Theories of Sexuality and Gender Professor Gregory Tomso Department of English and World Languages

1. Theories of Sexuality and Gender Professor Gregory Tomso Department of English and World Languages

2. Q:Why do we need to spend an entire class studying sexuality and gender?

3. A:Congressman Todd Akin! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKa5CY-KOHc&feature=related

4. “Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.” NOT TRUE 180,481 people in Missouri voted for this guy in 2012

5. Legitimate Rape? If there’s legitimate rape, then there must be illegitimate rape, right? So what is “illegitimate rape?”

6. “I forced her to have sex with me against her will, your honor, but it wasn’t rape because her eyes were saying yes even though her lips were saying no.” Taylor Ferrara: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg_4O6XmKAQ&feature=related

7. This “legitimate” v. “illegitimate” rape business sounds an awful lot like dunking witches, doesn’t it? If she floats, she’s a witch---so kill her! If she sinks, she’s innocent—but now she’s dead, alas! Either way, she’s dead!

8. The same idiotic logic applies to legitimate v. illegitimate rape . . . If he forced her to have sex, and she didn’t get pregnant, it might have been rape, but we don’t really know. If he forced her to have sex, and she did get pregnant, she must have enjoyed it, so it clearly wasn’t rape. Either way she’s been raped, and she’s also been F*^%*D!

9. Secret female sperm radar? Divine knowledge? Kantian faculty that knows good sperm from bad? Teeth? Hormones?

10. A few conclusions: Akin’s comment suggests that “the female body” is a wondrous thing that works in mysterious “ways.” His vagueness romanticizes female sexuality and physiology, making it at once fascinating, inscrutable—and deadly. He makes it seems as if women’s bodies are simply too complex for us to understand. This is a form of misogyny akin to men’s belief in hysteria—the mysterious “wondering womb”—and to the mythology of the “vagina dentata”—the vagina with teeth. His comment also indirectly posits that “the female body” possesses some sort of innate mechanism (divine, mental, or otherwise) that can tell good from bad, right from wrong, loving sperm from evil sperm. The idea that women are innately moral (i.e., “the angel of the home”) is an old Victorian stereotype. His remark about “legitimate rape” also suggests that the “truth” of rape can be found in women’s bodies, not their words. His comment implies that women “ask for rape” nonverbally even if they say “no” and that “the female body” may operate independently of a woman’s will or intention. In both cases, a woman’s words and thoughts are subordinated to her biology. The implication here is that women, despite what they might think, say, or know, are ultimately not in control of their own bodies—and that men know what is best. By attributing his understanding of “the female body” to “doctors,” Akin uses science to justify his own stance on abortion, an extremely political and ideological issue. Science has long been used to justify violence against women and sexual minorities on the basis of their supposedly inferior, defective, complicated, or dangerous bodies.

11. Sex/Sexuality • Our common assumption is that sex is a natural and immutable. We habitually speak of members of “the opposite sex.” • Yet “sex” refers both to acts and to categories of people, i.e. biological males and females. • Biological sex implies a seemingly natural sexuality: males are attracted to females; females are attracted to males. Modern humans believe we posses an innate quality called “sexuality” that defines who we are. • For some humans, biological sex is not a clear indicator of sexual attraction or gender expression. • Drag, intersex, transgender, transsex, sissies, tomboys, gays and lesbians, etc.

12. Gender • What we habitually call “gender” today might be more accurately referred to as biological sex. • When a questionnaire asks, “What is your gender,” the choices are normally “male” or “female,” not “masculine or feminine.” • Gender is more clearly defined as the social, cultural or political expression of one’s biological sex • there can be masculine women and feminine men

13. Jeffrey Weeks (1945 - ) Executive Dean of Arts and Human Sciences at London South Bank University Sexuality and its Discontents ( 1985) Sex, Politics and Society (1989) Coming Out (1977)

14. Sexuality • An abstract noun that refers to the quality of “being sexual” (Weeks 4) • Developed its modern meaning in the second half of the nineteenth century • Designates “personalized sexual feelings that distinguish one person from another” (Weeks 4) • “My Sexuality” • This modern understanding and experience of sexuality may be more mythical than real. • Sex and Gender theorists argue agree that there is no “mysterious essence” of sexuality that resides in each of us. • The separation of humans into “heterosexuals” and “homosexuals” is a modern development that begin in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is one of the most curious, distinctive and powerful developments in the history of modern life.

