Women's Studies 1021F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Gayle Rubin, Postcolonialism, Queer Theory
23 Nov 2016
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Interdisciplinary encounter between feminism, critical theory, queer theory, sociology, postcolonial studies and cultural studies. How are we able to construct our sexuality through social phenomena: language, institutions, binary thought, the sex/gender system. Sex is the anatomy, body we are born into biologically. Physiological and is anchored in responses of the body. For the human mind sex is always more than a bodily response. Sex is filtered and is attached to many layers of meaning: through taboos, laws, prohibitions, gender construction, models of masculinity and femininity, class, economics, etc. We never encounter the body unmediated by the meanings that cultures give to it (rubin, Sexuality helps us understand how sex has a history & geography. Sex will signify differently in different historical periods and in different cultures. (david m halperin, is there a history of sexuality" lesbian and gay studies reader, Sexuality brings what we think of as the private domain of sex into the public domain of politics.
