Section Two: Theoretical Perspectives
Learning Objectives
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To differentiate between gender and sex.
To explain the processes societies use to construct gender.
To learn about gender as a social institution that privileges men over women.
To become familiar with how social institutions, like medicine, contribute to the
construction of gender.
To become familiar with intersexual and transgender experiences.
To understand how various structures and unjust power relations maintain gender
distinctions.
To consider how other categories of oppression, like race, are involved in the
construction of gender.
Section Summary
Theories of gender outline the major processes and social structures that create differences and
inequalities between men and women.
 The biological characteristics of men and women are called “sex;” the social statuses and
meanings assigned to men and women is called “gender.”
 Although, there are physical and biological differences between men and women, it can
be difficult to separate biological sex and socially constructed gender.
 Essentialist theory on gender suggests that biological sex differences create the
behavioral differences in men and women.
 Social Constructionist theories on gender assert that differences in men’s and women’s
behaviors are cultural and vary among societies.
 Although most social scientists see gender as socially constructed, it has real
consequences for everyday life.
 This construction of gender is affected by race, class, sexuality, and nationality.
Reading 6: Judith Lorber, “’Night To His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender”
Although gender is often assumed to be natural, it is an all-encompassing social institution that
has power over people. Gender is (1) a process that humans create; (2) a stratification system
that ranks people; and (3) a structure that organizes life.
 People are socialized through parenting practices and life experiences that teach us how
to act.
 Legal and social rules enforce this socialization both symbolically and through
stratification.
 Cultural rituals and other rewards are provided for those who “do gender” appropriately.
 Although other cultures in history have had more than two genders, gender bending, even
by transvestites and transsexuals today, does not challenge gender boundaries.
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Despite the countless ways gender could be constructed, societies try to make all
biological boys perform the same gender as males and all biological girls perform the
same gender as females.
Women are demeaned because they are seen as lacking the characteristics of men that
society privileges.
Reading 7: Suzanne Kessler, “The Medical Construction of Gender”
Kessler proposes that even biological sex distinctions between men and women are socially
constructed. By looking at the medical community’s and parents’ treatment of intersexed
children, she demonstrates that decisions about sex depend, for the most part, on social factors.
Kessler uses six interviews with intersexuality experts in the medical community to reveal how
the strict dichotomy between two sex categories (male/female) is maintained.
 Despite the existence of a variety of intersex categories, physicians promote the socially
constructed idea that there are two distinct sexes by altering the bodies of intersex
children.
 Doctors act as though they can determine the “real sex” of the child and subject the child
to various medical tests during the initial months of the child’s life.
 Physicians decide which sex the child will be made to fit largely based on penis size at
birth, and whether this organ responds to testosterone.
 Physicians normalize the existence of the intersex child to their parents by (1) teaching
parents about fetal development; (2) stressing the “normal” aspects of the baby; (3)
insisting that it is not the gender of the child that is ambiguous but the genetics that are
ambiguous; and (4) stressing the social over the biological nature of gender.
 Physicians often try to ensure that intersexed children develop a socially acceptable
gender identity by using lies and manipulation of parents and children.
Reading 8: Susan Stryker, “Transgender Feminism: Queering the Woman Question”
Stryker describes how bringing transgender phenomena into mainstream feminism and women’s
studies will 1) transform this activism and scholarship by making obvious the structures of
domination and control; 2) make justice more possible; and 3) bring together queer and feminist
projects in productive ways. Transgender feminism focuses on the importance of the body and
embodied experiences while describing gender as a series of possible configurations and
positions.
 Stryker defines transgender as “a way of being a man or a woman, or a way of marking
resistance to those terms” (p.88) and “transgender phenomena” are broadly defined as
“anything that disrupts or denaturalizes normative gender, and which calls our attention
to the processes through which normativity is produced and atypicality achieves
visibility” (p. 85).
 Gender is a mechanism of domination. Transgender stigma, which strips away or
misattributes a person’s gender, has been used as a form of social control to limit how
people demonstrate their gender identities.
