesbian feminism. Stop sleeping with action, objectivity, and rational the "enemy," and turn to other thinking so valued in Western women for sexual love as well as for culture.  ○ Women are a threat to their ○ The grounding for standpoint theory independence and masculine comes from Marxist and socialist sexuality. feminist theory, which applies Marx's ○ Girls continue to identify with their concept of class consciousness to mothers, and so they grow up with women, and psychoanalytic feminist fluid ego boundaries that make them theory, which describes the sensitive, empathic, emotional. gendering of the unconscious. ○ It is these qualities that make them ○ The grounding for standpoint theory potentially good mothers, and keep comes from Marxist and socialist them open to men's emotional feminist theory, which applies Marx's needs. concept of class consciousness to ○ But because the men in their lives women, and psychoanalytic feminist have developed personalities that theory, which describes the make them emotionally guarded, gendering of the unconscious. women want to have children to Standpoint feminism argues that as bond with. Thus, psychological physical and social reproducers of gendering of children is continually children -- out of bodies, emotions, reproduced. thought, and sheer physical labor -- Standpoint Feminism women are grounded in material ○ Radical, lesbian, and psychoanalytic reality in ways that men aren’t. feminist theories of women's ○ Production of knowledge: oppression converge in standpoint ○ If women produced knowledge, it feminism, which turns from would be much more in touch with resistance to confrontation with the the everyday, material world, and dominant sources of knowledge and with the connectedness among values. people. Although men could ○ The main idea among all the gender certainly do research on and about resistant feminisms is that women women, and women on men, and women's perspectives should be standpoint feminism argues that central to knowledge, culture, and women researchers are more politics, not invisible or marginal. sensitive to how women see ○ Whoever sets the agendas for problems and set priorities, and scientific research, whoever shapes therefore would be better able to the content of education, whoever design and conduct research from a chooses the symbols that permeate woman's point of view. cultural productions has hegemonic ○ It is not enough, however, to just add power. more women to research teams or ○ Standpoint feminism is a critique of even have them head them -- these mainstream science and social women have to have a feminist science, a methodology for feminist viewpoint. research, and an analysis of the Gender Revolution Feminisms power that lies in producing The 1980s and 1990s have seen the knowledge. emergence of feminist theories that attack ○ the dominant social order through ○ Simply put, standpoint feminism questioning the clearness of the categories says that women's "voices" are that comprise its hierarchies. different from men's, and they must These feminisms deconstruct the be heard if women are to challenge interlocking structures of power and hegemonic values. privilege that make one group of men  dominant, and range everyone else in a women because of a traditional complex ladder of increasing disadvantage. patriarchal culture or because they They also analyze how cultural productions, are themselves subordinated by especially in the mass media, justify and men at the top of the pyramid. normalize inequality and subordinating Men's Feminism practices. ○ Men's feminism is a burgeoning field These feminisms thus have the of study that applies feminist revolutionary potential of destabilizing the theories to the study of men and structure and values of the dominant social masculinity. Men's feminism took on order. the task called for by feminists Multi-ethnic Feminism studying women in relationship to ○ Ethnicity, religion, social class, and men -- to treat men as well as gender comprise a complex women as a gender and to scrutinize hierarchical stratification system in masculinity as carefully as femininity. which upper-class, heterosexual, ○ A prime goal has been to develop a white men and women oppress theory, not of masculinity, but of lower-class women and men of masculinities, because of the disadvantaged ethnicities and diversity among men. religions. ○ no universal masculine ○ Structurally intertwined relationships characteristics ○ It is not enough to dissect a social ○ Hegemonic masculinity institution or area of social thought ○ Who are the dominant men? from a woman's point of view; the Hegemonic or dominant men viewpoint has to include the are those who are experiences of women and men of economically successful, different ethnic groups and religions ethnically superior, and and must also take into visibly heterosexual. Yet the consideration social class and characteristics of masculinity, economic conditions. hegemonic or otherwise, are ○ The important point made by not the source of men's multi-ethnic feminism is that the gender status. subordinate group is not marked just Genders -- men's and by gender or by ethnicity or religion, women's -- are relational and but is in a social location in multiple embedded in the structure of systems of domination. the social order. The object ○ Men are as oppressed as women, of analysis is thus not but men and women of masculinity or femininity but disadvantaged groups