Lorber Flashcards
How does gender construction start for the individual?
with assignment to a sex category on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth.
then dressed to follow norms for that sex
How do institutions / society depend on gender categories?
Human society depends on a predictable division of labor, a designated allocation of scarce goods, assigned responsibility for
children and others who cannot care for themselves, common values, etc
How does this article explain how gender is not purely physical / physiology based?
Comparing animal mating rituals, adulthood, birth etc with humans
Through the comparisons we can see we often take sex way further then animal species
What are the building blocks of gender?
socially constructed statuses
Does gender bending behaviour erode gender boundaries?
does not erode but rather preserves gender boundaries
Ex. Unfeminine women: “found it easier to pass as men than to try to change the stereotyped notions of what women should
look like”
- Getting assigned a gender and following the assumption to avoid harassment or exclusion
How does gender bending reinforce the gender binary?
When women dress as men for business reasons, they are indicating that in that situation, they want to be treated the way men are treated; when they dress as women, they want to be treated
as women
(upholding the existing systems)
Are people born with a gender?
Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be taught to be masculine or feminine
Learn their statuses
What happens when we fail to do gender appropriately?
we as individuals—(not the institutional arrangements)—may be called to account (for our character, motives, and predispositions)
In Western society it does not matter what men and women actually do; it does not even matter if they do exactly the same thing.
What actually matters about the labels “men” and “women”?
what they do is perceived as different
Even is men and women do the same tasks, how are they still being segregated?
spatially segregated to maintain gender separation, and often the tasks are given different job titles as well, such as executive secretary and administrative assistant
Explain how ‘Man’ and ‘woman’ are at once empty and overflowing categories:
Empty because they have no
ultimate, transcendental meaning.
Overflowing because even when they appear to be fixed, they still contain within them alternative, denied, or suppressed
definitions.
How do trans women (and other men) feel the effects of the gender based hierarchy?
tend to earn less after surgery if they change occupations; (So new job assumes they are women and pays them less)
Men who go into women’s fields, like nursing, have less prestige than women who go into men’s fields,
What is Janice Raymonds (radical feminist) argument on, transsexual men to women (trans women) have advantages over female women?
because they were not socialized to be subordinate or oppressed throughout life.
What is Gender as a process?
gender creates the social differences that define “woman” and “man.”
In social interaction throughout their lives, individuals learn what is expected, see
what is expected, act and react in expected ways, and thus simultaneously construct and maintain the gender order
“doing gender”
What do gendered interactions build gender into?
into the family, the work process, and other organizations and institutions, which in turn reinforce gender expectations for individuals.
How is gender part of a stratification system?
gender ranks men above women of the same race and class
In a gender stratified society, what men do is usually…
valued more highly than what women do because men do it, even when their activities are very similar or the
same.
What is the Marxist feminist explanation for gender inequality?
Demeaning women’s abilities and keeping them from learning valuable technological skills, bosses preserve them as a cheap and exploitable reserve army of labor
