chapter 8 Flashcards
(32 cards)
agender
people who do not have a gender preference and are more comfortable somewhere in-between (a 5 on our scale of 1-10) might refer to themselves as agender or non-binary.
alyha
Historically, the Mohave people had a two-spirit gender role known as the alyha. The alyha were biological males who took on many aspects of the female gender role. An alyha took a female name, referred to his genitalia with the terms used for female genitalia, and married men. They were not considered to be either women or homosexual. In a sense, they were considered to be superwomen, individuals who were particularly skilled in performing stereotypical female duties.
The alyha also imitated female reproductive behaviors. They would scratch their thighs to produce the illusion of menstruation, simulate pregnancy by inserting rags into their shirts and undergoing the food taboos of pregnancy, and mimic giving birth. An alyha did not engage in these behaviors in order to deceive others regarding a pregnancy, but rather to imitate aspects of being female. The alyha were also considered highly effective healers. In addition to alyha, the Mohave had a fourth gender category called hwame, who were females who adopted aspects of the male gender role. However, little is known about this role except that they married women, and like the alyha were believed to have special spiritual powers to heal the sick.
androgyne
In humans, male testes produce androgens, the dominant male hormone, while female ovaries produce estrogens and progesterone. Both men and women produce androgens and estrogens, but the ratios differ. Men, on average, produce about ten times as much testosterone as women do, and men have a degree of daily fluctuation in hormonal patterns, while women’s hormonal levels vary, roughly, over a monthly cyclical pattern. Hormone patterns are also age related. Production of sex hormones escalates for men and women in puberty, leading to the full development of secondary sex characteristics. As men and women age, their sex hormone levels decline.
One’s sex is not just determined by the XX or XY karyotype, but also by hormone ratios. Both males and females have both androgens and estrogens, but androgens predominate in males and estrogens predominate in females. Changes in hormone ratios can also result in an intersex person, such as someone who has Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS).
Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome occurs with individuals who have a male karyotype (XY) but develop as females because their bodies cannot absorb androgens from their mother’s bloodstream. The X chromosome is responsible for recognition and response to male hormones (the androgens), while the Y chromosome is responsible for the increased production of male hormones and also inhibits the development of female gonads. Individuals with AIS have a defect in their X chromosome so that they are not able to respond well to androgens. Depending on the severity of the condition, they may have either male genitalia, female genitalia, or ambiguous genitalia, but they have testes rather than ovaries and a uterus. In extreme forms of the condition, XY males are identified as females at birth, raised as females, and develop as females in outward appearance, including breast and hip development. In these cases, the condition is only discovered in late adolescence when they seek medical attention because they have not started to menstruate. Female intersex individuals have an XX karyotype, develop female internal reproductive organs, but have ambiguous external genitalia, and may develop male secondary sex characteristics (such as hair pattern, deepened voice, etc.) because their mothers produced excessive androgens when pregnant.
asexual
Some people do not feel sexual attraction (asexual)
bisexual
while others may be attracted to both men and women (bisexual)
cisgender
The term cisgender and cissexual refer to individuals whose gender identity matches his or her sex at birth. McGee for example, identifies as a cisgendered male, heterosexual.
cross dresser
cultural construction of gender roles
In Mead’s Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, she examined the cultural construction of gender roles by comparing three separate cultures in the Highlands of New Guinea. In her study, Mead attempted to determine whether masculinity and femininity could be attributed to biology (the dominant theory of her day) or to cultural conditioning. In her study, Mead found that among one group, the Arapesh, both men and women displayed traits that Americans would consider feminine. Mead described both men and women as being nurturing, cooperative, non-aggressive, and maternal. Among the second group, the Mundugumor (now Biwat), Mead found that both men and women displayed traits that would be considered more stereotypically masculine in our culture, and she characterized them as being violent and aggressive. She was so disturbed by the behavior of some adults that she thought members of the Mundugumor culture should not have children. In a third group, the Tchambuli (now known as the Chambri), Mead argued that compared to our society, this group displayed a reversal of roles. Men tended to be more emotional and dependent in their relationships while the women took a more impersonal attitude and were thought to be more logical. Additionally, Tchambuli women left home to work, leaving children in the care of men who Mead described as spending their days primping and decorating themselves. From these findings, she argued that sex roles are a product of cultural teaching rather than being based on a person’s biology.
