Week 5

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

9:21 AM

Tuesday
Sex, Sexuality, and Gender

Social Construction
Theory
Remember that something that is a "social construct" is a real because it is real in tits
consequences
Biology plays a role, but it is highly malleable as evidenced in temporal and cross cultural
variation
Method
Qualitative inductive approaches examine social construction in moment to moment
interaction
Qualitative deductive approaches refine and test how theses constructions impact people at
a general level

So you might think
Men and women are inherently different because of biology
This would be using gender essentialism to explain complex social behaviors
A form of biological reductionism
Sex, Sexuality, and Gender
Sex refers to the natural or biological differences that distinguish males and females
Sexuality refers to the desire, sexual preference, sexual identity, and behavior
Gender consists of a set of social arrangements and role expectations that are built around sex.
All are at least partly socially constructed realities
Sex: A process in the Making
Many believe that there are inherently only two sexes - male and female- and that all people fall
into one group or the other
However, the two-sex model is a recent scientific "discovery"
Many notions of sexuality are already inflected with gender ( "masculine" sperm &
"feminine" egg
Evidence suggests that we need to embrace a more expansive definition of sex that goes beyond
two rigid and distinct categories
Sex is more of a continuum(both in genotype and phenotype)
Doctors and parents socially construct a two sex split by correcting "mistakes" ( if they
anticipate you wont pee standing up or penetrate sexually..)
Sexuality -sociology in the bedroom
Much like gender differences, sexual practices vary across time and place, supporting the notion
that sexuality is much a social construct as gender

Gender roles are sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany ones status as a male or female
Evidence shows that gender roles have more to do with a social status than biology

The ideal man of the 1700s
Not associated with physicality or business acumen
Theses were rude and boorish traits
Instead he would be kind intellectual with a taste for poetry
Agents of Socialization
Sexism and sex stereotypes
When a person's sex is the bases of prejudicial beliefs and behaviors
Studies show that gender inequality is rampant in schools
Boys and girls are treated differently by teachers, and there are different expectations for their
behavior and performance
The textbooks and other materials used in school often reinforce gender stereotypes
Feminism
Feminism is an intellectual, consciousness raising movement based on the idea that women and
men should be accorded equal opportunities and respect
Feminism seeks to get people to understand that gender is an organizing principle of life
Gender structures social relations on unequal ground, and power is fundamentally at play when
we talk about gender differences
Women in the Workplace
Women still face many challenges in the working world today, including unequal pay, sexual
harassment, sexism, tracking to certain kinds of jobs, the "feminization" of jobs, the glass ceiling
and many more
Gender in the workplace
Gender essentialism and occupation
Job Queues
Example: why women often play the bass guitar in bands
Statistical discrimination
Employers use gender as a shorthand for other qualities
e.g. women have better "front-office" personalities
Lack of formal personnel practices
Job advertisement
Promotion ladders
Organization that have these (e.g. the army) tend to be more integrated



Thursday
Race and Identity

The myth of Race
Race can be defined as a group of people who share a set of characteristics - usually physical ones
- and are said to share a common bloodline
You might think race is a biological reality
However, race is clearly a socially constructed - racial divisions change over time and across social
contexts
There is more biological variation within racial groups between them
Race is imposed (usually based on physical differences) - often in ways that are hierarchical,
exclusive, and unequal
Race versus ethnicity
Ethnicity is a voluntary, self-defined, nonhierarchical, fluid, cultural, and not so closely linked with
power differences

Race and ethnicity acan and often do overlap - but they are distinct concepts
Groups that were once considered races can become ethnicities over time and they are
assimilated
The uses of race
Racism is the belief that members of separate race possess different and unequal human traits

Explotation
You might think that racism led o slavery, but that would be too simplistic!
Slavery (and the plantation economy) in the U.S. was a strong basis for the social construction of
racial division
First African-Americans were not slaves, but indentured servants
Slavery emerges to promote and justify free labor
Grows out of global commodity chain ( guns, slaves, and tobacco)
Origins of the Myth of Race
Ethnocentrism (the judgment of other groups by one's own standards and values) and bias against
darker skin predates our understanding of race
Race as we know it developed in the 1700s
Rise of scientific categorization and the dominance of European man
Becomes more fully developed as Social Darwinism
The (incorrect) application of evolution theory to the social world
The notion that some groups of races evolved more than others and were better fit to
survive and even rule other races
Backers of eugenics (the pseudo-science of genetic lines and the inheritable traits they pass on
from generation to generation_ claimed that traits could be traced though bloodlines and bred
into population for positive traits out of them or negative
Maintaining the Myth of Race
Prejudice refers to negative thoughts and feelings about an ethnic or racial group
Discrimination: unfair actions resulting from prejudice due to the categorizing of people by a
characteristic such as race/ethnicity, gender or class
1. Pure discrimination
2. Statistical discrimination
3. Institutionalized discrimination

Oppression - pure discrimination
Ambiguity of racial divisions leads to forced identification (Jews in Nazi Germany) or extreme
measures in "outing" a person (e.g. Burakumin in Japan)

Statistical Discrimination
What difference does incarceration make in shaping stratification outcomes?
A deductive casual approach to stigma
The problem of SPURIOUSNESS in causality!
Maintaining the myth of race
Social conflict may generate inequality, but what keeps it going
Theories of Institutional racism
Suggests that institutions (economy, schools, laws )
Institutional Oppression
The one-drop rule evolved from US laws forbidding miscegenation, was the belief that "one
drop" of black blood makes a person black.
Application of this rule kept the white population "pure" and limped anyone with black
blood into one category

"Objective" laws and rules are often used in very subjective that target minorities
Zero tolerance policies in schools
Sentencing of criminals(crack vs. power cocaine)
Stop and frisks
Racial realities
Racialization is the formation of new racial identity in which new ideological boundaries of
difference are drawn around a formerly unnoticed group of people
An ethnic identity becomes racialized when it is subsumed under a forced label, racial
marker, or "otherness"
Minority-Majority group relation
Segregation is the legal or social practice of separating people on the basis of their race or
ethnicity
Segregation was official policy in the US, particularly in the South, until the 1960s
Despite being illegal for over 40 years, there is still ample evidence of segregation in
American society today, particularly in schools, housing, and prisons
Segregation is the result of policies - and not simply a "natural" result of people soring
themselves
REDLINING
Racial and Ethnic neighborhood segregation
Massey and Denton propose is the main reason for poverty among African- Americans
Highly "poverty traps"
Wealth, commercial resources, and jobs leave the areas
Decease the tax base, especially hitting education
Whites bid up the price of rental predominantly of white neighborhoods

Schooling
Achievement and bias
Stereotypes can affect student performance
Cumulative disadvantage
Small differences can be magnified over time
Prejudice, discrimination, and the new racism
While overt racism is, for the most part, considered unacceptable in American today, a new kind
of racism is on the rise in American and Elsewhere that focuses on the cultural and national
differences, rather than racial ones






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