ANTHRO 33 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Performativity, Stereotype, Markedness
Document Summary
Gender = what someone socially identifies as. The sex=biology and gender=culture dichotomy is not that simple. Gender is built upon a set of culturally and historically specific practices that amplify, simply, and give meaning to perceived or actual biological differences. We can"t understand how we are doing gender without looking at how we are using language. Gender is learned: children are consciously/unconsciously socialized into a gender, differs across cultures. Individuals engage in activities that are learned in groups: self-regulated, work in groups to do gender. Gender is not something we have, but something we do: performativity, continuously reinforcing (or breaking away) from gender, gender requires work. If not continuously performed, worked on, then those aspects of gender identity can fade. Gender involves asymmetry: can"t talk a(cid:271)out gender without talking a(cid:271)out power and hierar(cid:272)hy. he being used as one (referring to a generic person, male or female) More convergence than divergence in the way that men and women talk.
