Intro Gender & Society Midterm

Sex

Physical differences in primary sexual characteristics ( presence of organs directly involved in reproduction) and secondary sexual characteristics (such as patterns of hair growth, amount of breast tissue, and distribution of body fat.

Gender

The symbolism of masculinity and femininity that we connect to being male bodied or female bodied.

biocultural interaction

How our bodies respond to our cultural environment and vice versa.

Gender West & Zimmerman

The activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one sex category.

Social constructionism

The process by which we layer objects with ideas, fold concepts into one another and build connections between them. (A shared creation of society).

Essentialism

Bodies posses qualities that do not change over time and space.

Dichotomous thinking

Black and white thinking.

Naturalism

The idea that biology affects our behavior independently of our environment.

Culturalism

The idea that we are “blank slates” that become who we are purely through learning and socialization.

Nature/Nurture debate

Between people who believe that observed differences between men and women are biological and those who believe that these differences are acquired through socialization.

Agencey

An institutionalized preference for the young and the cultural association of aging with decreased social value.

Biopower

Political power over biological functions (politics over autonomy).

Privilege

Social and economic advantage based on our location and social hierarchy.

Gender Binary

The idea that there are only two types of male bodied masculine and female bodied feminine.

Heteronormativity

Practice of obeying every gender rule except the ones that say we must sexually desire and partner with someone of the other sex.

Subordination

The placing of women into positions that make them servient or dependent on men.

Doing Gender

Phrase used to describe the ways in which we actively obey and break gender rules. 

Gender Rules

Instructions for how to appear and behave as a man or a woman.

Gender Policing

A response to the violation of gender rules that is aimed at exacting conformity.

Intersectionality

That gender is not an isolated social fact about us, but instead intersects with all other distinctions among people made important by our society. 

Culturalism claims that gender differences are purely the product of learning and socialization

True

Sexual dimorphism refers to the shared behavioral and physical traits of males and females.

False

Priming is a trick in which study subjects are reminded of a stereotype right before the test.

True

The gender binary emphasizes the difference between rather than the similarity of female and male bodies.

True

Naturalism claims that humans are born as blank slates upon which social forces inscribe gender differences.

False

Gender differences in math ability are lowest in countries whose citizens mostly endorse the idea that men are naturally better at math than women.

False

What is the relationship between nature (human biology), nurture (socialization) and gender differences?

Nature and nurture are inseparable, they work together to produce observed sex differences. 

Policing happens infrequently and most people never experience gender policing.

False

Once we become teenagers, we stop learning gender rules.

False

Gender policing is never violent. It only involves consequences like teasing, name calling and rejection.

False

Performing gender in a non binary way can lead to cultural unintelligibility.

True

We are doing gender only when we obey gender rules.

False

You only experience cultural traveling when you visit different countries.

False

Gender rules are not universal they vary by age, culture and context.

True

Gender Socialization begins at infancy, continues throughout life and helps us negotiate gender rules.

True

Macy loves to get all dressed up for her friend's weddings. She loves that special feeling of doing her makeup, curling her hair and picking out a gorgeous dress. She knows she looks her most feminine, and she feels that way too. In this example, Macy is most likely doing gender

For pleasure

Simplified by changing gender routines around hair care and removal during COVID-19 quarantine, people may perform certain gender routines largely

For others

Distinction

The attempts by aristocrats to keep high heels to themselves.

Culture

 A Groups shared beliefs and the practices and material things that reflect them.

Intersex

People with androgen insensitivity syndrome. Born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the typical definitions of female or male.

Gender Identity

A sense of oneself as male or female.

Gender Expression

Communicating our gender identity through our appearances, dress and behavior.

Transgender

A diverse group of people who experience some form of gender dysmorphia.

Gender Dysmorphia

A discomfort with the relationship between their bodies assigned sex and their gender identity, or otherwise reject the gender binary.

Gender Ideologies

Widely shared beliefs about how men and women are and should be.

Gender Binary Glasses

A pair of lenses that separates everything we see into masculine and feminine categories.

Associative Memory

Cells in our brains that process and transmit information, make literal connections. So some ideas are associated with other ideas in our minds.

Cultural Competence

Familiarity and facility with how members of a society typically think and behave.

Sexual Dimorphism

Typical differences in body type and behavior between males and females of a species.

Observed Differences

Findings from surveys, experiments and other type of studies that detect differences between men and women.

Priming

Finding study subjects of a stereotype right before the test in order to change the results.

