review
AA6666
ChildhoodSocialization-BirthThroughChildhood.pptx
Gender Socialization: Birth to Childhood
Five Sexes Revisited: Fausto-Sterling
Why does she propose a 5-sex system?
“LESS WELL KNOWN IS THE FACT THAT, ON CLOSE INSPECTION, ABSOLUTE DIMORPHISM DISINTEGRATES EVEN AT THE LEVEL OF BASIC BIOLOGY. CHROMOSOMES, HORMONES, THE INTERNAL SEX STRUCTURES, THE GONADS AND THE EXTERNAL GENETALIA ALL VARY MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE REALIZE.”
”Sex” can mean genetic/chromosomal, hormonal, anatomic levels
Intersexuality has always been treated as a medical emergency
Treatment has been traditionally done in the following spirit: “Nature intended the baby to be the boy or the girl that the physicians determined it was. Through surgery, the physicians were merely completing nature’s intention.”(15)
“SUCCESSFUL” ASSIGNMENTS HAVE BEEN TRADITIONALLY BEEN DEFINED AS LIVING AS THAT GENDER AS A HETEROSEXUAL.
But a new wave of treatment is advocating reversible surgeries, and a focus on therapy, not surgery.
We still need a new classification system. Medical establishment nomenclature still hasn’t caught up with reality of sex AND gender presentation.
Barbie Girls versus Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender- Messner
Previous Scholarship: Gender is a “top-down” process of socialization
Children are active agents in the creation of their worlds (inspired by Thorne’s Gender Play)
MAJOR FINDING:
GENDER VARIES IN SALIENCE FROM SITUATION TO SITUATION
MAGNIFIED MOMENT: what happened at the soccer game?
This was not just a gendered performance. Certain historical, social, and political conditions enable and constrain certain performances.
Messner says that there is nothing accidental about magnified moments- they do not happen randomly, they happen when 3 major factors come together:
The structural context: structure of AYSO
Interactional level: gendered groups interacting after being segregated
The level of cultural symbol: kids’ agency and use of cultural symbols
