ANTHRO 128B Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Heterosexuality, Takers, Xyy Syndrome
How do we define male and female?
What are the limitations and dangers of genetic ancestry tests?
Differences are learned
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Feminists in the 1970s/80s embraced the term "gender" in order to decouple biology from
behavioral differences between sexes
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Gender differences were constructed within specific cultural and historical contexts in different
ways
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Gendered differences are not uniform but situationally produced and interactionally accomplished
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Gender was also used to speak about sexuality in ways that did not assume or enforce
heterosexuality
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Sex to Gender
Gender = socially constructed (nurture)
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Sex = nature; concern of biologists
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Some feminists began to challenge this culture-nature division
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Humans attribute meanings through complex interactions
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Biological knowledge itself was gendered
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Nature is read differently depending on the differential positions of its human readers
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Gender/sex division?
Chromosomes? (XX, XY, XXY, XYY, X)
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Hormones? (testosterone, estrogen)
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External genitalia?
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Internal genitalia?
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Gonads? (testes, ovaries)
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Secondary characteristics? (hair patterns, fat deposits, pitch of voice)?
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Identity? (what you say you are)?
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Physicians, psychiatrists, parents, courts, prison officials, and IOC have taken positions of
human sex determination
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Social scientists, feminists, queers, gay rights, intersexual/transsexuals have entered debate
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Who decides?
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Biological categories and classifications are not natural, value free, or benign
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What defines sex?
Many activists contest medical definition of sex
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Fujimara found that geneticists did not question the assumption that testes indicate males and
ovaries indicate females
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Some transsexuals say that possessing testes/ovaries do not determine sex identities
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Intersexual activists use existence of phenotypic features as evidence that sex is not a male-female
dichotomy
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Set up experiments defining sex as a binary
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Researchers chose "normal" sex = males or females who can heterosexually reproduce;
"pathological" would be anything else
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Also found that geneticists used their own definitions of what constituted normal/pathological sex
to design their investigations
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Defining sex in genetic research
2/26/18
Monday, February 26, 2018
10:55 AM
February 26 Page 1
Document Summary
Feminists in the 1970s/80s embraced the term gender in order to decouple biology from behavioral differences between sexes. Gender differences were constructed within specific cultural and historical contexts in different ways. Gendered differences are not uniform but situationally produced and interactionally accomplished. Gender was also used to speak about sexuality in ways that did not assume or enforce heterosexuality. Physicians, psychiatrists, parents, courts, prison officials, and ioc have taken positions of human sex determination. Social scientists, feminists, queers, gay rights, intersexual/transsexuals have entered debate. Biological categories and classifications are not natural, value free, or benign. Fujimara found that geneticists did not question the assumption that testes indicate males and ovaries indicate females. Some transsexuals say that possessing testes/ovaries do not determine sex identities. Intersexual activists use existence of phenotypic features as evidence that sex is not a male-female dichotomy. Also found that geneticists used their own definitions of what constituted normal/pathological sex to design their investigations.