15. Essentialism • The belief that human sexuality and gender are unchanging, universal “essences” that reside in all humans. • Upholds popular beliefs in “hard-wired” sexual orientations: hetero and homo. • “I’m gay because I was born this way.” • “Homosexuality is a sin. It says so in the bible.” • Affirms absolute differences between genders/sexes • “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” • “Unmanly” or “Unwomanly” behavior • Grounded in appeals to god or nature • Espoused by conservatives and liberals alike • That behavior is “unnatural” • Nature made me this way, therefore I’m happy and healthy. • Neither of the above claims interrogates the thing (masculinity, homosexuality, etc.) that is being condemned or defended

16. Critique of Essentialism • Reductionist: “reduces the complexities of the world to the imagined simplicities of its constituent units” (Weeks 7) • Everything has to fit into pre-determined categories • You become a statistic, a mark made in a box on a questionnaire • Deterministic: “seeks to explain individuals as automatic products of inner propulsions, whether of the genes, the instinct, the hormones, or the mysterious workings of the dynamic unconscious” (Weeks 7) • No room for personal choice or for what sex and gender theorists call agency • Agency is the capacity of individuals to think critically and make choices • It is not the same thing as the Protestant notion of “free will” • Agency is always constrained by social contexts and historically-specific knowledges • Weeks argues that sexual essentialism rests on a “naturalistic fallacy,” i.e., an erroneous assumption that “the key to our sex lies somewhere in the recesses of ‘Nature’” (6).

17. Biological Determinism • A particularly seductive form of essentialism that draws on the legitimacy of science to re-inscribe cultural norms of gender, sex and sexuality • Generally operates through: • Argument by analogy: it happens in rats, so it must happen in humans • “Tyranny of Averages”: averages tend to be ready as moral norms and absolutes • The “black hole” hypothesis: we haven’t found that gay gene yet, but we know its out there, somewhere. • Genetic and evolutionary arguments can be “deeply conservative” (Weeks 47). • Example: Some argue that homosexuality is a form of social altruism that has been naturally selected over time. • Yet, this theory can never account for the complexity of gay and lesbian subcultures and the vast range of erotic and sexual practices that we call homosexual. • Genetics and the new evolutionism “deny human agency and creativity in favour of a hypothetical evolutionary metahistory” (Weeks 49).

18. So what is an alternative to essentialism and biological determinsm?

19. Constructionism • Sex, sexuality and gender are the products of social arrangements, historical events, and discursive/linguistic categories. • Constructionism is not relativism, or the idea that “anything goes” (Weeks 9); nor is constructionism opposed to the cultivation of political and ethical values; thus, it is not nihilism.

20. TheSocial Production of Sex and Sexuality • Kinship • Definitions of families change over time and across cultures • Family structures affect sexual practices by regulating marriage, legal age of consent, object choice, etc. • “Gay marriage” is a key example of changing family definitions today • Economic and Social Organization • Labor, migration, colonization, slavery, epidemics, new technologies all affect sex and sexuality • The global pandemic of HIV/AIDS is a primary example of how changing economic and social conditions influence our understandings of sex and sexuality

21. The Social Production of Sex and Sexuality • Social Regulation • Churches, families are traditional regulators of sex • Governments, doctors, employers are also regulators • Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts • WE are all regulators of sex. • Political Interventions • Rise of the Religious Right • Promise Keepers, Straight Edge, etc. • South African President Mbeki denies that HIV causes AIDS • Cultures of Resistance • Feminism • The Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement • US?

22. Rethinking Sex: Weeks’ Argument in Favor of Diversity over Perversity • “Sex only attains meanings in social relations, which implies that we can only make appropriate choices around sexuality by understanding its social, cultural and political context” (Weeks 84) • This approach “involves a decisive move away from the morality of ‘acts’ (Weeks 84).

23. Instead of offering moral judgments, sex and gender theorists ask: • What makes this particular activity valid or invalid, appropriate or inappropriate? • What are the social factors that make acts meaningful? • What are the power relations at work in determining the meaning of acts? • (Weeks 85-6)

24. Rethinking Sex: Some Examples • Heterosexuality • Most marriages, most rapes, and most cases of child abuse are heterosexual. • By focusing on genital intercourse alone, we miss what is really at stake in these very different expressions of heterosexuality. • Talking about the act of intercourse is not enough. Sex and gender theorists will also ask: • Is the act a means of perpetuating relations of domination and subordination? • If so, are there any alternatives? Is the act itself violent, or do other factors make it so? • Is it ever possible for men and women to exist on equal terms? • Is change even possible? Or desirable?

25. Rethinking Sex and Power: Some Examples • Pedophilia • Depending on age, biological sex of those involved, and the particular acts performed, pedophilia appears in many forms. Thus, we should speak of pedophilias, not a single pedophilia. • Society clings to the idea of the “anonymous” pedophile, although most abuse of children is carried out by relatives or close family friends. • Some questions: • What social function has pedophilia served in other societies, such as ancient Greece? • At what age is a child no longer a child? Is 17 year old too young to have sex with a 21 year old? A 41 year old?

26. Rethinking Sex and Power: Some Examples • Sadomasochism • Krafft-Ebing describes S/M as “nothing else than excessive and monstrous pathological intensification of phenomena . . . which accompany the psychical sexual life” (Weeks 88) • Modern practitioners call S/M a form of pleasure and a medium for exploring new “relational virtualities” (Foucault). For some, it takes advantage of the fact that sex is a form of ritual and play. • Some questions to consider • Should people have the right to consent to activities that are conventionally regarded as painful and harmful? • Under what conditions are choices to experience pain and harm valid? • Does lesbian S/M entail different relations of power from “straight” S/M?

