Lecture 3 - The Concept of Gender Flashcards
How is gender defined in social life?
Gender is one of the principles on which social life is organized, giving meaning to social relationships and structures.
What was the traditional assumption about gender differences?
It was assumed that gender differences were “natural” and based on a biological matrix.
How do social sciences contribute to understanding gender differences?
They investigate the social and cultural causes of gender differences, showing that biological explanations alone are insufficient.
What is “depth psychology”?
A branch of psychology that postulates the presence of the unconscious and argues that unconscious mechanisms play a key role in human behaviors.
Which psychologists contributed to understanding gender through depth psychology?
Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan.
How did depth psychology change perspectives on gender?
It challenged the idea that gender characteristics were fixed and invariable, showing they are constructed through lifelong psychic processes.
what position did the perspective of depth psychology overturn
Perspective overturns the positions according to which the characteristics of the sexes were fixed and invariable
What was Mathilde Vaerting’s main argument in “The Dominant Sex”?
She and Mathias Vaerting argued that male and female traits are not immutable but instead reflect power relations rooted in social structures.
What was the first general theory on gender proposed by Vaerting?
It focused on different spheres of gender domination, including the division of labor, law, and ideology.
How did Vaerting’s work challenge traditional gender norms?
She argued that what we define as “masculine” or “feminine” is culturally determined. In some societies where women were dominant, they exhibited traditionally “masculine” traits and customs.
What is Simone de Beauvoir’s famous quote about gender?
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
What does De Beauvoir argue about gender differences?
Gender differences are not natural but the result of cultural and social conditioning.
How does society construct women, according to De Beauvoir?
Women are constructed as the “Other” by men, and society places the male perspective at the center, making men the absolute reference point while women define themselves in relation to men.
This vision justifies her hierarchical relationship with the feminine
What did De Beauvoir propose for women’s liberation?
Women must affirm themselves and embrace the “path of transcendence”—modifying and creating the world according to their own will rather than starting from men’s perspectives.
what did Simone de Beauvoir launch
She launched one off the most powerful political criticisms of female subordination
Who was Robert Stoller, and what was his contribution to gender studies?
Stoller was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who studied gender identity development and sexual arousal.
What distinction did Stoller make between sex and gender?
Sex: Biological differences between males and females.
Gender: A set of cultural expectations attributed to men and women.
What is the essentialist approach to gender?
It suggests that gender differences are innate and biologically determined.
How did the feminist movement of the 1970s challenge this view?
Feminist groups, particularly “difference feminism,” reflected on patriarchy, sexism, and the need for female subjectivity in discourse.
What was the core idea of difference feminism?
Women must claim their own difference and create a discourse where they are the subject rather than speaking through the language of the “Other”
According to difference feminism, in the history of civilization, man has been the only subject of discourse: female subjectivity has always been forced to speak about itself through the language of the Other
How did Luce Irigaray contribute to difference feminism?
She made a radical critique of “phallogocentrism,” arguing that the Western philosophical tradition prioritizes male-centered thought.
the idea behind their thinking is that valorizing the feminine, which can and must achieve equality only in its difference from the masculine
Taking up Simone De Beauvoir’s contribution, difference feminist places the problem of…
Taking up Simone De Beauvoir’s contribution, they placed the problem of the difference of the female subject at the center of their reflections
Who is Gayle Rubin, and what is she known for?
Rubin is a U.S. cultural anthropologist and sex-positive feminist theorist who introduced the concept of the “sex/gender system.”
How does Rubin define the sex/gender system?
“The set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied.”
