History of Gender Idea

• Gender as a concept first used by Greek Sophists in fifth century B.C. to describe the names of masculine, feminine, intermediate.

• Latin describes third category as “neither” (Lyons 1968 in Archer/Lloyd)

• Early western ideas acknowledge people who are neither clearly biologically male or female

Mid-20th Century Academics:John Money

• Academic interest in hermaphrodites—people presenting “dimorphism” of biology—gonadal, genital anomalies, fetal hormone effects, developmental differences

• Psychologist John Money (Johns Hopkins University) in 1955 argues for “assigned sex” that would make a person take on a “gender identity.” 20th century concern with “fixing” the intersexed.

• Social constructionism splits sex from gender

The “Agnes” case• Agnes presents herself to UCLA academics in 1958 (including

sociologist Harold Garfinkel) seeking plastic surgery for what she defines as hormonal abnormalities

• Physical signs clearly show she was born and raised male, but she had been taking her mother’s estrogens from the time she was 12 to make her a female.

• She obtained a sex change operation. • 1968—UCLA psychiatrist Robert Stoller publishes Sex and Gender

and defines “gender” as a term with “psychological or cultural rather than biological connotations”

• Most famous transsexual of period, Christine Jorgenson, m to f.• Then differentiated transsexual (gender choice) from intersexed

(biological hermaphrodite)

Gender Identity Academics

• Academics construct notions of “core gender identity” study in university “Gender Identity Research Clinics”. “core gender identity” defined as inner sense of being female/male

• Belief by Money that turn a biological male at birth into a female simply through “proper” female socialization—Joan/John, David Reimer case

• Milton Diamond’s challenge of biological ideas (Colapinto’s discussion)

“Ambiguous” Genitalia

• Importance of biological anomalies as challenge to concepts of sex and gender as binary systems.

• Kessler: “physician as discoverer and the physician as determiner of gender” in Wharton.

• Concept of what is “natural” a social construction by academic and medical social interests

Transsexuality

• Hausman argues the concept of gender, medical technological developments allowed doctors to act on demands for sex change—to change people from one sex to another

• Fausto-Sterling study of intersexuality, meta-analysis of studies of outcomes, the “surgical fix”—doctors decided “nature’s intention” related to “acceptable” penis size, the “phall-O-metrics” (p. 59)

• Today transsexual defined as someone who has undergone a sex change operation (see psychology of gender textbooks)

Transgendered

• Defined today as persons with a “gender identity problem” or gender dysphoria—persons who feel their biological sex is incongruent with their psychological sex

• Current popular media discussions with identical twins where one experiences problem and other doesn’t—is it nature or nurture and how?

Anthropology: third sex cultures

• Interest in societies where male/female were not binary began in anthropology

• Examples include hijras (India), transvestis, bichas, viados (Brazil), kathoey (Thailand), sworn virgins (Albania), Native American “third sexes”

Social Construction/Interactionism

• Social interactionism—peoples’ interactions construct gender in social contexts

• Social categorization—processes through which individuals classify themselves and others as members of groups, sex category

• Ethnomethodology and “doing gender”—presentation of self as female/male

• Status characteristics’ theory—people expect sex category behaviors

• Homophily theory—consequences of people classifying others as similar, different from self

“Doing Gender”

• People “do gender” as habit, automatic, taken for granted; how does social interaction between people produce gender?

• Gender is an accomplishment and a performance• Ethnomethodologists see sex categories

(male/female) as social constructions, not “natural.” Natural is what is socially defined as such.

• Consider role of power and production of inequalities because of these definitions and interactions.

Status Characteristics theory• Theory of “expectation states”—people orient self to others

with categories• Expect certain behaviors based on those categories• Behaviors have “status characteristics”—attributes have

greater or lesser worthiness, social esteem• In U.S. society, men regarded more positively than women??• Goal-oriented expectations where people assess how

competent others are (“performance expectations”) at achieving gender (“Mine is bigger than yours.”)

• Group composition/expectations determine interactions more than individual choices/personalities

Homophily theory• People prefer sameness-people like themselves and in

their communities—”people like us”• Trust more with greater sense of kinship and feelings of

comfort; similarity-attraction hypotheses• Threatened and less committed to people who are

different, heterogenous• Tsui et al. found whites and men (members of

historically dominant US groups) reacted more negatively to being different than non-whites, women in work settings.

• Kanter: tokens, dominants in skewed groups

The Western Sex/Gender Split• Gender split off from biological sex in western

(US/Europe) ideas reflects the binary split of male/female in western societies

• Biological intersexed, social choice transgendered, cultural diversity challenge to sex/gender split and also challenge ideas about male/female

• Diversity in societies, cultures and histories challenges absolutes found in religious traditions and in biological theories about female/male

• Beliefs about sex/gender operate within everyday social hierarchies which need academic analysis

Reconceptualizations

• Fausto-Sterling argues multiple genders

• Friedman argues SexGender as a continuum going from physical sex to cultural gender, a continuum of colored dots

U.S. Political Context• U.S. feminists used “gender” from 1970s on—social

construction means oppressive institutions of gender can change

• In U.S., challenges from social movement activists organizing for rights of transgender/transsexual, intersexed individuals, gay marriage advocates

• Politics and culture wars between social conservatives critics of “gender feminists” (Christine Hoff Sommers 1990s) and critics of social constructionism (includes Christian evangelicals, conservative Republicans, “independent” feminists) vs. social liberals, social constructionists, liberal feminists who support sex/gender split, individual rights

References• Wharton, Chaps. 2, 3; John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him• Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body (2000)• Sarah Fenstermaker and Candace West Eds, Doing Gender, Doing

Difference (2002)• Asia Friedman, “Bringing the ‘Sex’ Back In” (unpublished paper

2005)• Harold Garfinkle, Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967)• Bernice Hausman, Changing Sex (1995)• John Money and Anke Ehrhardt, Man & Woman, Boy & Girl (1972)• Serena Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman: the Hijras of India (1999);

Gender Diversity (2000)• Robert Stoller, Sex and Gender (1968)