Sex, Sexuality and Gender : Basic Concepts

1. Sex, Sexuality and Gender: Basic Concepts From Advancing Sexuality Studies: a short course on sexuality theory and research methodologies

2. Schedule

3. Moduleaims • To: • Introduce and critique biologically determinist understandings of sex, gender and sexuality • Introduce Critical Sexuality Studies definitions of sex, sexuality and gender and examine the history of the construction of sexuality • Examine the interrelationship between sex, sexuality and gender through consideration of heteronormativity and sexual/gendered inequity 3

4. Participantswill: • Critique biologically determinist constructions of sex and sexuality • Identify key theorists and concepts in the study of sexual inequality • Think critically about the interrelationship between sex, sexuality and gender • Reflect on the effects of normative constructions of sex, sexuality and gender as these are relevant to their own sociocultural and research settings

5. Session 1. Challenging biological determinism and defining sex, sexuality and gender

6. Group work • Divide into two groups • Group 1 • List differences between women and men and consider: • On what are these perceived differences based? (e.g. biological, social, cultural or religious beliefs) • Group 2 • List similarities between women and men and consider: • On what are the perceived similarities based? (e.g. biological, social, cultural or religious beliefs) (10 mins) • Feedback(10 mins)

7. Discussion • All participants to consider together: • What are the effects of highlighting differences rather than similarities between men and women? • To what extent do assumptions about biologically determined sex differences between women and men influence popular culture, sayings or beliefs in your cultural setting? (10 mins)

8. Biological determinism, sex and sexuality • Biologically determinist theories of various kinds reduce social organisation and social complexity to an effect of biology or nature • Biological determinists include sociobiologists, some geneticists, psychologists and ‘pop psychology’ writers • Complex, socially embedded behaviours have all been explained as an effect of evolutionary reproductive strategies

9. In the biologically determinist school of thought: • Biological facts of sex constitute natural differences between men and women • Heterosexuality is a natural outcome of this sex difference due to the drive to reproduce the species • Key assumption driving biological determinism: • The primary function and goal of all human sexual activity is the reproduction of the species • Humans have sex because we must reproduce • Homosexuality becomes explained as ‘unnatural’ genetic deviation

10. ‘The gay gene’ • Geneticists search for a ‘gay gene’ to prove there is a biological basis for, and explanation of, male homosexuality • Small differences found between the post-mortem brains of heterosexual and homosexual young men (LeVay, 1991) • Research on pairs of homosexual brothers found that some had similar markers on the X chromosome, indicating a genetic basis for sexuality (Hamer et al. 1993) • LeVay’s work proved difficult to replicate • Hamer et al.’s work refuted

11. Challenging determinism • If reproductive differences between the sexes naturally drive individual behaviour, why do we need social institutions that police and set moral guidelines for sexual behaviour? • The family, religion, government, the military… • The research evidence for many biologically determinist claims simply does not hold up • Sex ‘difference’ research may be popular, but it masks a great deal of evidence for sex similarities • Differences often context-specific

12. Despite continuing interest in a genetic basis for sexuality, no gay or heterosexual gene yet found • Most sex is not reproductive • Human sexuality more complicated than ‘survival of the species’ or of one’s gene pool • ‘Biological drive’ arguments are political • Often used to resist social change and legitimate an unequal, gendered and sexualised social order • Institutionalised power relations

13. Definitions • Write down your own definitions of the terms sex, sexuality, and gender (5 mins) • Compare your definitions with those of the person next to you (5 mins) • Each pair to report back to whole group (10 mins) • Brief group discussion (10 mins)

14. Complexities of sex & gender • Is there a difference? Yes, on one level • Sex is biological – male, female, also intersex (reproductive differences based on genitalia, chromosomes, hormones) • Also refers to sexual acts, as in ‘having sex’ • Gender is ‘the structure of social relations that centres on the reproductive arena, and the set of practices that bring reproductive distinctions into social processes’ (Connell 2002: 10) • Gender underlies assumptions regarding ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ behaviour

15. Hijra in India Caster Semenya, South African athlete A ‘Tom’ in Thailand • Sex and gender often considered in binary pairs: • Male or female • Masculine or feminine • Binary challenged by intersex, transgender or third gender people

