Gender & Sexuality

1. Gender & Sexuality • Sex is biological • Gender is cultural • The roles people perform and the values & attitudes a culture has regarding men & women • Gender identity – how people internalize & enact the expectations or attitudes associated with established gender categories • Gender construct – refers to the set of cultural assumptions about gender roles & values & the relations between genders that people learn as members of their societies

2. Gender as Culturally Constructed • Cultural constructs – models of behavior & attitudes transmitted to members of a particular culture • Based on shared beliefs & values that become taken for granted as guiding principles

3. Gender Learning • Occurs through enculturation • Individuals are taught culturally appropriate behavior & to conform to cultural norms • Begins at birth!

4. Limitations of western/Christian notions of Gender • Assumes that gender is binary • Only two possibilities; male or female • Assumes there are fairly clear distinctions • Should be able to categorize any individual as either male or female • Assumes that gender identity does not change during one’s lifetime • Gender is often defined primarily in terms of with whom a person has sex

5. Elaborating on Gender Categories • Binary Gender – maximizes sex differences • Rigid distinctions between masculine & feminine roles • Minimal Gender – minimizes sex differences • Not as a rigid a distinction between masculine & feminine roles • Fictive Gender – describes the creative statuses & roles to accommodate variations of gender & sexuality

6. Cross-cultural Gender Identities • Trans-gender– dressing and/or behaving like people of another gender • Example: Female impersonators (transvestites) • Does not necessarily dictate sexual practice • Psychology does not match biology • Trans-sexual – individuals who have become the opposite sex by surgically altering their anatomy • Does not imply homosexuality • Psychology does not match biology

7. Gender Identities, cont. • Intersexes or Hermaphrodites – people who have anatomical features of both male & female • Very rare • Intermediate Status – institutionalized roles & statuses that enable people to combine male/female attributes • can be temporarily male and/or temporarily female

8. Gender Identities, cont. • Third Genders – institutionalized roles & statuses that provide a legitimate existence other than male or female (neither man nor woman) • Example: The hijras of India • Homosexuality – practice of having sex with people of same gender • Depends on how “same gender” and “other gender” are defined