SOCI 2P20 Lecture 1: Sociological Study of Sex, Gender & Sexuality Sept. 12, 2013
Brief History
- Earlier focus on behaviours considered deviant (outside of the norm)
o E.g. homosexuality; coping mechanisms of discredited and discreditable sexual beings;
and sexual underworlds – hustlers, prostitutes, prisons, tearooms, baths, and bars
- Influence of broader social and political contexts of 1960s and 1970s
o Civil rights movements
o Women’s liberation
o Anti-war and peace movements
o Sexual liberation
- Influence of broader social and political contexts of 1970s-1980s
o Sexual discrimination awareness
o Gay liberation movements
o Rise of AIDS and activism
o Corporate influence
o Consumerist growth
- Continuing backdrop of biological essentialism vs. social constructionism
o Biology is destiny; before culture and sets limits on effects; sexual preference = sexual
orientation, a biological mechanism
o Social constructionism – individual is filled and shaped by culture and society
o ‘nature’ vs. ‘nurture’ debate
- Essentialism: “prioritizes a biological explanation for sexuality and hence limits its definition of
sexuality to the individual expression of human desire and pleasure” (Blackwell Encyclopedia of
Sociology)
Sex, Gender & Power
- Basic critiques of essentialism-biological determinism
o Ignores sexual hierarchies and stratification
o Ignores role of all social institutions in the regulation of norms
o Sex as not always procreative
- Pro: intersex; political arguments -> have to do with the rise of feminism
- Social Constructionism: “prioritizes the relationships between the individual and society…
meaning [of] sexuality is embedded in specific historical, political, and social practices …
culturally and socially diverse ways in which sexual desires, practices, identities, and attitudes
are conceptualized, categorized, [acted out] and regulated through social institutions and
practices” (Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
Socialization and Implications
- Process through which the individual takes on ways of:
o Thinking
o Seeing SOCI 2P20 Lecture 1: Sociological Study of Sex, Gender & Sexuality Sept. 12, 2013
o Believing
o Behaving
- … that prevail within society one is born into
Attitudes toward sex?
- Argument that North America is not
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