SAS Week 4

Eugenics

the ‘science’ of improving human populations through controlled breeding.

Francis Galton

a cousin of Charles Darwin, who coined the term ‘eugenics’ from Greek roots meaning ‘well-born.’

Biopower

power exercised over entire populations, not just individual bodies.

Provincial Training School for ‘mental defectives’

Founded in Canada, also known as The Michener Center

Leilani Muir

A survivor from the Michener Center, was sterilized, sued, and won.

Karl Pearson

Galton’s protege, developed the correlation coefficient and the chi-squared test.

Medicalization

the process by which human problems, behaviors, or conditions come to be defined and treated as medical issues.

Drapetomania

a pseudoscientific, racist term coined in 1851 by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright to describe the alleged mental illness that caused enslaved Black people to try and escape captivity.

Prenatal genetic screening

raises real questions about which traits get treated as worth preventing.

Disability rights advocacy

continues to challenge coerced sterilization and institutionalization in many countries.

Sex

about the body.

Gender

about the social meanings, roles, and expectations attached to the body.

Sex Characteristics

The physical features of the body: chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy. Usually grouped as male or female.

Intersex

Natural variations where a body does not fit neatly into the typical male or female boxes.

Transsexual

An older term for someone whose gender differs from the sex they were assigned at birth, often used in medical settings. Now usually referred to as Transgender.

Gender identity

Your own inner sense of your gender.

Male

identifies as a man.

Female

identifies as a woman.

Non-binary

neither fully male nor female.

Cisgender

identity matches birth-assigned sex.

Transgender

identity differs from birth-assigned sex.

Gender expression

How you present your gender to the world: clothes, grooming, hair, voice, and movement. The visible layer, the one most often mistaken for identity.

Masculine

presents in ways read as manly.

Feminine

presents in ways read as womanly.

Androgynous

A mix of masculine and feminine, or neither.

Sexual orientation

who you are drawn to, romantically and emotionally.

Heterosexual

drawn to a different gender.

Homosexual

drawn to the same gender.

Bisexual

drawn to more than one gender.

Heteronormativity

The everyday assumption that being straight and cisgender is the normal default.

Binary

Sorts everyone into two boxes.

Spectrum

Allows a whole range in between.

Gender socialization

The lifelong process of being taught our gender, starting before we can even talk.

Stereotypes

fixed beliefs about a whole gender.

Roles

duties and jobs assigned by gender.

Disciplinary power

Power that does not force you, instead it gets you to watch and correct yourself.

Panopticon

The prison built for inmates where they can’t see if a guard is inside the tower, thus acting as being watched, always.

Docile bodies

bodies trained by routine and habit to behave properly, with no one forcing them.

Femininity as discipline

Being feminine is not automatic. It is a set of rules the body has to follow.

Size, shape, and movement

Rules about taking up less space: how to sit, stand, or stay small

Ornamentation

The expected work of grooming, makeup, and dress. Real time and real money, billed mostly to women.

The male gaze

images built so that women are there to be looked at, and the viewers assumed to be male.

The economy of smiles

the quiet rule that women should look pleasant and smile.

Intersectionality

people can carry advantages and disadvantages at the same time. Gender, class, and ethnicity overlap and shape each other.

Development as freedom

Real development means expanding what people are actually able to do and to be, not just raising income.

Gender and development

An approach that treats unequal gender relations, not women’s issues alone, as the thing that needs to change.

WID

add women to existing programs

WAD

women against unfair structures

GAD

change gender relations themselves

Gender mainstreaming

checking every policy and project for its effects on gender, instead of treating gender as a side topic.

Magna Carta of Women

the comprehensive women’s human rights law of the Philippines passed in 2009, also known as the Republic Act 9710

Philippine Commission on Women

The government body that oversees gender policy and the gender budget that every agency must set aside.

The SOGIE equality bill

A proposed law against discrimination based on SOGIESC.

Practical needs

come from existing roles and can be met without challenging them.

Strategic needs

change the division or power and labor itself.

Embodiment

you do not just have a body, you are the body.

Techniques of the body

the ways that, from society to society, people learn how to use their bodies.

Habitus

The lasting dispositions we take in from our social position. They shape what we do without us deciding to, and they feel like simply who we are.

Ontology

The study of what exists, and what it means to be.

Epistemology

the study of how we know what we know

Embodied knowledge

knowing that lives in practice and cannot be fully written down. you know what you know, even if you can’t explain how you know

Batok

cordillera hand-tap tattooing

The body as a site of power

The body is where power lands. As a power-laden site, the body has also become relational.

The body as a site of reclamation

The same body that power writes on can write back.

Bodily movement as subversion

Using the body in ways the rules did not intend.

Dancing

A body trained to take up less space, takes up more.

Playing

Activity done for its own sake. A body being useless on purpose.

Protest

Bodies gathering in a place that they were not supposed to gather.

Fashion

Style as refusal.