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Intercultural Literature C. Valverde Culver City High School. Women's Studies Overview. Women's Studies. An interdisciplinary academic field that explores politics, society, media, and history, from women's and/or feminist perspectives.
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Intercultural Literature C. Valverde Culver City High School Women's Studies Overview
Women's Studies An interdisciplinary academic field that explores politics, society, media, and history, from women's and/or feminist perspectives. Aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experiences. Methodologies: stand-point theory, intersectionality, multiculturalism, transnational feminism, autoethnography, critical theory, queer theory, etc.
Sexism • The systematic oppression of women on institutional, cultural, and individual levels.
Patriarchy The ideology of male supremacy that justifies male dominance and the subordination of women in all aspects of society.
The Binary The Binary: masculine and feminine roles are diametrically opposed, as opposites in a binary, and also hierarchically positioned, as superior or inferior.
misogyny Misogyny is a cultural attitude of hatred for females simply because they are female. It is manifested in many different ways, from jokes to pornography to violence to the self-contempt women may be taught to feel towards their own bodies.
misandry • The hatred or dislike of men or boys. Misandry can be manifested in numerous ways, including sexual discrimination, denigration of men, violence against men, or sexual objectification of men. • Misandry can take the form of the marginalisation of men, in which they perform the most dangerous occupations and are regarded as being disposable, men having lower life expectancy and higher suicide rates than women. It has been described as damaging to both men and women, preventing mutual respect between the sexes.
Self-objectification Ariel Levy contends that Western women who exploit their sexuality by, for example, wearing revealing clothing and engaging in lewd behavior, engage in female self-objectification, meaning they objectify themselves. While some women see such behaviour as a form of empowerment, Levy contends that it has led to greater emphasis on a physical criterion or sexualization for women's perceived self-worth, which Levy calls "raunch culture."
According to Hackman... When students say, “there is nothing you can do about it,” ... it highlights “the often complete lack of historical knowledge about the history of individual women's resistance to these constraints and the women's social change movements in this country” (Hackman 318).
According to Hackman... The struggle to dismantle sexism involves... * The need to educate men about the ways that sexism and patriarchy ravage their humanity as well as the lives of the women they care about and engage them, as men, in the struggle for change. * Women must take responsibility for the internalization of negative messages and transform these debilitating ideas into sources of power. * An effective movement to end sexist oppression of women cannot be done without examining intersecting issues of racism, classism, heterosexism, and transgender oppression, to name a few (Hackman 319).
Intersectionality The theory suggests that—and seeks to examine how—various biological, social and cultural categories such as gender, race, class, ability, sexual orientation, religion, caste, and other axes of identity interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic injustice and social inequality. Intersectionality holds that the classical conceptualizations of oppression within society, such as racism, sexism, biphobia, homophobia, transphobia, and belief-based bigotry, do not act independently of one another. Instead, these forms of oppression interrelate, creating a system of oppression that reflects the "intersection" of multiple forms of discrimination.
Gender Studies Gender Studies investigates the actual (physical and biological) gender differences between women and men, but thinks especially critical about what these differences mean in a socio-cultural context. Gender is a classifying principle in society and culture.
Gender Roles Rigid categories (and there are only two) that characterize what it means to be “feminine”and “masculine” in this society (Johnson 316). What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a woman?
Gender socialization The messages of what it means to be a man or woman are conveyed to us by every possible socializing structure in society. Ex: how to behave, what can be accomplished, what to look like, etc.
BTW, are you a guy or a girl? Why is this an important question?
Social constructions A social mechanism, phenomenon, or category created and developed by a society. An idea that is 'constructed' through cultural and social practice.
Readings cont. • Lorber, Judith (1994). “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender.
Gender • Lorber's Thesis: “Most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life. Yet gender, like culture, is a human production that depends on everyone 'doing gender.'”
Gender Construction • Begins with sex category assignment at birth based on genitalia. • Sex category becomes a gender status: naming, dress, and other gender markers. • Other: parenting, division of labor, social expectations, etc. • “These experiences produce different feelings, consciousness, relationships, skills – ways of being that we call feminine and masculine” (Lorber 321).
Gender Construction cont. • “Gender is one of the major ways that human beings organize their lives” (Lorber 322). • “Western society's values legitimate gendering by claiming that it all comes from physiology – female and male procreative differences. But gender and sex are not equivalent, and gender as a social construction does not flow automatically from genitalia and reproductive organs...” (Lorber 322). • “Whatever genes, hormones, and biological evolution contribute to human social institutions is materially as well as qualitatively transformed by social practices.... Thus, … gender cannot be equated with biological and physiological differences between human females and males. The building blocks of gender are socially constructed statuses...” (Lorber 322).
Gender Construction cont. • Individuals are born sexed but not gendered. • Individuals are taught to be masculine or feminine. • “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman...; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature... which is described as feminine” (Simone de Beauvoir)
Gender Construction cont. • “For human beings there is no essential femaleness or maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expectations” (Lorber 323). • Often justified by religion and cultural productions and backed by law. • The most powerful means of sustaining the gender order is that the “process is made invisible; any alternatives are virtually unthinkable” (Lorber 323). • Lorber's conclusion: the continuing purpose of gender as a modern social institution is to construct women as a groups to be subordinates of men as a group.
Gender Identity A person's private sense, and subjective experience, of their own gender. It's what you identify with in your mind, heart and soul.
4. Hackman believes that the study of sexism and patriarchy is as much for men as it is for women. Do you agree with her assertion? Explain.
Reflection Based on the readings, what are some examples of sexism and/or patriarchy in your own life (i.e., home, family, etc.)?
7. According to Johnson, what must we all recognize about patriarchy?
3. Hackman asks, “So, if gender roles are based on social constructions and not on nature, why does society create this dichotomy and respond so violently to those who do not adhere to it” (317)? How does she go on to answer this question?
6. According to Johnson, patriarchal culture is a “complex web of ideas...” (334). What are the various elements of patriarchy.
Heteronormativity The normalizing of heterosexuality and the pathologizing (unhealthy or abnormal) of being lesbian, gay, or bisexual.
