Part 1 Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 and Part 2 Chapters 7 and 8 Flashcards
(42 cards)
What is symbolic interactionism?
The idea that we relate to each other through language and meanings
What does Judith Butler discuss?
She discusses the idea that gender is a performance and that everyone chooses how they are going to present themselves
What is Agnes’ sex categorization?
She claims herself to be categorized as female
What is Agnes’ gender?
Agnes identifies as a woman and therefore has over-performed her gender as a consequence of being a transexual women
What is Agnes’ sex?
Agnes is biologically male though she regards herself as a female, albeit a female with a penis, insisting that it was a “mistake” in need of a remedy
What is gender understood to be?
Gender is understood to be the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sext categories. It is essentially a performance of one’s role within society as man or women
Can we avoid doing gender?
It is impossible to avoid doing gender as participants within a society hold each other accountable for their performance of gender through interaction and relations
What are the feminine disorders that women are victims of?
Historically speaking it was neurasthenia (a condition characterized by lassitude, fatigue, headache, and irritability) as well as hysteria in the second half of the 19th century. In the 20th century it is agoraphobia, anorexia nervosa and bulimia.
What do these illnesses that women have experienced over the decades demonstrate?
They demonstrate the changing expectations of womanly behaviour both on a symbolic and physical level
How can the physical transformation of the body through these feminine disorders demonstrate a protest of gender roles?
Agoraphobia: protest against wifey duties
Anorexia: protest against the ideal female figure by essentially destroying the body
Histeria: protest against womanly behaviour
What does Foucault argue about gender and sexuality?
He tells us of the primacy of practice over belief as through the organization and regulation of the time, space, and movements of our daily lives are our bodies trained, shaped, and impressed with the stamp of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity, and femininity
What does Bordo argue about the embodied distress that constraints the female gender in different ways?
She demonstrates through a historical explanation of the psychosomatic illnesses experience by women such as hysteria, agoraphobia, and anorexia that these conditions are not just medical or psychiatric afflictions but are symptoms of gender power relations that pressure women to remain subdued, voiceless, and childlike. Retreating into a private indoor space or starving oneself may seem like an excessive form of conformity to these pressures but Bordo argues that the agoraphobic or anorexic woman is also using her body as a form of protest, drawing attention to the destructive impact of patriarchy, whether she deliberately intends to do so or not.
What are the male virtues?
Self-mastery and control
How do the male virtues affect the woman in society?
They affect the woman by way of encouraging her to participate in practices of “self-mastery” and “control” by way of going to the gym, dieting, etc. Anorexia is an example of male virtues influencing the woman as, if she will have no control over anything within a patriarchal society, she will have control over her body
What is the feminine praxis?
The feminine praxis is essentially the practice of being a woman within society. It is the “trained, shaped, obeys, responds,” socially adapted “useful body”. It is what the woman does in order to fit into the roles and regulations that the female gender applies to the notion of the feminine body.
How are sex roles standardized?
Sex roles are standardized by way of categorizing the roles of sex through arbitrary, static notions of gender
Doe the male sex role exist?
It does not as it is impossible to isolate a “role” that constructs masculinity or another that constructs femininity because there is no are of social life that is not the arena of sexual differentiation and gender relations, the notion of a sex role necessarily simplifies and abstracts to an impossible degree
How can we understand masculinity?
We first need to understand that it is not simply a biologistic or subjective but rather men’s involvement in the social relations that constitute the gender order. Masculinity is a pattern of social relations where men are seen to be in power and women are not
How is the subordination of women by men achieved?
Women are subordinated by men within the contemporary capitalist world as men are advantaged by the subordination of women, allowing them to have power over a whole group
What is the differentiation of masculinities?
It is psychological as in it bears on the kind of people that men are and become, but is not only psychological. Through the imposition of a particular definition on other kinds of masculinity is part of a hegemonic masculinity that is imposed on society as a whole. It reify’s human behaviour into a “condition” and therefore legitimates and reproduces the social relationships that generate their dominance.
When did intersectionality emerge?
It emerged in the early twenty-first century
What is the interpersonal domain of power?
The intersectionality of varying combinations of class, gender, race, sexuality and citizenship categories differentially positions each individual and so, regardless of the love of soccer, these axes of social division work together and influence one another to shape each individual biography. Therefore the interpersonal domain of power is the power of relationships
What is the disciplinary domain of power?
It is how different people find themselves encountering different treatment regarding which rules apply to them and how those rules will be implemented.
What is the cultural domain of power?
The cultural domain of power is essentially the knowledge that is passed down from those who have power within a given culture to those who do not. It is the ability to define and create knowledge that keeps those in power in power and those who do not have power to continue to have none