SY210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Social Inequality, Gay Liberation, Raewyn Connell
Document Summary
The social construction of __ in western culture: commonly encountered view: biological sex is a given but gender is socially constructed. In fact, easy to demonstrate that historically notions of "biological sex" have been shaped by prevailing ideas about gender (i. e. that biological sex also "socially constructed") Late 1700s: transition from "one sex" model to "two sex" model. That the existence of two sexes, with fundamental anatomical and mental differences between them, is a recent notion would appear at first sight to be counter-intuitive. Same way they justified racial inequality, pointed to religion and tradition: but by late 1700s, early 1800s, both justifications were undermined by science. The transition to the "two sex model" now recognized as critical shift in european thinking. Laqueur"s legacy has been most enduring among modern historians of sex and the body for whom the transition from the one- to two-sex model serves as a sort of creation myth for binary ideas about sex difference.
