SOC 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Intersectionality, Talcott Parsons, Radical Feminism

• School: College of The Sequoias
• Department: Sociology (SOC)
• Course: SOC 001
• Professor: Bellin

Document Summary

The biological and anatomical differences distinguishing female bodies from male bodies. Not as binary a category as we might imagine! Social and cultural expectations about behavior regarded as appropriate for the members of each sex. Constructed through profound and ongoing socialization into gender roles. This learning results in the ongoing performance of gender. Not at all a binary category (gradations, switches, cis-vs. non-cis) Male and female bodies do differ, sometimes in absolute ways (e. g. , presence/absence of certain organs, certain elements of brain physiology), sometimes in relative ways (e. g. , average levels of testosterone) Gender roles (e. g. extent and type of aggressiveness, the genderedness of the division of labor) vary widely between cultures. Testosterone production may in part result from aggressiveness rather than simply spur it. Differences in sex behavior vary considerably across species. Boys wear blue, play with trucks, act tough, talk loudly, aspire to be athletes, and get called sport or champ .