SOC367H1 Lecture 2: SOC367 LEC2
Document Summary
According to joan scott (1986), gender means knowledge about sexual differences. Such knowledge is not absolute or true but always relative. Its uses and meanings become contested politically and are the means by which relationships of power - domination and subordination- are constructed. Identified in relation to men and the culture around them. It follows then that gender is the social organization of sexual differences. Understandings of this is co-constructed with biology and culture. Gender is the knowledge that establishes meaning for bodily differences. These meanings vary across culture, social groups and time. Just bc it exists in culture, it doesn"t mean its found in nature. The key question is how hierarchies of gender are constructed or legitimated. The emphasis on how suggests a study of processes, not of origins, of multiple rather than single causes. Of rhetoric or discourse rather than ideology or consciousness. Gender is based on what the culture says it is.
