SOCI 375 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Gender Binary, Dualism, Transphobia

• School: Concordia University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 375
• Professor: yaelglick

Document Summary

Our categories of sex and gender are socially driven, rather than scientifically driven, because biologically, bodies are not always made as complete men or complete women. Individuals can, and are, born with more than one set/ambiguous genitalia, indicating that biologically, there are not only men and women but people who are both, and neither. Furthermore, the concepts surrounding masculinity, femininity, and what establishes a body as feminine or masculine were created through cultural discourse, by individuals, as forms of limiting what people could and could not do. Doctors and scientists will operate on intersex bodies to reinforce the gender binary, which exists to maintain ideas about sexual and gender norms. These categories, based on the notion of essentialism, were created as means of social control by individuals who hold the power of discourse (white and heterosexual, typically males).