SOC100H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7-8: Performativity, Symbolic Interactionism, Queer Theory
Chapter 7 (Pg. 210-219) & Chapter 8 (Pg. 246-252) (266-280)
Chapter 7, Pg. 210-219
STARTING OFF… SINGLE CHINESE WOMEN “UNWANTED” AFTER 27.
- Women over 30s refers to “sheng nu”
oOften value career success above their personal lives”
oSocial medias have been set up in order to help matching single men and women
oFor educated, career-oriented women, remaining single may be a viable option but the fear of disappointing
expectant parent drives them to pursue marriage
Ex. The Garden of Joy plays on this fear to draw customers (single club that match single men and women)
INTRODUCTION: HAVE MEN BECOME THE “SECOND SEX”?
- Focus on gender and sexual relationship
- In many ethnic background boy values more than girl
- The relationship between men and women have changed so much in today’s society
oEx: Canadian women are more likely than men to graduate from university
o“men’s work” are gradually disappeared
*this chapter the topic of gender relations, exploring whether men and women are equal today
- consider gender as it related to sexuality
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEX ROLES AND GENDER ROLES
- society divide roles and statuses according to sex
ocan be biological basis, women can bear offspring
lead to widespread social roles of men acting as protectors and breadwinners while women serve as
procreators and caregivers
- the roles of men and women may vary from one society to another
owestern society men can often become caregiver
fertility rate decline women are increasingly able to engage in public life
- SEX biological characteristics that make a person male or female
oAssigned at birth
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oCan only be changed through surgery and hormone therapy
- GENDER socially expected behaviors that people describe as masculine or feminine
oA product of social construction
oCan change for an individual over time
- Social context plays in shaping human sexuality the pressure that society puts on people to mate in traditional ways with
people of a different sex, roughly same age and similar background
SEXISM AND GENDER INEQUALITY
- Even today, sexism still exit in our society
- Young women should they strive for stable, self-supporting employment or look for motherhood
- Young men no choice, there remains the expectation that they must earn a living
*even today, men and women are encouraged to think and behave differently
- sexualized image in social media influence people’s expectation of diff roles
JUDITH BUTLER:
- center the idea that gender is not innate but is derived from a narrative heavily influenced by the cultural practice of
patriarchy, or male dominance
- Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) aims to separate identity from the notion that human gender is binary, that people are
either categorically male or female, with no room for variance or middle ground
- Explain gender identity in terms of performativity a person’s gender is continually performed, not given as a fact, and that
this performance shapes an individual’s sexuality
- Queer theory people’s identities are not fixed and do not determine who they are propose that sexuality and sex itself
are socially constructed
- Gender does not cause performance, but performance defines gender
WAYS OF LOOKING AT GENDER AND SEXUALITY
FUNCTIONALISM:
- Social gendering is universal and inevitable: the most effective and efficient way to carry out the tasks necessary to
reproduction and socialization and material support
- The gendering of social roles may even have evolutionary survival value for the human race
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- Social relations are structured in order to allow societies to survive equality and individual rights do not play an important
role
- Question arises whether the supposed benefits of gender differentiation can be achieved without this gendering
- View certain sexual activities considered deviant acknowledges the positive social value of these behavior, even though
people may view them negatively
oEx: prostitution
Test the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior help promote social cohesion
Valuable and desire from functionalist perspective
CONFLICT THEORY
- Recognizes that capitalism demands the low-cost social reproduction of a workforce from one generation to the next
- Families are the best and cheapest way to raise new workers, and women provide the cheapest family “labor”
- Marxist both men and women are equal victims of the capitalism class
- The theory of patriarchy men are the main and universal cause of women’s oppression
- Standpoint theory cautions that we cannot universalize about oppression
- Some women may oppress other women (INTERSECTIONALITY)
- Ex: prostitution Permits men to gain pleasure from women
oUsually a result of poverty
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
- Concerned with the ways that gender differences become stable gender inequality
- Want to understand how the sexual double standard (women will feel or behave differently from men in sexual matters)
- Interested in the social construction of gendered concepts like “feminity” and “masculinity”
- Involve cross-national and cross-cultural comparison
- Hegemonic masculinity (the dominant or ideal masculine role)
- Traditional gender role is unstable and in transition not all men take part in the masculine role nor are women
- Sexual script the notion of feminity and masculinity are related to sexual norms and values
- Ex: Prostitution focus on the socialization of prostitutes, their entry into this line of work, and how they develop strategies
to deal with johns and pimps
- Symbolic interactionism frames the social problems surrounding sexual activity as social construction
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