SOC 2112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Frantz Fanon

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 2112
• Professor: William Flynn

Document Summary

Helped launch the french women"s liberation movement. Sex refers to the biological characteristics of women and men. Sex is assigned at birth refer to: One"s biological status as either male or female. Is associated primarily with physical attributes (chromosomes, hormone prevalence, and external and internal anatomy) Gender refer to the roles and characteristics society a signed to men and women. Ones is not born but becomes a woman (the second sex) Essentialist versus constructionist approach to understanding gender. One of the slogans of 1960s feminism was biology is not destiny". Overcome the unequal social consequences of biology. There is nothing natural/biological about gender stereotypes (girls playing with barbie"s, boys playing with trucks) How do these gender characteristics help to keep women down. Maybe these characteristic aren"t as natural as we thought, and help keep everyone"s place in society. Is her attempt to explain a broad reason for sexual inequality.