SOCI 2P20 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Social Constructionism, Inside Out Music, Social Conflict
15 Nov 2013
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Document Summary
Four key forms of social constructionism for studying both gender and sexuality: historicism. Shifts in social structures such as work, family and the state. Highlight the contingency of social arrangements and identities. Meaning and organization of gender and sexuality vary over time in any given culture. Historical examinations of the construction of sex", problematize the assumed self-evidence of male" and female" as either natural" or cultural" categories. Thomas lacqueur 18th century medical illustrators vagina as inverted penis. View of two distinct sexes emerged supplanting a one sex model" with female as an inside-out variants on the male. Biological difference" then became the key site for the contestation of men"s and women"s relative social position. Lacqueur"s work illustrates how the meanings attributed to bodies have varied historically in crucially important ways. Challenge of intersex and need to assign to category. More extensive literature on the historical specificity of sexual desires and sexual identities.