 Second wave feminism, particularly cultural and lesbian separatist feminism, was
transphobic and even worked to erase the history of the transgender movement.
 Transgender issues are important to feminism because 1) it offers a revisionist history of
feminism, 2) it engages many of the prominent questions in the social sciences and
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humanities and 3) postmodern or poststructuralist scholars have used transgender
examples as evidence for their theories and conclusions.
Transgender feminism suggests that socially constructed hierarchies are based upon
bodily differences. Understanding transgender examples of nonconforming genders can
disrupt the power structures behind various oppressions and privileges. Transgender
practices and identities highlight the contradictions in gender, sex, and sexuality.
Although the numbers of transgender individuals may be small, articulating transgender
issues taps into issues faced by all of the subgroups (racial, economic, sexual identities,
etc) within feminism. Additionally, transgender issues bridge feminist/gender studies and
queer studies.
Reading 9: Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill, “Theorizing Difference from
Multiracial Feminism”
The authors highlight race’s significance in how gender is organized and experienced in a
framework called “multiracial feminism.” This perspective examines how race and racial
hierarchies influence our understandings of gender.
 The experiences of women of color were excluded from early theories of gender; the
authors propose multiracial feminism as a framework that underscores how race and
class are systems of inequality that shape gender.
 Multiracial feminism goes beyond recognizing the diversity of women’s experiences to
understand how these differences are maintained by structures of domination.
 Women and men are affected by their location in structures of intersecting inequality,
particularly race and class that intersect and determine how people are discriminated
against and/or privileged.
 Race, class and gender intersect, or combine in various ways, to produce social
structures and social interaction.
 Women and men of all races are affected by the social construction of difference in
peoples’ lives. People’s differences are connected in systematic ways that confer
differing levels of power to groups based on race, class and other systems of inequality.
 Although race, class, and gender constrain human actions, people maintain agency and
may resist or undermine these structures.
Boxed Insert: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Feminism and Disability Studies”
The author suggests that more critical analysis of disability is needed. She suggests that New
Disability Studies will challenge views of disability as oppressive and lesser and redefine
disability as another form of human diversity that should be celebrated and incorporated into
everyday life.
 Reimagining disability this way 1) demonstrates that disability occurs in every society
and every family, and most every life, 2) helps people accept that fact, 3) pushes people
to integrate disability into understandings of human experiences.
 Although diversity and biodiversity have become popular, there is a push toward body
uniformity that devalues physical and mental variety in human beings. However
respecting the diversity of human disabilities will value disabled people and make space
for them in spaces and experiences.
 The disability/ability system legitimates an unequal distribution privileges and
disadvantages based upon the body.
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Reading 10: Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Feminism Without Borders”
Mohanty uses an international perspective to describe how race, gender, class, sexuality and
nation are interacting systems of power that disadvantage many, particularly those from the
“Third World,” while privileging others.
 The globalization of economics and labor has connected people in hierarchal
relationships where the “Third World,” and socioeconomic analysis must go beyond the
nation-state.
 The “Third World” is made up of people from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the
Middle East and people of color in the United States and Europe.
 Third World feminist struggles make up an “imagined community” where potential
cultural and political alliances could challenge structures of racism, sexism, colonialism,
imperialism, and monopoly capitol.
 Little comprehensive research exists on the struggles of Third World women. Instead
they are often seen as deficient in comparison to white, Western women.
 Third World women’s potential political alliance lies in their struggles against
exploitative structures and systems.
 Third World feminism focuses on the simultaneity of oppressions and the complex
interrelationship between struggles against these oppressions.
 Additionally, Third World women are interested in rewriting history and politics based
on the everyday experiences of people of color and postcolonial peoples.
Reading 11: Bob Connell, “Masculinities and Globalization”
There are multiple forms of masculinity that vary by historical time period, geographic location,
race, and systems of domination. Although masculinities are particular to their “ethnographic
moment,” there are also global aspects of modern masculinities. The global gender order
specifies divisions of labor among countries and creates hierarchies that rank men and women in
relation to their position in the world economy.
