Chapter 1-4

Question 1

Define Distinction

Answer 1

Efforts used to distinguish ones own group from others

Question 2

Present day, what do heels achieve?

Answer 2

A marker of gender distinction

Question 3

If distinction didn’t exist would the word gender exist?

Answer 3

No, the concept of gender would be unnecessary without distinction

Question 4

Define sex

Answer 4

Physical differences in primary and secondary sexual characteristics

Question 5

What does the word male-bodied or female-bodied mean?

Answer 5

That sex refers to the body and may not extend to the way a person feels or acts

Question 6

Define gender

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Define culture

Answer 7

A groups shared beliefs and the practices and material things that reflect them

Question 8

Is gender strictly biological?

Answer 8

No, it’s cultural and biological

Question 9

What does difference maintain?

Answer 9

Difference maintains hierarchy

Question 10

Why do many people in society try and maintain distinction?

Answer 10

• distinction is maintained if certain groups are valued more then others
• allowing them to demand more power, prestige and extreme wealth

Question 11

Is it correct to say opposite sex?

Answer 11

No, biologically we are much more similar than different

Question 12

Define binary

Answer 12

Binary refers to a system with two and only two separate and distinct parts

Question 13

Define gender binary

Answer 13

The idea that there are only two types of people and they are fundamentally different and contrasting

Question 14

Define intersex

Answer 14

Born with reproductive anatomy that doesn’t fit the typical definitions of male or female

Question 15

Define gender identity

Answer 15

A sense of oneself as male or female

Question 16

Define gender expression

Answer 16

How we communicate our gender identity

Question 17

What does the idea of oppositeness cause people to do?

Answer 17

• encourages cisgender women and men to maximize apparent differences in their gender expression
• to make the gender binary appear more real than it is

Question 18

Why is this idea of oppositeness needed?

Answer 18

• because there is no biological binary

- to enforce this rigid gender binary we must act like there is a distinct oppositeness between the sexes

Question 19

Define ideology

Answer 19

• set of ideas widely shared by members of a society

- guide identities, behaviours and institutions

Question 20

Define social construct

Answer 20

An arbitrary but influential shared interpretation of reality

Question 21

Define gender binary glasses

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What does our gender binary give us?

Answer 22

Cultural competence

Question 23

What’s useful and not useful about gender binary glasses?

Answer 23

• they allow us to perceive the world the way the people around us do
• however they distort our vision

Question 24

How do gender stereotypes affect and influence memory?

Answer 24

• people are better able to remember things if they fit with gender stereotypes
• this is because gendered things are grouped together, even if they have no correlation

Question 25

Define sexual dimorphism

Answer 25

-typical differences in body type and behaviour between females and males of a species

Question 26

What was the first definition of the word real?

Answer 26

- sex differences are real if we can measure them | - they’re observed differences

Question 27

Define priming

Answer 27

-if you remind test subjects of a stereotype right before you test them their test score will reflect that stereotype

Question 28

What is an example of priming?

Answer 28

- reminding a man or women that they are female or male before you test their empathy - women tend to be more empathetic and men tend to be less

Question 29

Define learned differences

Answer 29

-differences that are a result of how we were raised or our sociocultural environment

Question 30

What is the second definition of the word real?

Answer 30

Sex differences are real if they are observed in all or most contemporary and historical cultures

Question 31

How is the first definition shown to not withstand?

Answer 31

- the idea of priming holds true | - the observable results are biased and subjective

Question 32

How does the second definition not withstand?

Answer 32

The majority of research on sex differences only look at societies that are western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (weird) and only 12% of the worlds population lives in these

Question 33

What is an example that disproves definition 2?

Answer 33

Girls and boys math abilities vary wildly across countries and there is a correlation between sex differences in math ability and the level of gender inequality in that country

Question 34

What is definition three of real?

Answer 34

Sex differences are real if they’re biological i.e. they are caused by our brains, genes or hormones

Question 35

Is the absence or addition of a Y chromosome cause the sex differences?

Answer 35

No, the X chromosome if much larger than the Y chromosome and the Y chromosome only creates testicles and facilitates male fertility. It actually is the reverse, the second X chromosome causes more sex differences

Question 36

What makes definition three not withstand?

Answer 36

-personality traits, emotional states etc don’t have sex specific genetic causes

Question 37

What is definition four of what is real?

Answer 37

Sex differences are real if they’re biological and immutable

Question 38

What are three ways we will look at why humans females and males are so alike?

Answer 38

- bio social interactions - intersectionality - evolution

Question 39

What’s is the nature vs. Nurture debate?

Answer 39

- nature says men and women are born different - nurture says we become different through socialization alone - both are wrong

Question 40

Define naturalism?

Answer 40

The idea that biology affects our behaviour independently of our environment

Question 41

Define culturalism

Answer 41

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

Question 42

Is culturalism or naturalism right?

Answer 42

Neither, it’s a combination of the two

Question 43

Define bio cultural interaction

Answer 43

How our bodies respond to our cultural environment and vice versa

Question 44

Define deceptive differences

Answer 44

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

Question 45

How does intersectionality produce sameness among women and men?

Answer 45

- there are ways in which biology predisposed us to being different but the manifestion of such differences may be muted by the things we share - national, regional and local cultures, quality of education, diet and health etc

Question 46

Define intersectionality

Answer 46

- gender is not an isolated social fact | - instead it intersects with our other identities

Question 47

Define nuclear family

Answer 47

A family with a mom a dad and children who live together without extended kin

Question 48

Define kin groups

Answer 48

Culturally variable collections of people considered family

Question 49

Define doing gender

Answer 49

The ways in which we actively obey and break gender rules

Question 50

Define gender rules

Answer 50

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

Question 51

Define cultural travelling

Answer 51

Moving from one cultural or subcultural context to another

Question 52

What is the injection idea of socialization?

Answer 52

- when genderless children are taught a gender in their childhood that they then carry on for the rest of their lives - assumes children are victims of their environment

Question 53

How does the injection idea fail in three ways?

Answer 53

It does not assume: - we are continuously socialized throughout our lives - we actively could consider and resist gender rules - cultural changes could occur

Question 54

What is the learning model of socialization?

Answer 54

Socialization is a lifelong process of learning and re-learning gender expectations and how to negotiate them

Question 55

What are the four reasons we follow gender rules?

Answer 55

They are habit, pleasure, encouragement and punishment

Question 56

Why do we follow gender roles because of habit?

Answer 56

- Our culture has caused us to become habituated to gender rules - it’s easier to act in gender conforming ways then it is to not - once we have learned a rule we don’t experience it as oppressive but as natural

Question 57

Why is acting in a gendered way pleasurable?

Answer 57

- it feels good to do gendered things they are fun and exciting - some of the pleasure of doing gender can even come from being defiant

Question 58

Why does observation cause us to follow gender roles?

Answer 58

- gender is something we perform and others are watching | - Depending on who is watching we may perform it definitely

Question 59

Why do we follow gender rules because of policing?

Answer 59

Breaking gender rules attracts: | -negative attention and policing

Question 60

Define gender policing

Answer 60

- responses to the violation of gender rules | - aimed at promoting conformity

Question 61

Define account

Answer 61

- an explanation for why the person broke the rule | - works to excuse their behaviour

Question 62

Define accountability

Answer 62

-an obligation to explain why we don’t follow social rules

Question 63

Define policing

Answer 63

yes

Question 64

What is the number one gender rule?

Answer 64

To do gender

Question 65

Define culturally unintelligible

Answer 65

-so outside the symbolic meaning system that people do not know how to interact with you