WMGS 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Secondary Sex Characteristic, International Association Of Athletics Federations, Caster Semenya
30 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
The social (and historical) construction of sexed bodies. Feminists helped to popularize and spread the knowledge that sex and gender are different. Our fate in the world is not determined by biology, but gender. What cre- ates inequality in the world is ideas of gender. Anti-feminists said biology is your destiny; the sex you are born with determines your life. Since the biology of each is different, it creates restraints on women. Since women have uteri, their destiny is to have children. But sex is a social construct too. Social construct: an idea or notion that appears to be natural and obvious to people who accept it, but may not represent reality, an invention or artifice of a given society. Particular beliefs about things are shaped by social forces. Saying that something is a social construct doesn"t make it any less real! Voice men typically have deeper voices, women softer and high pitched. Bone structure women typically smaller build.