 Masculinities are constructed by groups and institutions and are actively produced
through social interaction. Masculinity and femininity are produced together.
 Some forms of masculinity are hegemonic; these forms are the most honored desired
and/or dominant forms of masculinity. Other types of masculinities are subordinated.
 Institutions like the global marketplace and the state are gendered. The globalization of
many institutions has produced a world gender order. The world gender order started with
imperialism and continues with the globalization of economies. Today there is a highly
unequal and partially integrated world society.
 The culture and institutions of the North Atlantic countries are hegemonic in the world
system. The export of these institutions defines masculinity and femininity and brings
about specific gender practices.
 The world gender order is patriarchal; it privileges men over women.
 Colonialism and neo-colonialism subverted traditional gender orders of many indigenous
peoples in each time period: conquest and settlement, empire and postcolonialism and
neoliberalism.
 Today the hegemonic masculine form is the “trans-national business masculinity” which
involves increased individualism and only a commitment to accumulation.
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Forms of masculinity are always open to change and challenge from individuals and
groups.
Boxed Insert: Alice Walker, “Womanist”
Walker offers various definitions of a “womanist.” These definitions suggest ways that feminists
of color are both similar to and distinct from white feminists.
 A womanist redefines women as good.
 A womanist is seen as only a shade different from a feminist.
 Love for herself, other women, and all people is central to a womanist.
Discussion Questions
Reading 6: Judith Lorber, “’Night To His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender”
1.
2.
3.
4.
What does Lorber mean when she says “gender means sameness” and “gender means
difference”? How does gender create differences between men and women? How does
gender create sameness among all women and among all men?
How are the genders ranked in a way that privileges men over women? What does this
mean for our daily lives?
Why does Lorber say that women who become men receive prestige, while men who
become women lose it? How is this complicated by society’s stigmatization of
transexuality?
Lorber suggests that gender bending and passing between genders preserves gender
boundaries. Do you agree? How might the gender bending of transsexuals and people who
are transgender challenge society’s ideas about gender?
Reading 7: Suzanne Kessler, “The Medical Construction of Gender”
5.
6.
7.
8.
How many sexes do most people in Western societies believe there are? How do cultural
understandings about gender affect the medical and parenting decisions regarding intersex
children?
What do doctors believe guides their decision about what the sex of the baby should be?
On what do physicians base their decision regarding the sex of the child? How does this
help explain the reasons people believe gender is a natural system of differences?
How do physicians normalize the intersex condition of a child to the parents? How do the
physicians’ practices maintain the secrecy and stigma of intersex?
How do the doctors explain the condition to the child as the child grows up? Are the
doctor’s actions misleading?
Reading 8: Susan Stryker, “Transgender Feminism: Queering the Woman Question”
9.
What does transgender mean? Do you agree with Stryker that transgender is not an
identity?
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10. Why does Stryker believe that transgender feminism is so important? What are the three
sets of concerns that transgender phenomena open up? Are there other ways that
transgender issues transform feminism/women’s studies?
11. How do transgender phenomena focus feminism on embodied experiences? Why is this
important?
12. How do the constraints of sex and gender affect your embodied experiences? How might
transgender feminism challenge the social control you experience?
13. In what ways does transgender feminism make claims to justice? Do you think these claims
encompass all of the groups that Stryker suggests?
Reading 9: Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill, “Theorizing Difference from
Multiracial Feminism”
14. What is “multiracial feminism” as Baca Zinn and Thornton Dill see it? Where did it come
from, and why was it developed?
15. Why do the authors see a “false universalism” in the category of “woman”? Whose
experiences were left out? How does looking at the experiences of minority or poor women
change the way that gender had been theorized?
16. There are a variety of ways that women are differentiated. Why do Maxine Baca Zinn and
Bonnie Thornton Dill focus on race? What other categories do you think are systems of
inequality that differentiate women’s experiences?
