Multicultural
Summer Institute
Summer 2003
"Strange
Fruit": The Social Construction of Gender
and Sex
Wednesday, July 10, 2003
Multicultural
Summer Institute |
||
"Strange
Fruit": The Social Construction of Gender
and Sex |
|
| Reading | Fausto-Sterling, Anne. "The Fives Sexes: Why Male and
Female Are Not Enough." The Meaning Of Difference: American Constructions of Race, Sex and Gender, Social Class, and Sexual Orientation.
Eds. Karen E. Rosenblum and Toni-Michelle C. Travis. McGraw-Hill,1995. 68-73. Lorber, Judith. "The Social Construction of Gender." Women's Voices, Feminist Visions. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company. 2001. 121-124. Pharr, Suzanne. "Homophobia as a Weapon of Sexism." Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, 5th Edition. Ed. Paula S. Rothenberg. New York: Worth Publishers. 2001. 143-152. |
| Assignment Due | Draft of Paper #1 at the beginning of class |
| GOAL | Understanding that sex,
in addition to gender, is a social construction. Discovering the current state of the law regarding hate crime jurisprudence Obtaining a visceral understanding of the nature to which gender is embedded in society |
OUTLINE
HATE CRIMES: Definition and the current state of the law
Virginia vs Black (2003) USSC rules that a 50-year
old Virginia statute preventing all cross burning is unconstitutional, but
upheld the part of the same law that allowed prosecutors to charge people with a
crime if the act was a threat and not a form of symbolic expression [O’Connor
5-4].
Wisconsin
vs Mitchell (1993) USSC rules that Wisconsin’s hate crime enhancement
statute IS constitutional [Rehnquist 9-0]
Texas vs Johnson (1989) USSC rules 5-4 that flag burning is protected speech by the first amendment (Brennan)
A "hate crime" is therefore: a criminal
offense committed against a person or property, where the motive is
pre-existing bias against the group to which that person is presumed or
perceived to belong. The mere fact that the perpetrator is indeed prejudiced
against his victim is not sufficient to designate an offense as a "hate
crime," but rather that bias must provide the motivating circumstance behind
the criminal act committed (Source: Triangle Foundation).
II.
Social
Construction of "Gender"
GENDER: the characteristics, assumptions, expectations
and 'scripts' ascribed by societal forces to a particular biological SEX.
SEX:
the biological characteristic of humans known as
male and female.
The point of today’s class is to get a full appreciation for the inherent nature of gender hierarchy and the degree to which it is embedded in our society.
Many dictionaries
will define gender and sex as synonyms. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is credited
for promoting the use of the word “gender” for “sex” in legal parlance
because she was embarrassed to use the word sex due to its association with
sexual intercourse. In fact of the 1964 Civil Rights Act only included “sex”
as a category of prohibited discrimination because people thought that would
cause the bill to NOT pass. [The categories are: “race, national origin, color
or sex.” When she was an employee of the ACLU in the 1970s Justice Ginsburg
won 6 of 7 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court concerning equal rights for
women, which is why when President Clinton nominated her to the Court some
feminists called her “our Thurgood Marshall.”
Define term: signifier (term) -> signified (meanings
associated with term)
A signifying chain: female/male -> feminine/masculine
-> whole host of socially constructed ideologies
The Fausto-Sterling piece is a distillation of a classic article which details the generally surprising way the identity characteristic of sex is also a site of contestation and a social construct, as opposed to gender, which is generally accepted/expected to be socially constructed.
But first, let’s think
about the ways in which the social construction of gender is similar/different
to the social construction of race. In "The Social Construction of
Race" Ian Haney Lopez discussed features of “race formation”:
Clearly “gender formation” has all these features and more. It is a binary, i.e. there are only two genders: masculine and feminine
The fact that gender has a
dualistic nature means that it also has a dichotomous hierarchy: (masculinity is
superior/femininity is inferior).
Note, though that not all
the characteristics associated with one half of the binary is positive, and that
not all the
corresponding characteristics on the other half are negative. This is (not?) similar to
the White/non-White binary.
Discussion:
Q:
How is the border between the binaries regulated or policed?
A: See Suzanne Pharr's article
III. Social Construction of "sex"
Professor Julie Greenberg
is one of the leading legal experts on analyzing transsexuality and the law and
has been cited in numerous legal cases, the most prominent being Littleton itself, as well as Estate
of Gardiner (Kansas Supreme Court, 2002)
Intersexuals
have a combination of both male and female sexual characteristics. Examples, are
the herms (short for hermaphrodite) having both testes and ovaries, the merms
have testes and XY chromosomes but also a vagina and clitoris, while ferms have
ovaries, XX, sometimes a uterus but some external male genitalia.
The point Fausto-Sterling
is making is that sex, far from being a strict binary feature, should really
exist on a continuum from male to female.
Greenberg highlights this
point in addition to the fluidity/plasticity of sex by pointing out that the
taxonomy of individuals by sex occurs on an 8-point scale :