ANTHRCUL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Gender Role, Biological Determinism, Orgasm

• School: U of M
• Department: Anthropology, Cultural
• Course: ANTHRCUL 101
• Professor: Holly Peters- Golden

Document Summary

Sex is biological; gender is social and cultural. Sex refers to the biological structures of men and women internally and externally. Gender is a consolation of things you do; is determined by the things we do. Sex is a category that is fixed while gender is fluid; however this is not that simple. Gender: qualities that are culturally constructed, defined and elaborated. Sometimes described as performative meaning the things we do define our gender. Sex is fixed; gender is fluid (however this is not always true) When a man"s chest was turned into breasts using silicon, the man"s breast was uncensored but censored when they were seen as a woman"s breast. Children are born into their sex according to how society constructs those categories. Knowing someone"s sex does not allows you to determine his or her gender role. Without knowing much more about the culture, we cannot determine the gender role based sole on sex.