Lecture Recap and Key Concepts

Introduction

• Last lecture: Recap of key concepts and progression of ideas throughout the trimester.
• Franz Kafka Quote: "A book must be the axe of the frozen sea inside of us," highlighting the power of language and ideas to challenge our inner states.
• Acknowledgment of Wurundjeri people, the Kulin nation, and the Wadawurrung people.
• Representations matter and are a site of political struggle (Taylor Swift, Charlie XCX).
• Consideration of Heartstopper backlash and personal reflections on harmful and healing stories.

Key Terms and Concepts from Week 1

• Initial Key Terms:
  • Sex = Nature
  • Gender = Culture (cultural ideas placed upon the sexed body)
• Complication: The sexed body is also a product of culture.
• Essentialism: The feminist critique of the idea of a natural, unchanging essence untouched by culture.
• Connection to Humanism: Personality considered as an essence.

Social Construction of Sex and Gender

• Sex and gender are socially constructed with cultural elements.
• Social construction of the body occurs materially (hormones, surgery, diet).
• Historical Situatedness of Knowledge:
  • What we see as a culture is historically situated.
  • Example: The clitoris was not mapped until 1998.
  • Meanings vary across social contexts and historical time periods.
• Ideological Component of Knowledge:
  • What we find is partly determined by the questions we ask.
  • Material bodies exist with capabilities and properties, but our perception and interpretation vary.
• Bias can prevent us from seeing what is there; experience, meaning, and self-determination matter.
• The meaning of sex, gender, and sexuality is a political, social, and scientific question.

Masculinity as a Social Construct

• Masculinity as social practices and cultural representations (following Judith Butler).
• Masculinity is performed rather than an innate quality.
• Raymond Connell:
  • Gender as the end product of ongoing interpretations of reproductive and sexual capacities.
  • Masculinity and femininity are effects of these interpretations on bodies, personalities, societies, culture, and institutions.
  • Masculinities occupy a higher ranking than femininities in the gender hierarchy of modern Western societies.
  • Examples: Taylor Swift’s “The Man” and videos from Bully to analyze the construction of masculinities.

Liberation Movements

• Political movements seek freedom from oppression, control, constraint, and discrimination.
• Beyond equality, liberation aims for universal freedom.
• Gay liberation activists (1970s): Sought to destroy heteronormativity, the family, and monogamy.
• Liberation movements aim for complete social transformation.
• Reform vs. Revolution: Idealism vs. Defeatism

Feminism

• Feminism: A movement responding to inequalities of sex, gender, and sexuality and their intersections.
• Feminist struggle: Resistance to sexism anywhere, anytime, by anyone.
• Goal: To eliminate patriarchy (bell hooks).
• Women’s Liberation: Access to abortion, the pill, fighting objectification and violence.

Intersectionality

• Feminism is more than just a movement for implicitly white, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender women.

• Recognition in the 1980s: Differences between women are as significant as similarities.

• Kimberle Crenshaw on Intersectionality:

  • Multiplication of oppressions: They can add to or subtract from one another based on privilege.

• Intersectionality as a theory of social construction.

• Interaction of interlocking forms of privilege and oppression:

  • Racism, colonialism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc.

Gay Liberation

• Activist and social scene in the 1960s and 1970s.
• Beyond decriminalizing sex between men: Reimagining sexual values for everyone.
• Question: Who gets to say what kinds of sexuality are good or bad, moral or immoral?
• Society shaped by pervasive sexual oppression with negative consequences for everyone.
• Analysis of manifestos and consideration of elements to discard or retain.

Trans Liberation and Inclusion

• Trans liberation in the 1970s.
• Continuation of the liberatory history of feminists, queer and trans people.
• Intersectionality has included trans people in feminist movements since the second wave.
• Susan Stryker: Feminism inclusive of trans people fights to dismantle gender hierarchy.
• Oppression can result from changing/contesting gender categories or being categorized as female.

Central Question and Activities

• Mackenzie Walk’s Question: Where do we go to get free?
• Exploration of experiences of oppression and liberation.
• Activities:
  • Creating utopias.
  • Collages of positive, non-toxic masculinities.
  • Analyzing manifestos.
  • Writing about representations that hurt and heal.
• Goal: To encourage imaginative thinking about a better world.

Ursula Le Guin Quote

• Marginalized groups speak subversively when they speak truly.
• "When women offer our experiences, our truth, as human truth, all the maps change."

Mary Oliver Quote

• "What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Conclusion

• Encouragement to join other gender and sexuality studies units.
• Hope that students have learned something about themselves and the world.
• Desire for students to feel a sense of agency.
• Questions and Answers about Assignment 3 and seminar details.