Women's Studies Midterm
Joyce L. Huff (discourse) (equality) (privilege)
"Access to the Sky" -The notion of the adaptable body, with its supposed ability to conform to norms, comes to serve as the basis for social imperative that compels individuals to strive for normalcy -"Monitoring discourse" discussing the ways in which the compulsory norming of bodies has been represented as a disabled persons problem, when such issues should be central to current discussions of identity policy (example, southwest enforcing fat people to buy 2 seats so they don't take anyone else's' space) -The stigmatizing potential of this discourse is that if individuals are responsible for solutions to social problems, and then it follows that they are to blame if solutions aren't found, southwest has a stigma that fat represents a differentness that are neither anticipated nor desired and that. It also implies that individuals can and should adapt their bodies to meet the needs of corporations -Sparks the true debate: the definition of the normal, opposed to the "special" body -Universalizing discourse: It's an issue of universal human rights when people are prevented from traveling because of their personal attributes, culture is constructed to meet the needs of some individuals and not others, solution is the reconstruction of the physical and social environment to meet the needs of a greater number of people
C.J. Pascoe (discourse) (gender) (heteronormativity) (institutions)
"Guys Are Just Homophobic" -Homophobic taunts, jokes, teasing and harassment are central to the ways in which contemporary american boys come to think of themselves as men, through making homophobic jokes, boys attempt to assure themselves and others of their masculinity (fag discourse, boys publicly rejecting what is considered unmasculine) -Masculinity is repeated signaling to self and others that one is powerful, competent, unemotional, heterosexual and dominant -Eminem exception: he doesn't call people ****** because of their sexual orientation, but because they are weak and unmanly. If a man were gay and masculine, he does not deserve the insult -In order for boys to maintain a sense of themselves as masculine, they have to directly attack effeminate men, a symbol of what they feared most, masculine nothingness -Compulsive heterosexuality comprises of: rituals of getting girls, rituals of touch (which reinforces boys' dominance over girls' bodies) and sex talk (locker room talk, asserting their knowledge of sex through vicarious experiences) -To understand the role of sexuality in maintaining gender inequality it is important to look at sexuality as an institution, heterosexuality systematically disempowers women, and compulsive heterosexuality reinforces linkages between sexuality, dominance and violence, not a reflection of an internal set of emotions
Chris Ingraham (gender) (heteronormativity) (gender socialization) (heterosexual imaginary) (patriarchy) (discourse) (institutions) (essentialism vs social construction)
"One is Not Born a Bride" -"our sexual orientation or sexual identity...is defined by the symbolic order of that world through the use of verbal/non-verbal language and images" -heterosexuality is a social category -category of woman and meaning attached it it would not exist if there wasn't a political regime of patriarchal heterosexuality ***heterosexual imaginary***: an imagined/illusory relationship between an individual and their social world, relies on romantic and sacred notions of heterosexuality to create & maintain the illusion of wellbeing and oneness -Wedding culture plays a central role in our enforcement of heteronormativity -marriage = primary requirement for social & economic benefits -*women were not born with a need to be married, they are socialized into the role of a bride* -weddings are used as a form of ideological control and also signify that a couple is normal, moral, productive, family-centered, and appropriately gendered and sexual -$35 billion/year wedding industry -companies make wedding toys for children in order to secure them as consumers as they grow older -**romancing of heterosexuality in the interests of capitalism**
Margo DeMello (institutions) (intersectionality) (equality) (privilege)
"Racialized and Colonized Bodies" -People who share a number of physical characteristics do not share intellectual or emotional characteristics, however due to discrimination and stereotyping people begin to think certain people are smarter thanks to their skin color -Colonialism was the birth of the system of racialization whereby groups of humans are categorized and ranked by a new concept known as "race" -Hypodescent: the way in which children of mixed-race parentage are classified, any child born of a white and a black parent is automatically assigned the race of the "subordinate parent" -Human zoos: Displays in which visitors could gawk at native people from colonized nations in reconstructed villages, for example, at the 1876 centennial international exhibition in philly, native people were exhibited and it was called "ethnographic display" -Dual marriage system: whereby in the Caribbean, even after the arrival of european women, white men had a legal white wife and a black concubine -In racialized cultures like the United States, on every health and morality measure, including life expectancy, infant mortality, cancer survival rates, and more, whites have better health and survival prospects -Race has been socially constructed into a system in order to divide humans and to provide privileges and benefits to some
Moya Bailey (privilege) (intersectionality) (discourse) (institutions)
