week 2.1

Flashcards covering key vocabulary related to the social construction of gender, gender identity, gender expression, and related concepts from the lecture.

Sex/Gender/Sexuality System

In current mainstream US culture, sex, gender, and sexuality are mutually reinforcing social structures, where understandings of each are dependent upon and naturalized by beliefs about the other two.

Gender

The meanings, norms, and values ascribed by society to sexed bodies (classified reproductive capacities) as well as to inanimate objects, ideas, dynamics, language, feelings, etc.; an identity, ascribed by one’s self to one’s self, which may or may not be related to one’s sex assignment.

Social Construction of Gender (Lorber)

A process of social interaction that socializes people into norms and delineates between men and women as categories, and a stratification system that ranks gender categories, often placing cisgender men above cisgender women and other gender minorities.

Sex Assignment

The act of categorizing an individual into a specific social system of gender, typically at birth, based on perceived biological sex.

Gender Socialization

The process by which individuals learn and internalize the norms, values, and behaviors associated with their assigned gender within a specific social system.

Personal Exception Theory

The belief that one is immune to socialization and that their gender is solely the product of their personal feelings and will.

Gender Reveal Rituals

Contemporary rituals, often involving a public display of pink or blue, that serve as an attempt to stabilize the gender binary and perform socialization expectations for the unborn child, family, and others.

Policing/Pain (Gender Socialization)

External pressures such as ostracism, physical and emotional violence, criminalization, or medical or spiritual 'correction' used to enforce adherence to gender norms.

Rewarding/Pleasure (Gender Socialization)

External pressures such as social and familial acceptance, legal recognition and protections, and social privileges used to reinforce adherence to gender norms.

Gender Performativity

The process by which individuals enact gender norms and values, consciously and unconsciously, by routinely repeating them in bodily and non-verbal ways, giving them the appearance of being natural.

Gender Embodiment

A term describing how the gender norms of a particular society come to reside in a body, shaping its sensations, emotions, movements, size, and form.

Gender Identity Development

The process through which individuals begin to align their embodied and internal sense of gender with the existing classifications of gender in their society.

Contemporary Gender Identities

A wide spectrum of self-identifications that include, but are not limited to, trans man/woman, cisgender man/woman, Two-Spirit, Bi-Gender, Pan-Gender, Agender, Masc, Stud, Fem or Femme, Non-Binary, Gender Queer, Butch, Queen, and Butch Queen.

Gender Expression

The conscious act of using clothing, behavior, and mannerisms to communicate one's gender to others.