16. Temptation to make an absolute distinction between sex and gender: • ‘Nature vs nurture’ or ‘essentialism vs social constructionism’ • Understanding of the sexed body as ‘natural’ can sustain social inequity between men and women • Butler (1990) argued that gender determines sex • Sex is not ‘natural’ but a social construction • Knowledge systems used to describe and reinforce sex differences already gendered by the language used to express ideas about the body

17. Cannot neatly separate the sexed body from the gendered body • Mutually constituted through sociocultural processes • Biological science is a social construction, expressed through language which is gendered and value-laden • In Critical Sexuality Studies, the ‘natural’ body is political

18. ‘Bodies cannot be understood as just the objects of social process…they are active participants in social process... • They participate through their capacities, development and needs … through the direction set by their pleasures and skills. • Bodies must be seen as sharing social agency.’ • (Connell 2002: 40)

19. Discussion • Bodies have physical capacities and limitations • These influence how bodies can be socially experienced or intervened with • In Critical Sexuality Studies: • Sex, sexuality and gender necessarily involve various dimensions of bodily and social capacities and phenomena • These will be expressed differently in different sociocultural settings • Discussion (5 mins)

20. What is ‘sexuality’? Quite a new term Came into English, French and German usage at the end of the 18th century Usually meant reproduction through sexual activity among plants and animals Used in relation to love and sex matters in European discourse in the 1830s What does it mean according to the dictionary? Depends on which dictionary you read Macquarie (1981): The definition or recognising of sexual matters

21. Three intertwining strands of sexuality: • Sexual desire or attraction • To whom (or in some cases what) someone is attracted (physically and emotionally) • Sexual activity or behaviour • What a person does or likes to do sexually (intercourse, masturbation, oral sex, sexual fetishes) • Sexual identity • How someone describes their sense of self as a sexual being (e.g. heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, homosexual) • No clear boundaries!

22. I am suggesting that what we define as ‘sexuality’ is an historical construction, which brings together a host of different biological and mental possibilities, and cultural forms − gender identity, bodily differences, reproductive capacities, needs, desires, fantasies, erotic practices, institutions and values − which need not be linked together and in other cultures have not been. (Weeks 2003: 7)

23. Are these images of sex, sexuality or gender? • What would we need to know in order to make sense of this question? (5 mins + 10 mins feedback)

24. Session summary • Review the notes made at the start of the session on definitions of sex, sexuality and gender and consider: • To what extent do they equate with working definitions so far? (5 mins) • Final questions or comments about this session?

25. Session 2.Heteronormativity and sexual stratification

26. Like gender, sexuality is political. It is organised into systems of power, which reward and encourage some individuals and activities, while punishing and suppressing others. Gayle Rubin (1984: 309)

27. Lecture • Heteronormativity … the institutions, structures of understanding and practical orientations that make heterosexuality seem not only coherent—that is, organized as a sexuality—but also privileged. (Berlant and Warner (2000: 312) • Maintained and perpetuated by social institutions • e.g. media, education, law, family, religion, healthcare systems • usually through exclusion and marginalisation

28. Brainstorm • Can you think of examples of heteronormative assumptions that dominate within your cultures? (5 mins) • Theories of sexual stratification:Adrienne Rich and Gayle Rubin • Offer opportunities for reconfiguring heteronormativity

29. Adrienne Rich • ‘Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence’ (1980) • Women’s Liberation era theorist and poet whose work was influential in the development of lesbian and gay studies • Heterosexuality is not a natural outcome of sex difference • It is a social institution maintained by a series of inducements and punishments for women • Key question: ‘What social forces stop women from expressing their sexual and emotional attraction to other women?’