Genes

Set of instructions for building and maintaining our bodies.

Genotype

Unique set of genes.

Phenotype

Observable set of physical and behavioral traits.

Hormones

Messengers In a chemical communication system released by glands or cells in one part of the body. The hormones carry instructions to the rest of it.

Deceptive Differences

Differences that, by being observed, can make it seem as if men and women are more sexually dimorphic than they are across different times and cultures.

Nuclear Family

A monogamous mother and father with children who live together without extended kin.

Kin Groups

Collections of individuals considered family.

Forager Societies

One’s that migrate seasonally, following crops and game across the landscape.

Cultural Traveling

Moving from one cultural or subcultural context to another, and sometimes back.

Learning Model of Socialization

A model that suggests socialization is a lifelong process of learning and relearning gendered expectations and how to negotiate them.

Account

An explanation for why a person broke a gender rule that works to excuse his or her behavior.

Accountabillity

An obligation to explain why we don't follow social rules that other people think we should know and obey.

Culturally Unintelligible

To be so outside the symbolic meaning system that people will not know how to interact with you.

Social Identity

Culturally available and socially constructed category of people in which we place ourselves or our placed by others.

Gender Strategy

Finding a way of doing gender that works for us as unique individuals who are also shaped by other parts of our identity and the material realities of our lives.

Racism

Social arrangements designed to systematically advantage one race over others.

Unmarked Category

Social identity that is assumed for a role or context without qualification.

Heteronomative

Designed on the assumption that everyone is heterosexual.

Sexual Minorities

Gays, lesbians, bisexuals and others who identify as non heterosexual.

Heterosexism

Individual and institutional bias against sexual minorities.

Compulsory Heterosexuality

A rule that all men be attracted to women and all women to men.

Homonormativity

A practice of obeying every gender rule except the ones that say we must sexually desire and partner with someone of the other sex.

Xenophobia

Individual and institutional bias against people seen as foreign.

Abelism

Individual and institutional bias against people with differently abled bias.

Patriarchy

Literally the rule of the father. It refers to the control of female and younger male family members by select adult men or patriarchs.

Democratic Brotherhood

Distribution of citizenship rights to certain classes of men.

Formal Gender Equality

The legal requirement that men and women be treated more or less the same.

Modified Patrichies

Societies in which women have been granted formal gender equality, but the patriarchal conflation of power with men and masculinity remains a central part of daily life.

Androcentrism

Granting of higher status, respect, value, reward and power to the masculine compared to the feminine.

Male Flight

Men abandon feminizing areas of life.

Hegemony

A state of collected consent to inequality that is secured by the idea that it is inevitable, natural, or desirable.

Hegemonic Masculinity

The type of masculine performance, idealized by men and women alike, that functions to justify and naturalize gender inequality, assuring widespread consent to the social disadvantage of most women and some men.

Exculpatory Chauvinism

A phenomenon in which negative characteristics ascribed to men are presented as natural and offered as acceptable justifications of men's dominance over women.

Hierarchy of Masculinity

Ranking of men from most to least masculine, with the assumption that more is always better.

Masculinities

Ways of doing masculinity arrayed in a hierarchy that are more or less available to people with different social positions, intersectional identities, and context of interaction.

Emasculation

Loss of masculinity.

Precarious Masculinity

The idea that manhood is more difficult to earn and easier to lose than femininity.

Compensatory Masculinity

Acts undertaken to reassert one's manliness in the face of a threat.

Colorism

A racist preference for light skin over dark skin.

Hypermaculinity

Extreme conformatory to the more aggressive rules of masculinity.

Toxic Masculinity

Strategic enactments of masculinities that are harmful to both the men who enact them and the people around them.

Patriarchal Barigan

A deal in which an individual or group accepts or even legitimates some of the costs of patriarchy in exchange for receiving some of its rewards.

Hybrid Masculinities

Collection of gender strategies that selectively incorporate symbols, performances, and identities that society associates with women or low status men.

Hijra

Someone who transitioned from male to female but who is not considered female but enjoys femineity.

Eunuchs

Castrated male.

According to Einrich and English, the elimination of midwives in the US between 1900 and 1930 was done for real public health reasons.

False

According to Enriche in English, midwives had to be eliminated or even outlawed in the US between 1900 and 1930

Because American Medical institutions needed materials to train their own students in developing specially obstetrics the very existence of the midwife was an obstacle for this purpose in the very existence of the midwife was an obstacle for this purpose.