Culture and personality school
A development in the study of socialization that arose principally in the United States in the 1930s. The theory combined elements of psychology, anthropology, and sociology, but principally involved the application of psychoanalytic principles to ethnographic material.
Mead was a member of the Culture and Personality school of thought in anthropology. Followers of this perspective were interested in understanding both how personality varied from culture to culture, and, following Sigmund Freud, the extent to which childhood experience determined personality. Mead’s research in particular, addressed questions of personality and gender roles. Her controversial findings—notably that sex roles were culturally rather than biologically determined—influenced a generation of American sociologists to reexamine their cultural assumptions about the roles of men and women in society.
french structuralism
Her theory drew from the work of the French anthropologist, Claude Lévi Strauss, founder of the school of thought in anthropology known as French Structuralism
Lévi-Strauss saw cultural variation as a difference of number and arrangement, like, to use a favorite analogy, various melodies composed from a determinate number of keys. He studied the variations to generate the laws of transformation that formed the essential cultural grammar and indicated universal innate structures of mind. The ultimate goal was l’attitude totalisante, the awareness of complex social structure as determined by “unconscious reason.”
Gender
Varies considerably from culture to culture
genderfluid
People who present themselves as men or women in different circumstances are referred to as gender fluid or pan-gender,
Guevedoche
Cornell University researchers studied a similar situation in two villages in the Dominican Republic that had an unusually high rate of an androgen insufficiency disorder called 5 alpha-reductase deficiency. As children, genetic males appeared female, but at puberty, their physical appearance tended to masculinize. Most “switched” their gender identity after adolescence and assumed a male gender role. The condition is locally referred to as guevedoche or huevos a los doce, literally “eggs at twelve,” which is a euphemism meaning testicles at age twelve. People with these conditions provide an interesting study of the differing effects of gender socialization and biological sex. Some choose to live their lives as men, some chose to live as women, while others may refuse to be forced into the male-female pattern choosing instead to be gender fluid.
hijras
A hijra is most commonly a boy who as he grows up does not or cannot fulfill typical Hindu male gender roles. All members of the Hindu faith have ritual responsibilities called dharma, through which they can achieve spiritual merit. One dharma path is to devote one’s life to the worship of a Hindu deity, much like a Catholic monk or nun. Hijra is one such path. A hijra typically lives in a community with other hijras and devotes their life to the worship of Bahuchara Mata, an aspect of the Hindu mother goddess. As you can see in the accompanying photograph, these individuals dress like women, wear their hair in long braids, and adorn themselves like women. To become a full-fledged member of a hijra community, an individual must undergo the ritual removal of their genitalia which is done without anesthetic or follow-up medical care. This surgery is a rite of passage and represents a type of rebirth into the third gender, after which they are considered neither male nor female. In fact, if you encounter a hijra on the street and ask them about their gender identity they might tell you they are not women because they do not menstruate or bear children, but they are also not men because they have no male genitalia which they might illustrate by pulling up their sari to show you. The social structure of the hijras falls outside the Indian caste system (discussed in Chapter 6). They often live together in households headed by a guru-mother and her disciple-daughters. The hijras have ancient roots in Indian society. The classical Hindu text, the Rig Veda describes a time before the creation of the world when no distinctions existed between men and women. The hijras are believed to have the ritual power to curse or bless children, and are often invited to weddings and birth ceremonies where they bless the people attending, tell risqué jokes, and perform burlesque satires of women.
homosexuality
Some people are sexually attracted to members of the same sex (homosexual)
intersex
Cultures vary in their response to people who are intersex. For example, in India and among many Native American groups, intersex people are widely accepted. In the United States and other parts of the Western world, intersexuality has historically been viewed as a medical disorder to be concealed. With the advent of medical advances that allowed sex reassignment surgery, parents of intersex children were at one time encouraged to have their children undergo reconstructive surgery to make genitalia “normal,” which typically meant reducing genitalia to appear female. According to a 2017 report by InterACT and Human Rights Watch there are still uneven standards of care for young intersex children, but there is pressure to change and an increasing number of surgeons today will no longer perform sex reassignment surgery until a child is old enough to make the decision for themselves. Additionally, intersex individuals have formed a variety of support organizations such as the Intersex Society of North America to raise awareness of sexual variation and to discourage surgical alteration of their natural anatomy.
