CUL120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Heterosexuality, Biopower, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• School: Macquarie University
• Department: Critical and Cultural Studies
• Course: CUL120
• Professor: All

Document Summary

Cul120: men + women as polar opposites, had different roles to play endowed different characteristics, had (biologically determined) characteristics suits to different social roles, scientific discourse. Always a matter of not just being different, but different and better. Mod 1: what is culture/cultural studies: c19th: women are inferior, science told me. Seeing that the average brain-weight of women is about five ounces less than of men, on merely anatomical grounds we should be prepared to expect a marked inferiority of intellectual power in the former. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver charlotte perkins gilman. Difference + inequality: justification of inequality in the c18th/19th, gender + race inequality explained by biological essentialism. The source" of gender difference (according to humanism) About: genitalia, reproductive organs, chromosomes, hormones, brains, try and use to body to explain gender differences, in this way, gender roles become natural", when culture becomes naturalised.