HREQ 1920 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Lewis Terman, Harriet Martineau, Table Manners

• School: York University
• Department: Human Rights and Equity Studies
• Course: HREQ 1920
• Professor: Elizabeth Brule

Document Summary

Social construction of gender: a move from freudian theory. Freud"s impact on the social sciences: to measure and codify differences between males and females. Psychology: psychologists such as lewis terman and catherin cox miles attempted. Sex role theory: analyzes an individual"s socialization into appropriate gender roles and identities. As a result of these tests, gender identity came to be associated with a particular set of attitudes, traits and behaviours that could be then used as an indicator homosexuality. Had 455 questions used to determine what your gender was. If you came up as neutral, you were known as androgenus; you had both male and female characteristics. Gender referred to the social characteristics of masculinity and femininity and were variable, whereas sex was related to our biological sex and was believed to be more fixed. This division between sex and gender formed the framework for much of the early work on the social construction of gender.