are often their oppositional oppressed in different ways -- in the relationship. United States, Black men are Neither men nor woman can punished for their masculinity; Black be studied separately; the women seen as sexual objects or whole question of gender mothers. Thus, group consciousness inequality involves a reflects all social statuses at once. relationship of haves and ○ A woman of a disadvantaged ethnic have-nots, of dominance and group may not feel loyalty or identity subordination, of advantage with "all women." But she may also and disadvantage. feel alienated from the men of her ○ The sources of gender inequality own group, if they are oppressive to that men's feminism concentrates on  are embedded in the stratification inappropriate behavior sinful, illegal, systems of Western societies as well and insane. as in the homophobia of ○ Sexuality, in this perspective, is a heterosexual men, who construct product of learning, social pressures, their masculinity as clearly opposite and cultural values to that of homosexual men. ○ In the social construction feminist ○ Homosexuality: Because view, long-lasting change of this homosexual men do not have sexual deeply gendered social order would relationships with women -- an have to mean a conscious important marker of manhood in reordering of the gendered division Western society -- they are of labor in the family and at work, considered not-quite men. and at the same time, undermining ○ Labor force: exploitation of the the taken for-granted assumptions working class men about the capabilities of women and Social Construction Feminism men that justify the status quo. ○ In social construction feminist theory, ○ Such change is unlikely to come inequality is the core of gender itself: about unless the pervasiveness of Women and men are socially the social institution of gender and differentiated in order to justify its social construction are openly treating them unequally. challenged. ○ It focuses on the processes that ○ Social construction feminism create gender differences and also recognizes that there is always render the construction of gender change, but it is usually slow – and it invisible. may not be in the direction of gender ○ The common social processes that equality encourage us to see gender Postmodern Feminism and Queer Theory differences and to ignore ○ Post-modern feminism and queer continuums are the gendered theory go the furthest in challenging division of labor in the home that gender categories as dual, allocates child care and housework oppositional, and fixed, arguing to women; gender segregation and instead that sexuality and gender gender typing of occupations so that are shifting, fluid, multiple women and men don't do the same categories. kind of work; ○ They critique a politics based on a ○ In the social construction feminist universal category, Woman, perspective, the processes of presenting instead a more gender differentiation, approval of subversive view that undermines the accepted gendered behavior and solidity of a social order built on appearance, and disapproval of concepts of two sexes, two deviations from established norms sexualities, and two genders. are all manifestations of power and ○ Equality will come, they say, when social control. there are so many recognized ○ Religion, the law, and medicine sexes, sexualities, and genders that reinforce the boundary lines one can't be played against the between women and men and other. suppress gender variation through ○ Postmodern feminism and queer moral censure and stigmatizing, theory examine the ways societies such as labeling gender justify the beliefs about gender at any time (now and in the past) with  ideological "discourses" embedded ○ Postmodern feminism is mainly in cultural representations or "texts." concerned with deconstructing ○ For example: A romantic song about cultural productions, neglecting the the man who got away glorifies more iron-bound and controlling heterosexuality; a tragedy deploring discourses embedded in the death of a salesman glorifies the organizational, legal, religious,and traditional nuclear family political texts. ○ These discourses influence the way ○ Opposite of social contructionism we think about our world, without questioning the underlying assumptions about gender and sexuality. ○ They encourage approved-of choices about work, marriage, and having children by showing them as normal and rewarding and by showing what is disapproved of as leading to a "bad end." ○ In queer theory, gender and sexuality are "performances" -- identities or selves we create as we act and interact with other. What we wear and how we talk are signs and displays of gender and sexual orientation. ○ What we do socially creates us as women and men of a particular ethnic group, social class, occupation, religion, place of residence, even if we try to create ourselves as individuals. ○ What queer theorists often find is that gender roles are recreated in the same old way -- a transvestite passing as a woman wears a demure dress, stockings, and high-heeled shoes; a butch lesbian swaggers in men's jeans and cowboy boots. The bearded lady in a skirt still belongs in a circus, and is stared at openly on the street. ○ Genders and sexualities may be mixed up, but they are not erased. ○ In queer theory, all the emphasis is on agency, impression management, and presentation of the self in the guise and costume most likely to produce or parody conformity.