MDSA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Alison Bechdel, Masculinity
MDSA01
Lecture 8 – June 5, 2018
Feminist and Queer Analysis
Gender and Sexuality
Gender, sexuality, and representation are at the heart of BOTH feminist and queer analysis
Whose stories are told—and how those stories are told—inform how we understand gender and
sexuality
Stereotypes and norms limit the range of “acceptable” expressions of gender and sexuality
These stereotypes and norms are often used against those who do not conform, helping to justify
bullying, violence, rejection, mockery, and—ultimately—inequality
Traditional Notions of Sex and Gender
Gender
oGender = Social, Cultural, Psychological
“The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural
differences rather than biological ones)”
This definition is NO LONGER SUFFICIENT
Fluid, variable, dependent on expression rather than (or along with) physicality
A continuum, rather than a binary
Sex
oSex = Biological
“Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other
living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions”
This definition is NO LONGER SUFFICIENT
Determined by the presence or absence of specific reproductive, scientific basis
Bill Nye on Sexuality and Gender Spectrum
“It’s new to me but it’s changing. As a scientist…”
Simon Baron-Cohen
Fellow of the British Academy and Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of
Cambridge
He argues that, broadly speaking, “The female brain is predominantly wired for empathy. The male
brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems”
Is it simply the product of social conditioning?
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
oBaron-Cohen argues that NO—that exposure to different levels of hormones in the womb can
influence the brain and subsequent behaviour.
Lise Eliot
Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Chicago Medical School of Rosalind Franklin University of
Medicine and Science (?)
Elliot argues that assertions of innate sex differences in the brain are either “blatantly false,” “cherry-
picked from single studies,” or “extrapolated from rodent research” without being confirmed in people
Gender and Performativity
Judith Butler
oGender, rather than a coherent component of identity incorporated through socialization, is in
fact a bodily performance of discourse that exists only because people believe it is significant
oGender only exists because people act (perform) as gendered beings
oActions that are supposedly the output of an inner quality called “gender” are in fact the only
force that constitutes any conception of gender in the first place
oGender is not an objective natural thing: Gender reality is performative which means, quite
simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed
oGender is not tied to material bodily facts but is solely and completely a social construction, a
fiction, one that, therefore, is open to change and contestation
Note, not not-real, not unreal
Gender as a social construction
- Open to change and contestation:
"Because there is neither an 'essence' that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to
which gender aspires; because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender creates the idea of
gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. Gender is, thus, a construction that
regularly conceals its genesis" ("Performative" 273).
For Butler, gender has no relation to essential "truths" about the body, but is strictly ideological
Gender has a history that exists beyond the subject who enacts those conventions:
“The act that one does, the act that one performs, is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one
arrived on the scene. Hence, gender is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives the
particular actors who make use of it, but which requires individual actors in order to be actualized and
reproduced as reality once again. (272)
Repetition of mundane gendered acts (the way we walk, talk, gesticulate, etc.) maintains the hegemony of
heteronormative standards and the power it entails.
Encoding Gender:
Baby Boys vs Baby Girls
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Gender, sexuality, and representation are at the heart of both feminist and queer analysis. Whose stories are told and how those stories are told inform how we understand gender and sexuality. Stereotypes and norms limit the range of acceptable expressions of gender and sexuality. These stereotypes and norms are often used against those who do not conform, helping to justify bullying, violence, rejection, mockery, and ultimately inequality. Gender: gender = social, cultural, psychological. The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones) . Fluid, variable, dependent on expression rather than (or along with) physicality. Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions . Determined by the presence or absence of specific reproductive, scientific basis. Bill nye on sexuality and gender spectrum.
