FEM 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Gender Binary, Judith Butler, Janet Mock

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: FEM 1100
• Professor: Corrie Scott

Document Summary

Fem1100 lecture 3: undoing sex and gender. Sex biological designation of male or female. Gender cultural designation of feminine or masculine. Biological determinism belief that biology determines fundamentally who we are. Essentialism reduction of group of people to essential idea of what it means to be that person; innate essential difference between men and women. Masculinity and femininity change with time and space, not fixed. One is not born a woman but becomes one (simone de beauvoir) sex does not determine gender; women not born passive, secondary or unequal, forces in external world cause this. Inequalities that women suffer in society are not due to our supposedly inferior nature, but are caused by historical processes that called upon nature" to justify that inequality. Do not accurately represent anyone, social ideas of what it means. Gender often intimately affected by other categories such as race, indignity, class. Dominant identity (straight, white, able-bodied masculinity) often perceived as world wide.