Gender

Front 1

Martin (1991)

Back 1

She argues that the way human fertilization is viewed is influenced by cultural factors. For example, the egg is viewed as behaving ‘femininely’ and the sperm ‘masculinely’, penetrating and activating the egg, when this doesn't reflect scientific truth.

In actuality, human sperm is quite weak in movement towards the egg, and the view of sperm as being strong and penetrating is entirely constructed.

Front 2

Pepper LaBeija (Paris Is Burning 1990)

Back 2

"To be able to blend. That’s what realness is."

"The realer you look means you look like a real woman. Or you look like a real man. A straight man. It’s not a takeoff, or a satire. No. It’s actually being able to be this."

Front 3

“To choose to appear as “female” when one is “male” is always constructed in the patriarchal mindset as a loss, as a choice worthy only of ridicule”

Back 3

bell hooks "Black Looks" Is Paris Burning? (1992)

Front 4

“Long before there was ever a contemporary feminist movement, the sites of these experiences [drag/transsexualism] were subversive places where gender norms were questioned and challenged”

Back 4

bell hooks "Black Looks" Is Paris Burning? (1992)

Front 5

Venus Xtravaganza, Paris Is Burning (1990)

Back 5

“I don’t feel like there’s anything mannish about me, except maybe what I might have between me down there, which is my little personal thing. I guess that’s why I want my sex change, to make myself complete”

Front 6

Simone de Beauviour

Back 6

De Beauvoir claims that women have always been subordinate, and she does so in saying that there was no before: it is somehow in their physiological structure (de Beauvoir 1949: 8).

Front 7

Butler 1990

Back 7

Butler explains this by saying that gender is always there and that a human was its gender before it became a gender. The mark of gender qualifies the bodies as human bodies and in the sentence “Is it a boy or girl?” express that infants are given a gender, even before they are born (ibid).

Front 8

Herdt (1993)

Back 8

Darwinian theories about Sexual Dimorphism (ie differences in body size shaped by reproductive competition) have influenced thought on the sex dichotomy

Sexologists, anthropologists and historians have all been influenced by these 19th century Darwinian ideas of Sexual Dimorphism

Front 9

Herdt (1993)

Back 9

Mead said that all societies use sexual dimorphism as a major differentiating factor, the same as age

Front 10

Herdt (1993)

Back 10

Geertz said "what falls between [male and female] is darkness, an offense against reason"

Front 11

Herdt (1993)

Back 11

Herdt thinks that third sexes shouldn't be confused with homosexuality / attraction to the same sex (as they traditionally have been)

Sexologists in the mid-19th century assumed that third sex typified a person attracted to the same sex

Front 12

Gayle Rubin (1975)

Back 12

A "sex/gender" system is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity

Front 13

Kessler and McKenna "Gender" (1985)

Back 13

The categories of male and female, based on anatomical criteria, are neither universal or valid concepts for a gendered classification system

Instead, for some cultures, gender ROLE becomes the central constituent for gender (rather than sex). Thus the Berdache is a third category of gender, separate from male or female.

Front 14

Berdache are...

Back 14

Two-Spirit people: Indigenous North Americans who fulfill one of many mixed gender roles found traditionally among many Native Americans and Canadian First Nations communities.