17. What do Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill mean when they say that race and
gender are “interlocking inequalities”? How does race affect the way women or men
experience gender? How does class affect the experiences of gender? How does class affect
race?
18. Baca Zinn and Dill suggest that race, gender, and class are all primary organizing features
of our lives. If this is the case, how do people have agency? How is resistance or underling
of these structures possible?
Boxed Insert: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Feminism and Disability Studies”
19. What does the author suggest New Disability Studies will do? Why is it important to study
disability in this way?
20. Do you agree with Garland-Thonsom that disability is like gender and race? Are humans
guilty of limiting biodiversity by changing or eliminating disabilities?
Reading 10: Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Feminism Without Borders”
21. Mohanty describes Third World women and Third World Feminism. Who are Third World
women? What links them in this broad category? How are they often seen as “different”
from the perceived norm of white, Western women?
22. What are “imagined communities”? How are they created? What is the difference between
an imagined community and a social category?
23. How do you think it will be possible to create a global feminism? What types of issues
should this feminism look at?
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Reading 11: Bob Connell, “Masculinities and Globalization”
24. What are some of the recent lessons about masculinity from ethnographic research that
Connell describes?
25. What types of masculinities developed during colonization/settlement? What types
developed during the empire stage? What about now during postcolonialism/
neoliberalism? How are the masculinities of the three stages of globalization different?
How are they similar?
26. How does the globalization of trade, labor, and markets influence masculinities? Can you
think of ways that it influences femininities?
Boxed Insert: Alice Walker, “Womanist”
27. How does the womanist point of view differ from the feminist point of view?
28. How does the womanist point of view relate to the standpoint theory used by Hill Collins in
Reading 8?
Assignments and Exercises
Sex/Gender Distinction: This exercise can be useful, since many students have difficulty
distinguishing between sex and gender. Provide students with the following list or a similar list.
Ask whether each item is determined by sex or gender. Ask students to defend their answers.
Continue to discuss why we sometimes believe these to be biological factors, when they are
socially constructed.
A. dressing girls in pink and boys in blue
B. boys behaving aggressively and girls behaving passively
C. the military Special Forces is mostly men
D. more women than men stay home with their children
E. the two categories of men or women
F. women have to wear shirts in public; men do not
G. sex organs
Understanding Trans: Lorber’s piece has been consistently criticized for its treatment of people
who call themselves “transgender” or “transsexual, and students may be curious about this group
of people after reading Stryker’s piece. Hand out the Gender Education and Advocacy resource
“Gender: A Primer” to students. Ask students to make a list of assumptions Lorber makes about
“transsexuals” and “transvestites.” Now ask students to compare these assumptions to the
information on the handout and to what Stryker says.
The handout may be found at the website: http://www.gender.org/resources/dge/gea01004.pdf
Imagining Intersex Children: This exercise is designed to have students put themselves in the
position of the parents or children in Kessler’s piece in order to better understand intersexuality.
Ask students to imagine that they have just had a baby. Ask them what they expect will be the
first thing the doctor will tell them. Now ask them to imagine the baby has intersex
characteristics. What would they want to do about this? Finally, ask students to imagine that
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they are intersexed young adults whose bodies have been put through many surgeries and
hormone treatments in order to fit into a rigid sex category. How would they feel about their
body, the doctors, and their parents?
Trans and Intersex Activism: Students should understand that there are advocacy groups for
people who challenge the categories of gender. Have students explore the Web for sites such as:
http://www.gender.org
http://www.isna.org/
http://www.gpac.org/
Ask students to describe how these groups actively challenge the binary categories of male and
female. What kinds of problems do people who are trans or intersex face? What are these
groups doing to ameliorate these problems?
Library Exercise: Theories of Gender
Academic journals print articles that explore a wide variety of topics relating to gender. Students
should go to the library or access their library’s journal on-line. Students should write a one-page
summary of the article they choose from a journal that specializes in issues of gender. The writeup should discuss what theory the author(s) use and how it relates to one or more of the articles
in Section Two. Here are a few of the journals that students may choose to focus on: Men and
Masculinities, Gender and Society, Genders, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society,
Gender, Technology and Development, International Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist
Theory, and Feminist Criminology.