30. Inducements & punishments

31. Group work • Divide into groups • Using the handout supplied on Rich’s work re: inducements and punishments, consider the following focus questions: • Is this model of inducements and punishments still relevant and appropriate in the 21st century? If not, can it be rewritten? • Is it relevant in and appropriate to your cultural setting? If not, can it be rewritten? • Can this table be rewritten to apply to men? (10 mins) • Feedback (10 mins)

32. Gayle Rubin • Thinking Sex (1984) • Hierarchies of sexual value • People and practices high in the hierarchy rewarded with a range of benefits, those low in the hierarchy punished and vilified • Heterosexual couples who are married, monogamous and of the same generation accrue more benefits than those who are not married and/or who engage in more marginalised sexual practices • What is more important: • The sexual categories people fit into and the kinds of sex they have, or • Democratic sexual morality: how people treat each other, their level of mutual consideration and the presence or absence of harm and coercion?

33. Rubin’s ‘charmed circle’ • Form small groups • Read the handout provided, and share your understandings (5 mins) • Discuss Rubin’s diagram in relation to the sexual cultures, identities and practices relevant or currently topical in your own communities • Can you redraw the model to fit your local setting? (15 mins) • Feedback (10 mins)

34. Charmed circle: summary • Diagram not intended to be a fixed representation of how heteronormativity works at all times, in all places • The inner circle boundary line can shift over time, and from place-to-place, for instance: • Polygamy was once legal in the US but not now; legal in other countries • Homosexuality never illegal in French colonies but criminalised by the British in all of its colonies • Intergenerational sex between males permitted in Ancient Greece but illegal in Greece now • Whoever controls the boundary determines what is normal and abnormal, and controls the system of rewards and punishment

35. Session 3.Either: Understanding sexuality as historically and socially constructed or: Transgender identities in cross-cultural context

36. Session 3, Option 1.Understanding sexuality as historically and socially constructed

37. Guided reading • Read Weeks, J., The invention of sexuality (2003) (30 mins) • Focus questions: • What does the title mean, in relation to the idea that sexuality has a history? • What are the cross-cultural similarities, and cross-cultural differences, identified by Weeks in the social organisation of sexuality? • Discuss in small groups, and consider: • Can you add case studies of your own to support the argument that sexuality is historically and culturally constructed?(20 mins) • Feedback (30 mins)

38. Session 3, Option 2.Transgender issues in cross-cultural perspective

39. Guided reading • Read Sinnott M. (2008) Romancing the queer • Or • Nanda, S.([1985] 2007) The Hijras of India: cultural and individual dimensions of an institutionalized third gender role (30 mins)

40. Focus questions (30 mins reading, 20 mins discussion, 30 mins feedback) • Nanda ([1985] 2007): • How would you describe ‘Hijra’ to someone who did not know? • How does Hijra equate to Western categories ‘eunuch’ or ‘transgender’? • What challenges do Hijra present for biological determinists? • What aspects of Indian culture enable the Hijra to have some status within Indian societies? Sinnott (2008): • What is meant by the terms ‘gay’, ‘Kathoey’, ‘Tom’ and ‘Dee’? • What differences does Sinnott identify between Thai and English-language sexuality/gender assumptions? • What does this indicate about heteronormativity in Thai and English-speaking cultures? • Do the categories Tom and Dee reinforce and/or challenge Thaiheteronormativity?

41. Conclusion • In Critical Sexuality Studies, human sexuality is understood as: • Diverse • Dynamic and • Deeply inventive • The field challenges fixed notions of sex, gender and sexuality • It grounds the interrelationship between these concepts in specific social, historical, cultural contexts

42. Critical Sexuality Studies challenges the notion that sex and sexuality are biologically determined, but: • This does not mean the body or biological limitations/capacities are irrelevant • Sex, sexuality and gender invariably linked to power relations—institutional and interpersonal—and to systems of regulation and reward • Heteronormativity exists across the world, but takes variable forms

43. Personal reflection In pairs: discuss the aspect of the module that you personally found to be the most thought-provoking (5 mins) Individually: note down any ways in which this module might influence future work you undertake (5 mins) In pairs: discuss your notes on the possible future influence of the module on your work (10 mins) Reflection sharing (10 mins)

44. Module created by: • Dr Deb Dempsey, Swinburne University of Technology and Mr William Leonard, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society • Supporting material from Professor Gary W. Dowsett, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society • Short course developed by: • The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia • and • The International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS) • With funding from The Ford Foundation • Available under an Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike licence from Creative Commons