The Power of Discourse: Sex, Power, & Culture in the U.S.

Flashcards covering key vocabulary related to discourse, power, and culture in sexuality within the U.S., based on lecture notes.

Social Construction of Sexuality

The idea that what is confidently known as 'sexuality' is a product of many social influences and interventions, not existing outside of history but rather as a historical product, shaped by changeable social norms.

Discourse

A disparate amalgamation of language, symbols, aesthetics, speech, writings, etc., that addresses a subject of significance, coheres into a meaningful narrative, and eventually takes hold as 'the truth,' giving it power.

Medical Discourse (on Sex)

Narrates sex/uality often as a reproductive process that is either healthy or diseased, historically exemplified by the invention of sexual orientation classifications.

Sexual Orientation

A classification system for sexuality, invented by late 19th-century sexologists, which defined sexuality not just as behavior but as an inner 'type of human' (hetero or homo); referred to by Weeks as a 'fictional unity.'

Fictional Unity (Weeks)

A term used by Weeks to describe the discourse of sexual orientation, which created a new 'truth' about sexuality as an inner, inherent type of human.

Religious Discourse (on Sex)

Narrates sex/uality in terms of morality, as virtuous or sinful.

Legal Discourse (on Sex)

Narrates sex/uality as obscene, lawful, criminal, or worthy of tax deductions.

Commercial Media Discourse (on Sex)

Narrates sex/uality as a phallocentric activity, often used to seduce people into purchases.

Cultures of Resistance Discourse (on Sex)

Narrates sex/uality in ways that offer alternatives to dominant religious, commercial, legal, and other discourses.

Hegemonic Discourse

A dominant discourse that emerges from a confluence of other discourses or 'truths' and derives its power from this unification.

Androcentrism

A perspective or discourse that centers men's sexual desires, practices, and relations over all others, often found in patriarchal societies where disparate discourses cohere to form a hegemonic androcentric discourse.

Hegemonic Androcentric Discourse

A dominant discourse in patriarchal society that centers men's sexual desires, practices, and relations, formed by the coherence of otherwise distinct, often androcentric discourses (e.g., commercial media, religious, medical).

The Sexual Double Standard

A hegemonic, androcentric sexual discourse that frames boys and men as 'naturally' sexual, and girls and women as not.

The Cult of Virginity

A hegemonic discourse, prominent until the turn of the 21st century, primarily concerned with the sexualities of young women (especially middle-class American girls), gaining power through its confluence with religious and legal discourses.

Social Construction of Virginity

The concept that virginity has no universal medical or physiological definition but is a social construct, making its link to sexual purity and women problematic.

Ethics of Passivity

A problematic assumption by the 'cult of virginity' that women cannot be moral actors, implying that their sexual morality is tied to their virginity status.

Renovated Sexual Double Standard

A modern version of the sexual double standard where patriarchal principles of gender inequity are hidden by 'discourses of empowerment' (popular feminism) that suggest girls have unfettered sexual agency, but still impose new limits on their sexuality, requiring careful control and avoiding 'too much' to be considered 'appropriate.'

Popular Feminism

Discourses that, according to Tolman, mask the underlying patriarchal principles of the sexual double standard by touting girls' unfettered sexual agency, thereby creating a 'renovated' version of the double standard.

The Get Some Game

Perry's term for young men's track in the sexual double standard discourse, where guys are always in search of scoring (getting sex) and girls are the gatekeepers, leading to adversarial roles and sexual encounters viewed as physical acts to be done to someone, often involving subversion or manipulation of girls' will.