SWMS 210mgw Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Cisgender, David Reimer, Adrienne Rich
Document Summary
Describing gender as a social construction is one way of helping to help answer the question what is gender . Gender as an effect of biological sex. Gender as a social role determined by biological reproduction. Meaning these conceptions of gender tend to naturalize gender, to render it relatively fixed and immutable. Men and women seem to make different choices. Women are 4x more likely to major in education, while men are 5x more likely in engineering; women choose dance and choir men choose cand and sports as extracurricular activities. Meaning gender is not fixed, but it does follow highly stable patterns of practice. Varies in different social situations, context and individuals,etc. Gender rules are instructions for hot to appear to behave as a [proper] man or woman the social construction of gender re-stated in the form of an instruction. Vary in different cultural contexts, including subcultural contexts within a large culture (cross and intra-cultural variation)
