01:920:101 Lecture 8: Social Construction of Gender & Sexuality Intro
Document Summary
Gender: taken for granted, social structure, doing gender. We rei(cid:374)for(cid:272)e ge(cid:374)der roles (cid:271)(cid:455) (cid:862)poli(cid:272)i(cid:374)g(cid:863) the(cid:373) Gender and sex: sex is biological. Beha(cid:448)ior, ho(cid:449)e(cid:448)er, is(cid:374)"t deter(cid:373)i(cid:374)ed (cid:271)(cid:455) (cid:455)our chromosomes: gender is social behavior/attributes. How we think men/women behave or should behave: often associated w/ biological attributes, gender is something learned not inherent. Gender socialization: process by which individuals learn culturally-accepted behavior, parental descriptions of newborns. Where gender socialization begins: ex) mothers usually reward and reinforce passivity and dependency in girls and reward actions and independence in boys. (usually do this unconsciously) Gender as an institution: organizes social interactions, life experience leads to personality, feelings, motivation, and ambitions, members of different groups have different experiences and then become different. Gender as a process: processes create the social difference that define men and women, we actively produce and maintain gender through interaction, gender norms are enforced. Some norms continually change with time and are therefore not biological, but enforced.