"The Illest" -Bailey believes rap music contains ableist phrases and that these words have extreme power -phrases such as "let's get retarded" and "go dumb" are seen as ableist -claims that black people "actively flout societal conventions of quiet and sane behavior" to challenge their marginalization in a culture that renders them invisible -hip hop dancing often includes "losing control" which is lyrically manifested in music as ableist language such as "getting retarded and going dumb" -blatant use of this offensive language speaks to the invisibility of ableism in pop culture
J Wallace (intersectionality) (gender socialization) (institutions) (gender) (transgender) (privilege) (essentialism vs social construction)
"The Manly Art of Pregnancy" -a pregnant person is a biologist, a mechanic, a weight lifter, and someone providing for their family-- this makes *pregnancy a manly act because these are all masculine things* -Wallace experienced prejudice and ignorance because people did not expect a man to be pregnant -maternity clothes marketed to women -Wallace "grew a penis" by having a male fetus -*Protecting family* is a central masculine ideal that Wallace felt he was embodying
Suzanna Danuta Walters (essentialism vs. social construction) (transgender) (equality) (heteronormativity)
"The Medical Gayz" -The "born this way" framework is a core commitment to an absolute "nature versus nurture" dichotomy, tolerance as a theme of contemporary gay rights is dependent on biological arguments -This framework depends on the arguments to embrace gays who just can't help themselves -It leads to the thinking that same sex love is "natures mistake" or homosexuality is evidence of brain inversion -"Political lesbianism" offering up same-sex desire as a positive and pro-woman choice that rejected compulsory heterosexuality and medicalized models, sexual and emotional choice was a radical mode that promised a freedom beyond mere tolerance -Saying its biological leads to the 'breakthrough" discovery of the "cause" of homosexuality, leads to a perception that gayness, specifically male, is innate, immutable, predetermined in some finite and marked and knowable way -Presents an overoptimistic view of the role of genetics in social problems and misinforms public knowledge -Sociobiological explanations of human homosexuality wind up naturalizing heterosexuality by holding up homosexuality as a challenge for evolutionary theorists to explain
Lilia Abu-Lughod (privilege) (intersectionality) (equality) (discourse) (gender) (difference)
"The Muslim Woman" -in Western imagination, image of veiled Muslim woman stands for oppression in the Muslim world -sets up an "us" and "them" mentality -veiling should not be confused with a lack of agency or traditionalism -contrary to popular western belief, the Taliban did not invent the burqa, and it was used as a local form of covering for women that represented modesty and respectability -to many, the veil signifies belonging to particular communities and the home is associated with the sanctity of women -we shouldn't pity Muslim women when we don't understand them
Buck Angel (gender) (heteronormativity) (intersectionality) (transgender) (discourse)
"The power of my vagina" -Angel was the first female to male porn star and wanted to represent himself as a transexual man who was sexual and confident -Showed that trans men didn't need a penis to be a "complete man" and challenged how our society defines gender on a basis of genitals alone -His kind of feminism: taking control of our bodies, naming them on our terms, and being unafraid of using our power, especially sexually
Dean Spade (institutions) (privlege) (equality)
"Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer" -5 realities about criminal punishment that are helpful in analyzing the limitation of hate crime legislation to prevent violence or bring justice after its happened: jails and prisons are not full of dangerous people, they are full of people of color, poor people, and people with disabilities, most violence happens between people who know each other, in our homes, schools and with familiar spaces, the people who destroy and end the most lives- government workers, courtrooms, military and policemen- are still on the outside, prisons aren't places to put serial killers and rapists, prisons are the serial killers and rapists- prisons and jails are spaces of extreme violence, and increasing criminalization does not make us safer it just feeds the voracious law enforcement systems that devour our communities. -3 strategies taken up by queer and trans activists that want to stop homophobic violence: projects that connect queer and trans people outside of prisons to people currently imprisoned for friendship and support, dismantling work and building alternative ways to deal with violence in our communities and families that don't involve the police.
Nicola Gavey (heteronormativity) (heterosexual imaginary) (patriarchy)
"Viagra and the Coital Imperative" -The widely overshared presumption that heterosexual sex is penis and vagina intercourse and that anything else is either preliminary to real sex -Forcing women into traditional forms of intamicy premised on male domination -Most men using viagra are beyond their procreating stages in life, yet while the reproductive function is no longer valorized, the heterosexual act for reproduction is -Viagra represents the invitation to understand erectile changes as pathology rather than simply natural change -Viagra works to re-naturalize and re-normalize the centrality of intercourse to heterosexual sex
