WVCS223 - The Construction of Gender and Race - Week 1 PDF

CO P YR IG H T © 2 022 E DIT ION WVCS223 – THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER AND RACE - WEEK 1 C REATED BY: PRO F. C H AN TELLE GR AY A N D D R AÏD A TER BLAN CH É-G R EEFF DESCRIPTION OF CONTENT In the first study unit you learnt what social constructs are. You may ha...

CO P YR IG H T © 2 022 E DIT ION WVCS223 – THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER AND RACE - WEEK 1 C REATED BY: PRO F. C H AN TELLE GR AY A N D D R AÏD A TER BLAN CH É-G R EEFF DESCRIPTION OF CONTENT In the first study unit you learnt what social constructs are. You may have noticed that they are often conceived of negatively – and rightly so – because many of them have caused harm in the world. But social constructs can be useful too; they did, after all, emerge from shared experiences and from the desire to collectively produce meaning in order to foster communal understanding and values. Arts and crafts are good examples of more useful constructs because they enable societies to share and communicate something about their common interests and acquired skills. Having said that, we also know that crafts became viewed as less valuable than art for quite a long time, in part due to the industrial revolution, but also because crafts were associated with ‘women’s work’ and with products created by non-Western cultures. Although much work has been done to debunk the arbitrary division between arts and crafts, this example illustrates how easily a social construct can be transformed into something useful or harmful – which itself depends on many factors, such as socio-economic and political arrangements in the world. In this study unit, we take a closer look at the social constructs of gender and race – some of the most dominant social constructs in our societies. In particular, we look at the creation of the gender binary and the inclusionary-exclusionary mechanisms it uses to reinforce certain gendered norms. These norms are used, in turn, to police gendered expressions, behaviour and expectations. We also look at the construction of race and the fact that it does not exists as a scientifically verifiable category (because it does not have predictable characteristics – even if you share physical features with other people which you associate with race, such as skin colour or hair, those are superficial and change across generations). More importantly, none of these so-called ‘racial’ characteristics give you any information about inferiority or superiority. Yet they are deeply linked to our perceptions of racial identity and the enactment of racial discrimination. It will be part of our task, then, to understand how and why gender and race were constructed and how we can decode them in order to change their harmful applications. Study Section 2.1. The Social Construction of Gender During the first week of Study Unit 2, we learn about how and why the category of gender was constructed. In particular, we look at the creation of the gender binary – that is, MAN vs WOMAN. We also study the inclusionary-exclusionary mechanisms it uses to reinforce certain gendered norms, for example, the idea that blue is for boys and pink is for girls. By decoding some of these arbitrary assumptions, we can better understand how the gender binary is used to police gendered expressions, behaviour and expectations. Study Section 2.2. The Social Construction of Race and Racism During this week, we look at the concepts of race and racism, tracing the historical reasons for their creation, chief amongst which are economic reasons. But, as we will see, the creation of racial categories and perceptions linked to these are not enough to sustain racial ideologies. For this to occur, race and racism have to become institutional or structural, meaning racial hierarchies need to become codified by laws and accepted by social institutions so that these hierarchies become reinforced and normalised. We may think here, for example, of the geographical segregation – in other words, planned geography – during Apartheid. This is why the National Museum of African American History & Culture (Smithsonian, n.d.) argue that: “Racism = Racial Prejudice (Unfounded Beliefs + Irrational Fear) + Institutional Power.” Our aim in this part of the study unit will thus be to recognise that racism is not grounded in the objective observation of something called race, and that our perceptions of race can be traced historically as the product of a complex confluence of factors driven by forced economic relationships. By understanding the history of racism, we are in a better position to decode this social construction and the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways in which it continues to reproduce itself through our language and actions. LEARNING OUTCOMES On completion of this study unit, students should: 1. have a fundamental knowledge base of the social constructions of gender and race, and be able to demonstrate a critical understanding thereof; 2. be able to analyse and evaluate how gender and race function in natural and social systems, and how they are upheld by prejudice and institutional power; and 3. be in a position to articulate their personal understandings of the social constructs of gender and race, as well as argue for achievable solutions to these core issues of our time in a typical academic manner. KEY CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS STUDY SECTION 2.1. THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER What do you think of when you hear the word binary? Do you think of 1s and 0s (as in binary code)? Do you think of gender because you’ve heard someone talk about the gender binary? Do you know what the gender binary is? Before working through the rest of this study section, take a moment to watch the following video: THE ORIGIN OF GENDER (ORIGIN OF EVERYTHING, 2019) One of the things you may have noticed in this video is the idea that gender is not biologically determined but stems, rather, from cultural conditioning. To unpack what this means, it helps to go back a step and distinguish between sex and gender. Commonly, sex refers to the physical differences in hormones, chromosomes and genitals between male, female and intersex bodies. According to these variations, you are assigned a sex at birth, though even these seemingly ‘simple’ physical attributes are rarely homogenous – for instance no two men have exactly the same mixture of hormones, nor do their genitals look the same! This is further complicated by intersex persons whose reproductive and sexual anatomy does not fit either the ‘male’ or ‘female’ box. So even thinking about sex as something that is easily verifiable is false. Nevertheless, it remains less contested than gender which refers to the socially created expectations and behaviours related to the sexes. For example, women are generally thought to be more nurturing than men, whereas men are expected to be protectors. It is true