27. Sex and Power: Summing Up “A disaggregation of sexual practices . . . opens them up to social and political interrogation. Inevitably we will not find simple answers for and against particular activities in doing this. But deconstructing the unitary categories of the moralists and the early sexologists has the inestimable value of opening up crucial debates about the parameters within which valid decisions and choices can be made.” (Weeks 89) “Questions of sexuality are inevitably, inescapably, political questions “. (Weeks 90)

28. Sex = Symbolic “…Conflicts over sexual values . . . acquire immense symbolic weight. Disputes over sexual behavior often become the vehicles for displacing social anxieties.” “Sex is always political.” Gayle Rubin Anthropology and Women’s Studies University of Michigan

29. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1820, 2008. “Noting that civilians account for the vast majority of those adversely affected by armed conflict; that women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group; and that sexual violence perpetrated in this manner may in some instances persist after the cessation of hostilities”

30. Another Definition of Essentialism “. . .the idea that sex is a natural force that exists prior to social life and shapes institutions. Sexual essentialism is embedded in the folk wisdoms of Western societies, which consider sex to be eternally unchanging, asocial, and transhistorical. Dominated for over a century by medicine, psychiatry, and psychology, the academic study of sex has reproduced essentialism. These fields classify sex as a property of individuals. It may reside in their hormones or their psyches. . . . within these ethnoscientific categories, sexuality has no history and no significant social determinants.” --page 9 Examples: All African-American men are hypersexual, Homosexuality is a disease “

31. Sexuality = Historical Construct Historical eras “recodify the relations of sexuality” and leave a “residue in the form of laws, social practices, and ideologies which then affect the way sexuality is experienced” Today: Abortion, Gay Marriage, “Promiscuity,” Transsexuality/Intersex

32. 19th Century: Prostitution and Masturbation • “White Slavery Scares” • “Anti-Onanism” campaigns • Comstock Laws

37. 1950’s: Renegotiation of American Masculinity

38. 1970’s Anti-Gay Organizing and the Rise of the “Religious Right” and the “Neo-Conservative” Movement 1977 campaign to repeal the Dade County, FL gay rights ordinance “SAVE OUR CHILDREN” Anita Bryant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS91gT3XT_A

39. Rubin: Five areas need to be addressed • sex negativity • fallacy of misplaced scale • hierarchical valuation of sex • domino theory of peril • lack of theory of benign sexual variation

40. Michel Foucault (1926-1984) College de France The History of Sexuality, Volume I (1976)

41. Foucault, History of Sexuality, Volume I • Foucault states that: • 1. We tend to believe that cultural, social, religious, familial and governmental forces are trying to repress our innate sexuality. • 2. According to this way of thinking, sexuality is opposed to power, which is trying to destroy or contain it. • 3. Talking about sex is the new sermon.

42. Sex and the Sermon “Today it is sex that serves as a support for the ancient form—so familiar and important in the West—of preaching. A great sexual sermon . . . has swept through our societies . . .” (7) “What sustains our eagerness to speak of sex in terms of repression is doubtless this opportunity to speak out against the powers that be, to utter truths and promise bliss, to link together enlightenment, liberation and manifold pleasures.” (7)

43. Q: But does Foucault believe that sex is repressed?

44. A: No, he doesn’t. • Look for rhetorical clues: • “It would seem” (3) • “The Story goes” (3) • “We are told” (5)

45. The Repressive Hypothesis The erroneous belief that sex was repressed in Western society during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and, as a result, that sex is opposed to the workings of power.

46. Foucault’s Three Doubts about the Repressive Hypothesis (10): 1. Is sexual repression truly an established historical fact? 2. Do the workings of power really belong primarily to the category of repression? (Are prohibition, censorship and denial really truly the most important forms of power in our society?) 3. Does the discourse /critique of repression represent a break with what came before? Was there really a “historical rupture” between then and now? Or, rather, is the discourse of repression actually a part of “the same historical network” as the past it denounces?

47. But weren’t those uptight Victorians really repressive? We can re-evaluate the Victorian era in light of Foucault’s “repressive hypothesis.”

48. In the 19th century: • Women, children, homosexuals, blacks and others were the subjects of intense moral and scientific scrutiny. • Punishments for sexual transgression were severe, include mutilation, imprisonment, and death. • BUT: • These forms of violence do not constitute a repression of some innate sexuality. Instead, they constitute a proliferation of discourses about sex. We had to invent homosexuality, nyphomania, necrophilia, etc. before we could diagnose, condemn, and treat them. • There is a veritable explosion of sex in the Victorian era. Everyone seemed to be worried about, and talking about, sex! • Granted, that led to a lot of misery for a lot of people; but is also led to new identities and new pleasures.

49. What’s in a game of “curdled milk”? Or, lessons from the village idiot (31).

50. The incitement to discourse around sex and sexuality: “a steady proliferation of discourses concerned with sex . . . a discursive ferment that gathered momentum from the eighteenth century onward” Foucault studies the “general economy of discourses on sex in modern societies since the seventeenth century” (11). He wants to “account for the fact that [sex] is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and which store and distribute the things that are said” (11).