Chapter 12 and Chapter 14

Chapter 12

• Sex - refers to physical or physiological differences between males and females, including both primary sex characteristics (the reproductive system) and secondary characteristics such as height and muscularity

• Gender - a term that refers to social or cultural distinctions and roles associated with being male or female

• Gender identity - the extent to which one identifies as being either masculine or feminine

• In some cultures - gender is viewed as fluid

• Some anthropologists used the term berdache or two spirit person - refer to individuals who occasionally or permanently dressed and lived as the opposite gender

• Samoan culture accepts what they refer to as a “third gender.” Fa’afafine, which translates as “the way of the woman,” is a term used to describe individuals who are born biologically male but embody both masculine and feminine traits

• Sexuality - refers to a person’s capacity for sexual feelings and their emotional and sexual attraction to a particular sex

• Heterosexuality - the attraction to individuals of the opposite sex

• Homosexuality - the attraction to individuals of one’s own sex

• Bisexuality - the attraction to individuals of either sex

• Asexuality - no attraction to either sex

• Heteronormativity - heterosexuality as the norm

• Alfred Kinsey - among the first to conceptualize sexuality as a continuum - six -point rating scale ranging from heterosexual to exclusively homosexual

• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick - coined the term “homosocial” to oppose “homosexual” -describing nonsexual same-sex relations

• Homophobia - an extreme or irrational aversion to homosexuals

• Gender role - refers to society’s concept of how men and women are expected to act and how they should behave - reinforcement of roles begins in early childhood

• Cisgendered individuals - identify their gender with the gender and sex they were assigned at birth

• Transgendered individuals - individuals who identify with the gender that is the opposite of their biological sex

• The dominant gender schema - an ideology that serves to perpetuate inequalities in power and status

  • States that sex is a biological characteristic that produces only two options, male or female, gender is a social or psychological characteristic that manifests or expresses biological sex

• Fausto-Sterling’s research - indicates there are 5 different sexes

  • male

  • female

  • herms (true hermaphrodites with both male and female gonads)

  • merms (male pseudo-hermaphrodites with testes and a mixture of sexual organs)

  • ferms (female pseudo-hermaphrodites with ovaries and a mixture of sexual organs)

• Patriarchy - the set of institutional structures based on the belief that men and women are dichotomous and unequal categories

• Socialization - teaches people to behave according to social norms

• Sexism - refers to prejudiced beliefs that value one sex over another

• Gender socialization occurs through four major agents of socialization: family, education, peer groups, and mass media

• Family - first agent of socialization - treating sons and daughters differently based on gender roles

• Education - would try to push girls to take home economics or humanities courses and boys to take shop, math, and science courses

• Mass media - women tend to serve less significant roles in media - often portrayed as wives or mothers

• Stratification - refers to a system in which groups of people experience unequal access to basic, yet highly valuable, social resources

• Gender discrimination - in hiring and salary, different work, distribution of domestic duties

• Functionalists argue that gender roles - were established well before the preindustrial era when men typically took care of responsibilities outside of the home

• Bifurcated consciousness - women often perceive a disconnect between their personal experiences and the way the world is represented by society as a whole

• When people perform tasks or possess characteristics based on the gender role assigned to them - they are said to be doing gender

Chapter 14

• Marriage - a legally recognized social contract between two people - traditionally based on a sexual relationship - implying a permanence of the union

• Family - a socially recognized group joined by blood relations, marriage, or adoption, that forms an emotional connection and serves as an economic unit of society

• A family of orientation - refers to the family into which a person is born

• A family of procreation - describes one that is formed through marriage

• We can analyze the family as a social form that comes into existence around five different contents or interests - sexual activity, economic cooperation, reproduction, socialization of children, and emotional support

• Family is an excellent example of an institution that can be examined at the micro-, meso-, and macro- levels of analysis

• Nuclear family - a cohabiting man and woman who maintain a socially approved sexual relationship and have at least one child - as the basic unit of an orderly and functional society
  

• Exchange theory - proposes that all relationships are based on giving and returning valued “goods” or “services”

• Romantic love can be defined as the desire for emotional union with another person

• Romantic love - ends up develops into companionate love - deep friendship, comfortable companionship, and shared interests

• Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love - romantic love consists of three components

  • Passion or erotic attraction (limerance)

  • Intimacy or feelings of bonding, sharing, closeness, and connectedness

  • Commitment or deliberate choice to enter into and remain in a relationship

• Mate selection - implicit or explicit cost/benefit analysis - affects who falls in love with whom

• People tend to select mates of a similar social status from within their own social group

• Socioeconomic resources - income potential or family wealth, cultural resources, within social group to avoid conflict, local marriage markets

• Monogamy - when someone is married to only one person at a time

• Polygyny - refers to a man being married to more than one woman at the same time

• Polyandry - refers to when a woman is married to more than one man at the same time

• Bigamy - The act of entering into marriage while still married to another person - prohibited by the criminal code of Canada

• Bilateral descent - Tracing kinship is called

• Kinship - Traceable ancestry, can be based on blood, marriage, or adoption

• Unilateral descent - The tracing of kinship through one parent only

• There are three types of unilateral descent - patrilineal, matrilineal, ambilineal

  • Patrilineal - which follows the father’s line only

  • Matrilineal - which follows the mother’s side only

  • Ambilineal - which follows either the father’s only or the mother’s side only - depending on the situation

• Family life cycle - The set of predictable steps and patterns families experience over time - in specific stages

• Family life course - Recognizes the events that occur in the lives of families but views them as parting terms of a fluid course

• Key factors in children’s quality of life - educational levels and economic condition of the family - not about if children’s parents are married, common-law, or single

• Single parenting and cohabitation - becoming more acceptable in recent years, people may be less motivated to get married

• Sociologists found no quantifiable data to support the notion that opposite-sex parenting is any better than same-sex parenting

• Marriage rate is declining - decision to marry or not to marry can be based a variety of factors including religion and cultural expectations

• Functionalists - the differentiation of the roles on the basis of sex ensures that families are well-balanced and coordinated

• Critical perspectives - emphasize that the diversity of family forms does not indicate the “decline of the family”

• Symbolic interactionism therefore draws our attention to how the norms that define what a “normal” family is, and how it should operate, come into existence