Lernmaterialien für MA Gender and Society an der Tribhuvan University Kathmandu

• social identity
• roles and images of men and women
• economic, political and social context
• changeable
• there is a creation of dichotomies of masculine or feminine attached to male and female
• but gender is a spectrum wide and broad

• Gayle Rubin 1984, to define a set of arrangements from which the society transforms the biological sex into human activity
• The three are interlinked through culture
• heteronormativity
• According to biological determinist - Biology is destiny
• According to social constructionist - all the unquestioned, conventional characters are a product of historically and culturally rooted power relationships reproduced in the process of socialization
• Mothering as a profession
• Glass Escalator

• Non-binary, gender fluid etc
• The biological gender perspective assumes only two genders obscuring the diversity.
• People who do not identify themselves with the gender assigned at birth
• Assigned G- The sex doctor pronounces after your birth
• Identified G- The gender you discern later in life
• Challenges the idea of the gender dichotomy of the male and female

• variations in sex characteristics
• do not fit cultural definitions of male or female
• people who are biologically different from either male or female
• may not appear physically different
• challenge the notion of the dichotomy of the two sex
• the difference in the hormone, chromosomes as well as unidentified, both or one sex organ
• hermaphrodite is a derogatory term
• called ' intersex'
• eugenic project
• 
  

• greek words andros and gynaika
• the blending of both characteristics in an individual
• says that gender dualism is not only unacceptable but is very harmful to the society
• two types , physical and psychological
• rejects the gender dichotomies
• Sandra Bem, 1971 concept of psychological androgyny
  • 4 gender role orientation
  • Masculine 
  • Feminine
  • Androgenous
  • Undifferentiated
• no absence of gender but a fusion
• religions embrace gods who are androgynous
• modern media and culture's acceptance of androgyny
• androgyny is normal

Judith Butler and Gayle Rubin challenged the notion of underlying sex to a person, arguing that even sex too is a social construct

• the assumption that all individuals are heterosexual until stated otherwise.
• this defines 2 things in gerneral
  • how we should behave 
  • who we should be attracted to on the basis of our biological sex
• is homophobic 

• to move beyond gender
• social, political and cultural movement that argues how the erasing of the binary dichotomies of gender will liberate us all

• heterosexuality is no more natural or less natural than gay sexuality or bisexuality
• cultural norms and expression of power construct control what is normal
• defining sexual desires and relations between W/M as normal and all others as deviant
• also between men and women, all norms are set in the relation to power as to what is normal and what is deviant
• Adrienne Rich (1980) compulsory heterosexuality - assumption that all people are heterosexual
  • helps in reproducing the inequalities in the lives of sexual minorities
• like gender, the sexuality of neither fixed nor binary
• this wide variety and multiplicity shows that culturally dominant binary fails to accurately encapsulate the wide variety of sex and gender lived experiences

• A framework for building theories that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.
• A theory to explain theories that states that every whole has its constituent parts and every individual part has its independent function, so for a society to run smoothly all the parts must function well.
• R.K. Merton, latent, manifest and dysfunctional
• Talcott parsons, role, "concrete process of interaction with concrete role partners"
• each individual must fulfil their role or social strain theory
  • conformity
  • innovation
  • ritualism
  • retreatism
  • rebellion

• Physical build-up
• 2-3% unidentified
• sex organ identification
• 3 ways: 
  • Hormones
  • Chromosomes
  • Physical anatomy