Globalization of Masculinity and Femininity
In class show clips from a variety of popular movies from around the world, pass around popular
magazines from different countries, or show commercials from multiple locations. Ask students
to think about the many portrayals of masculinity and femininity. What are the similarities? How
do these portrayals vary by race or geographic location? Do these portrayals indicate a
hegemonic form of masculinity or femininity? Can students see a pattern that indicates a gender
hierarchy?
Thinking About Intersectionality
Many of the authors in Section Two describe how gender affects people’s lives in concert with
race, class, and other hierarchies. Ask students to describe how race (or class) affects the
everyday gendered activities such as getting ready for work or school, attending school or
working, or shopping. What lessons does this provide for thinking about the theories in Section
Two?
Using Popular Movies to Demonstrate Intersectionality
Popular movies can provide a visual example of the intersectionality of gender, race, and class.
Movies can be shown in class or excerpted to help students think about how race, class, and
gender are interconnected. Suggested movies: Bend It Like Beckham, Real Women Have Curves,
Bread and Roses, Girlfight, and The Color Purple.
Web Links
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African-American Women
African-American women have made many important contributions to social change and to
social theory. These two websites provide brief introductions to the accomplishments of black
women and to scholarship on black feminist thought.
www.library.ucsb.edu/blackfeminism/index.html
www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/AfAm.html
Intersex Society of North America
Although many take human sexual dimorphism—the division of the species into two sexes—for
granted, the existence of intersexed persons challenges the belief that human bodies are naturally
only male or female. In recent years, the Intersex Society of North America has become a strong
advocate for the rights of intersexed people. Read about their interesting work on their website.
www.isna.org/index.html
Isis International Manila
This feminist organization seeks to expand knowledge about and for women, particularly those
women of the global South. Women’s problems and opportunities are dependant upon their
geographic location and their race. The publications and the advocacy of Isis reflect the insights
of women from these regions.
http://www.isiswomen.org/
Gender Education and Advocacy
Transsexual peoples’ experiences are discussed by Judith Lorber in Reading 6. This website
explores transsexual and transgender issues in much greater detail. Think about how trans people
challenge or reinforce gender norms. What particular oppressions do they face?
http://www.gender.org
Gender Public Advocacy Coalition
Gender stereotypes often cause people to act in violent or discriminatory ways. Gender Public
Advocacy Coalition provides information and advocacy against gender discrimination. Follow
some of the links to recent news stories to see how gender stereotyping continues to limit
people’s opportunities.
http://www.gpac.org/
Nation Center for Transgender Equality
This organization uses advocacy, collaboration and empowerment to achieve equality for
transgender people. This website provides information on legal and political issues facing
transgender Americans, and suggests ways that individuals may take action on these issues.
http://www.nctequality.org/
The Society for Disability Studies
The Boxed Insert on feminism and disability describes disability studies as an important
challenge to mainstream understandings of disability as something that is bad, lesser, or in need
of change. This organization’s Mission Statement explains that the group’s purpose, “through
research, artistic production, teaching and activism, the Society for Disability Studies seeks to
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augment understanding of disability in all cultures and historical periods, to promote greater
awareness of the experiences of disabled people, and to advocate for social change.”
www.disstudies.org/
The Transsexual Menace
Judith Lorber describes transsexuals, but many transsexuals see themselves differently than she
describes. The Transsexual Menace, an activist organization devoted to addressing the social and
political challenges facing trans people, spells out some of the difficulties of transitioning from
one sex to the other.
http://www.themenace.net/
XY: Men, Masculinities, and Gender Politics
Many discussions about gender focus on women. However femininity is constructed in relation
to masculinity. It is important to look at how masculinities are formed, operate, and affect our
lives. This website provides links to many articles about masculinity and its intersection with
other categories of difference. There is also a bibliography on a variety of topics on men and
links to other interesting websites on masculinity.
http://www.xyonline.net/index.shtml
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