GENDER AND SEXUALITY

WeekThreeLessonOne1.docx

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Week Three

Lesson One

The Social Construction of Sex & Gender

The first lecture video for this week goes into some detail about how and why scholars in the field of Gender & Sexuality Studies (and many other disciplines, including Sociology, Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, and Philosophy) generally view sex and gender as socially constructed. Social constructs are probably useful in human societies because they allow people to makes sense of the world through categories that have meanings. Many parts of social life are constructed—money, borders, government/the state, and more! To say something is socially constructed does not mean that it is fake or insignificant; social constructs are incredibly real and can have serious implications for individuals, groups, and entire societies.

Social constructs share a few core features, and thinking about them can help us understand sex and gender as social constructs better. Social constructs are constituted by social relations (and by definition can only exist within social relations), such if the social relations were different, it would be possible for the specific social constructions not to exist at all, or to exist in a very different way. Social constructs generally also develop over time—most have long historic roots—and they can change over time as social relations within a society change. That is good news, because it means we can change them!

Many of you in this course are likely familiar with two or more cultures, and you may even see how sex and gender are socially constructed differently across those cultures. Just one simple example: in Germany, where my family lives, women regularly wear their hair very short (well above the ear). When I am in Germany, I never have issues with people categorizing me as male or as a man—people see my short hair and they keep looking for other social cues of my sex and gender, such physique, clothing, accessories, etc., before addressing me as Fraulein (Ms.) or Herr (Mr.). In the United States, women rarely wear their hair very short, and those who do are often assumed to be lesbian or otherwise gender-non-normative. I routinely have people (who are presumably women, since they’re in a room marked as designated for women) inform me that I have walked into to the “wrong” gender bathroom, or just do a double-take and then flee (this especially happens to me in bathrooms designated for women on the UCR campus!). I am called “Sir,” by wait staff and others. This doesn’t happen every day, but a good amount—and far, far more than it happens than when I am home in Germany. That’s because my appearance falls outside of the expected gender expression of women in the US and closer to the expected gender expression of men, whereas my appearance falls within the expected gender expression of women in Germany.[footnoteRef:1] These are differences in how gender is socially constructed in these two societies. (I know my hair may not look that short on my videos lately, but like many of us, I haven’t gotten a haircut in ages because of the pandemic, and I am struggling with whether to trust my wife to do it. ). I have no doubt that you can come up with examples from your own lives of similar examples. [1: Gender expression refers to how an individual communicates their sex/gender to others within the norms and expectations of a particular society. So, for example, in the US, having long hair, carrying a purse, and wearing shoes with heels are associated with femininity and would typically be part of expressing the gender identity of a woman.]

Another key point to make about social constructionist theories is that they are not all the same. There are many different theorists writing and working in this area, and they often have somewhat different ideas. Some focus on the micro, or interactional, level of analysis, so how we create and recreate constructs through our everyday interactions with other people. Others focus more on how macro, or larger-scale institutions, like the state and the economy, (re)create social constructs and use those constructs to guide how they function.

Sex and gender difference are constructed and maintained at three levels: 1) at the individual level of social learning; 2) at the interactional level of social relations in everyday life (e.g., interactions with friends, family, religious leaders, teams, etc.); and 3) at the level of structural, organizational and institutional forces that constrain and shape action (adapted from Aulette and Wintner, 2015). Importantly, social constructions of sex and gender can vary across or even within these three levels. For example, you may be a player on an athletic team that has a particular way of thinking about, enacting, and embodying sex and gender, while being part of a student club that has a somewhat different way of thinking about, enacting, and embodying sex and gender. One of the two may have more rigid norms around sex and gender, the other more flexible norms. You may even find some groups that challenge dominant constructions of sex and gender and which offer very different ways of thinking about the possibilities of these categories.

As we move through the quarter, we will be talking both about more social constructs (such as masculinity and femininity), and about how our social construction of sex, gender, sexuality—often in conjunction with other socially constructed structures of inequality like race—shape individual, group, and societal experiences. Keep an eye for opportunities to think about sex and gender as socially constructed.

In regards to sex and gender, a key idea for this week (and to keep with us for the rest of the quarter) is that the social constructionist perspective stands in opposition to biological determinism and gender essentialism. Biologically deterministic perspectives hold that a person’s sex characteristics determine their gender identity and expression. Gender essentialism further explains people’s behaviors and identities as being an outcome of their sex/gender category. For instance, if you’ve ever heard someone say girls and women are more emotional or have a harder time controlling their emotions than boys and men, that would be a biologically deterministic and gender essentialist statement: the statement claims that someone’s behavior is the outcome of their gender, and that all (or at least most) people in that gender category will exhibit this behavior.

Self-Assessment (not to be submitted, just for your own reflection; best completed after completing the reading)

1. Compare two contexts in your life in which you encounter different (whether just a little bit or very different is fine!) social constructions of sex and gender.

2. Practice thinking about and analyzing social constructs. Beauty is socially constructed. Explain how, in your own words.

3. How does the existence of gender diverse people challenge biological determinism?