klinefelter syndrome
Klinefelter syndrome involves an XXY chromosomal variant. The syndrome occurs about once in every 500 live births. Individuals with Klinefelter syndrome seem to develop as normal males until puberty. At puberty, these individuals who had previously followed a typical male pattern of development have a degree of breast development, their testes do not fully develop, and they are infertile. They also tend to be taller, more prone to osteoporosis, and more prone to learning disabilities than average males.
mahu
The Tahitian term mahu literally means, half-man/half woman. These are individuals who display attributes of both masculine and feminine culture norms, and are considered a third gender category. Mahu are shown in the video clip The Third Sex Tahiti, but the video also introduces people called raerae who are transgender or transsexual. While sexual behavior is less important than the gender role one presents in public, sex with raerae is considered a homosexual activity, while mahu are not considered homosexuals.
male privilege
When societies are organized in such a way that women are disadvantaged it is called male privileging. American men are privileged over women in a variety of ways. For example, women do not have access to public space the same way that men do. As a man, McGee can go just about anywhere he wants, anytime he wants. He walks across campus at night without a second thought or any fear for his safety. This is not true of women who worry about the threat of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Women think about where they are going and when they are going in terms of their safety. To illustrate this point, in his class with over 300 students, McGee asks the men what precautions they take when they walk across campus or dark parking lots at night. No men respond except to say they don’t even think about taking safety precautions walking home at night. However, when McGee asks the women in the class the same question 200 hands go up, and the men in the class get to hear all the different ways that women prepare to defend themselves when just walking home from the library or returning to their cars after their shift at work. Further, McGee asks the men how many have had someone make sexually suggestive comments to them as they walked down the street or have had a stranger on a bus or in a bar grab their buttocks or genitals or feel their breasts. Again, no men respond. But when McGee asks the women in the class how many of them have had strangers make sexual comments or touch them without permission virtually every woman in the class raises her hand. Often, the men in the class are so surprised they have trouble believing it. We criticize people in the Middle East for what we view as their gender bias, but in the United States women can’t walk down the street without being sexually harassed. Imagine what it must be like to be the constant target of sexual comments, comments about your looks or unwanted touching and lewd stares. Imagine going to work knowing the men in your workplace are paid more than you are. This is the world in which women in the United States live (It is true that men can be sexually harassed and assaulted too, but in the United States women are overwhelmingly victimized in this way.).
nadleeh
Navajo gender categories include women, men and nádleeh. According to Wesley Thomas, a nádleeh mixes the behaviors and activities of both females and males so there are female-bodied nádleeh and male-bodied nádleeh, which Thomas refers to as “womanly males” and “manly females” (1997:160). As with the Mohave, the Navajo nádleeh took on aspects of the gender role of the opposite sex, and they are also considered to have special spiritual powers. While many Navajo today have adopted the Euro-American concepts of gay and lesbian and do not identify with their historical gender tradition, it is still the case that Navajo view the appropriateness of sexual relationships primarily through one’s gender identity. For example, the relationship between a female bodied nádleeh and a woman (in other words, a biological female who has adopted male gender roles and a woman) is not considered a homosexual relationship. However, a relationship between two women, two female-bodied nádleeh, two men or two male-bodied nádleeh, is a homosexual relationship which is not approved of in Navajo society.
pangender
People who present themselves as men or women in different circumstances are referred to as gender fluid or pan-gender,
pansexual
while others are pansexual, that is attracted to people of any sex or gender identity.
raerae
people called raerae who are transgender or transsexual. While sexual behavior is less important than the gender role one presents in public, sex with raerae is considered a homosexual activity, while mahu are not considered homosexuals.
secondary sex charcteristics
The primary sex characteristics are determined during embryonic development. A second critical period in sexual development occurs during puberty, where hormone ratios are largely responsible for the development of what are called secondary sex characteristics. For young women, changes include breast enlargement, their hips widen, they develop pubic and underarm hair, and their body fat increases in their hips, thighs, and stomach. Young men’s testes and penises enlarge, their voices deepen, they develop pubic, facial, and other body hair, muscle mass increases, and they generally grow taller than women.
In humans, male testes produce androgens, the dominant male hormone, while female ovaries produce estrogens and progesterone. Both men and women produce androgens and estrogens, but the ratios differ. Men, on average, produce about ten times as much testosterone as women do, and men have a degree of daily fluctuation in hormonal patterns, while women’s hormonal levels vary, roughly, over a monthly cyclical pattern. Hormone patterns are also age related. Production of sex hormones escalates for men and women in puberty, leading to the full development of secondary sex characteristics. As men and women age, their sex hormone levels decline.