that our conceptions of gender have changed a lot over the past decade or two and most people would agree that gender is not biologically determined, meaning gender is not genetically preordained. Similarly, most people would agree that gender roles and expectations are culturally conditioned, which basically means that they are learnt from parents, at school and from religions, and reinforced via laws, norms and other kinds of rewards or punishments – whether implicit or explicit. Be this as it may, many people still think there are only two genders, MAN and WOMAN. This, despite the fact that many societies did not conceive of gender this way historically. “On nearly every continent, and for all of recorded history, thriving cultures have recognized, revered, and integrated more than two genders” (Independent Lens, 2015). The following interactive map has many examples you can read about: A MAP OF GENDER-DIVERSE CULTURES (INDEPENDENT LENS, 2015) So why did the gender binary become the dominant conception of gender? As with race, which we discuss in the following section, the history of gender can be traced, at least in part, to colonisation and economic expansion. Prior to colonisation, many indigenous cultures valued other genders, but colonial missionaries erased many of these cultural ideas by “banning cultural rituals and enforcing strict cis-hetero standards” (Chen, 2021). With the later industrial revolution, these standards became further entrenched. In Women, Race, and Class, Angela Davis argues that one of the effects of industrialisation was that by the 1830s, “many of women’s traditional economic tasks were being taken over by the factory system”, and although it is true that many women “were freed from some of their old oppressive jobs”, the industrialisation of the economy also eroded “women’s prestige in the home – a prestige based on their previously productive and absolutely essential domestic labor” (Davis, 1981). As a result, their status diminished – so an “ideological consequence of industrial capitalism was the shaping of a more rigorous notion of female inferiority” (Davis, 1981). In turn, this entrenched the gender binary, now firmly rooted in notions of ender essentialism, or the idea that genders have some innate, universal and objective characteristics or essences. Over time, these essentialist notions became culturally accepted as idealised norms and standards that continue to shape our thought and behaviour. Can you think of other consequences the gender binary had on how societies are shaped? The following terms should give you a good clue: heteronormativity, compulsory heterosexuality, hegemonic masculinity. Try to write down what you understand these terms to mean before reading further. The term heteronormativity was coined in 1991 by Michael Warner to “describe the idea that heterosexuality is the default, and therefore superior, expression of sexuality” (Gillespie, 2021). This does not, of course, mean that heteronormativity only started existing from that time – it only means we found an adequate term to describe it. If we had to define heteronormativity, we could say that it “describes the ways in which heterosexuality is normalized through myriad practices, so that it becomes naturalized as the only legitimate form of sexuality” which regulates behaviour in spaces ranging from the home to “work, social space, and public space” (Bell, 2009:387). Heteronormativity is, as you may have surmised, grounded in the gender binary – and this is precisely what makes it harmful because by definition it “excludes LGBTQ+ people” and reinforces homophobia, so much so that it often “underlies discrimination and violence against LGBTQIA people because it views them as ‘abnormal’ and/or erases them” (Gillespie, 2021). Heteronormativity, in other words, induces compulsory heterosexuality, or “the assumption by a male-dominated society that the only normal sexual relationship is between a man and a woman” (Napikoski, 2019), with the result that all other kinds of relationships are viewed ‘abnormal’ or ‘deviant’. (LGBTQIA stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or questioning), intersex and asexual (or ally). Sometimes this is written as LGBTQ+ to include people who identify as pansexual and two-spirit. It should be quite clear by now that the gender binary and heteronormativity has had (and continues to have!) especially dire consequences for women and LGBTQI+ persons. But while it benefited, and continues to benefit men – especially white, cisgender men – it is also harmful to them in many ways. (Cisgender refers to when a person’s gender matches their sex, for example if a person is born with a stereotypically ‘male’ body and also identifies as a man, that person is cisgender.) Watch the following video on hegemonic masculinity: PROFESSOR RAEWYN CONNELL (ENGAGINGMEN, 2010) Write down what you understand by the term hegemonic masculinity and why it is harmful not only for women and LGBTQI+ persons, but also for men. The concept of hegemonic masculinity emerged in the mid-1980s to refer to the power structures and patterns “of practice (i.e., things done, not just a set of role expectations or an identity) that allowed men’s dominance over women to continue” (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005:832). Hegemonic masculinity is thus “distinguished from other masculinities, especially subordinated masculinities” – which does not mean that hegemonic masculinity is necessarily enacted by the majority of men – it can be enacted by a minority, but the point is that it is normative and thus requires “all other men to position themselves in relation to it” (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005:832). In other words, like heteronormativity and compulsory heterosexuality, hegemonic masculinity is a complex system of oppression because it is based on hierarchies of violence. Because it assumes that there is a certain standard type of masculinity that all other men have to conform to, it places limitations on a person’s gender identity and gender expression. Watch the following video on gender identity: U N D E R S T A N D I N G G E N D E R I D E N T IT Y ( O A S I S M E N T A L H E A L T H A P P L IC A T IO N S , 2 0 2 0 ) You will have noticed that gender identity refers to each person’s individual experience of gender. In other words, it pertains to your internal sense of being a woman, a man, neither or both. Your gender identity does not necessarily have to be the same as the sex that was assigned to you at birth. You may, therefore, identify as cisgender, trans or transgender, gender nonconforming, genderfluid or any other gender identity of your choice. Now watch the following video on gender expression: WHAT IS GENDER EXPRESSION? (THE ADVOCATE, 2018) After watching this video, you should understand gender expression as the way in which a person chooses to publicly present (or express) their gender. This can include the way your dress, speak, behave and so on.