Subjectivity: Sex, Gender and Sexuality

Subject Position

an individual’s unique position in the world, which is shaped by social variables (class, gender, socioeconomic status, etc.)

Socialization

process of learning to live as a member of a group, both by interacting appropriately with others and by coping with the behavioral rules established by the group

Enculturation

process by which human beings living with one another must learn to come to terms with the ways of thinking and feeling that are considered appropriate in their respective cultures

Agency

an individuals’ ability to make choices and to effect change through their actions

Personality

relative integration of an individual’s perceptions, motives, cognitions and behavior within a sociocultural matrix

Perception

act of becoming aware of the world through what we have deemed the five senses

Cognition

mental processes by which human beings gain knowledge

Phenomenology

• philosophical study of how knowledge and facts are always lived and experienced through one’s body

• understanding that we always experience the world through our perceptions, senses, memory and imagination

Poststructuralism

• how the self is made by political and social processes

• seeks to reveal the historical origins of structures and how they interact with other forces

Subjectivity

an individuals awareness of their own agency and subject

Sex

 The conventional biological, and often binary, distinction between male, female, and intersex people based on morphological sex (observable sex characteristics), gonadal sex, and chromosomal sex.

Gender

 The culturally constructed beliefs and behaviours considered appropriate for different categories, often linked to sex.

Sexuality

An individual’s sense of their own sexual desires, orientation, and preferences. 

Gender Binary

A categorization of gender and sex as discretely binary comprised of males or females and men or women.

Gender Fluidity

An understanding of gender, sex, and sexuality as non-binary (on a spectrum, rather than two distinct categories) and that it can change over time and context.

Heteronormativity

An ideology that promotes heterosexuality as a social ideal, supported by a cultural definition of appropriate behaviour and defined binary categories

Naturalizing Discourses

The deliberate representation of particular identities (e.g., gender/sex, caste, class, race, ethnicity, and nationality) as if they were a result of biology or nature rather than history or culture, making them appear eternal and unchanging.

Marilyn Strathern

• demonstrates the connection between gender, selfhood, and enculturation in an example of gender identity from Melanesia

• Persons are not conceived as self-contained, unique selves, but rather as internally plural (dividuals) and are better understood as androgynous

Androgyny

 A condition in which an individual person possesses both male and female characteristics

Early Feminist Research

• focused on including women in the ethnographic data, the relativity of gender roles, and gender in/equality

Androcentric Bias

An explanation of cultural phenomena based on male experiences and perspectives that is then used to represent a community as a whole

Feminist Anthropology

The critical study of gendered categories, gender inequality, and how they intersect with racism, colonialism, and capitalism

Sexism

Systematic sociocultural structures and practices of inequality, derived from patriarchal institutions that continue to shape relations between genders

Second Wave Feminism

• Critically examining patriarchy à domination of men over women and children

• Addressing sexism

• Mitigating domestic oppression of women

• Promoting political and economic mobility of women

• Encouraging women to enter the workforce, enroll in education

• Reducing gender-based discrimination

• Preventing spousal abuse

Intersectionality

The notion that institutional forms of oppression organized in terms of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and other subjectivities are interconnected and shape the opportunities and constraints available to individuals in any society

Feminist Anthropology Today

• goes beyond comparing gender roles to questioning the categories of women and men themselves

• Assert that categories of gender and sex are materially experienced by subjects but that those categories are produced, not natural, in specific political and historical contexts

Cisgender

Individuals whose sex and gender agree based on normative assumptions of male/ female and man/woman

Transgender

Individuals whose sex and gender are male/woman, female/ man, or have a non-binary gender identity

Queer

An increasingly common identity used to include all sexual practices, sex, and gender identities that transgress normative binaries and heterosexual practice

Hijra

a common catchall name for a diversity of “third genders” and intersex people in South Asia.

Two Spirited

term used to refer to a diversity of gender, sex, and sexual identities including non-binary, androgynous, transgender, intersex, gay, lesbian, or queer in Indigenous communities  

Queer Anthropology

•Challenges and rejects “defined categories of male/female, man/woman, heterosexual/homosexual” (Hatzfeldt 2011). It avoids placing fixed boundaries around ideas of sexuality.

•Critique of the introduction of heteronormative thinking, and heteronormative sexual classifications, in Euro-American societies is fairly recent.

•Terms such as gay and lesbian are recent and reflect western notions of homosexuality