FEM 2110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Judith Butler, Margaret Mead, Gender Binary

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Women's Studies
• Course: FEM 2110
• Professor: Lori Stinson

Document Summary

Indigenous men and masculinities: unlike western cultures, indigenous women held political, economic and social power like men. Margaret mead: different culture expectations for men & women exist in different cultures, cultural expectations change with time and space. The inequalities that women suffer in society are not due to out supposedly inferior nature, but are caused by historical processes that called upon nature to justify that inequality. Dominant identities are often perceived as generic, simply human, universal and unmarked and marginalized identities are often perceived as particular, specific and as only of interest of that particular group. One of the ways the dominance functions is that the dominant groups avoid being examined. Judith butler argued that gender precedes sex: gender influences how we see and understand biological sex. We are so socially conditioned to see men and women as different, that it influences that way that we understand and describe biology.