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GNSE - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Gender is a process of continuous enactment-never a static trait
      - Sex category refers to how others read and classify us (through social monitoring)
      - Example: When the clerk could not determine whether he was male or female he caused discomfort-he demonstrates that social ambiguity around gender causes disruption to social order
    - - Gender is performativity: the continued enactments of the same behaviors, over time, produce the illusion of a stable gender identity
      - There is no "real" gender beneath the performance-the performance produces the gender
      - It is the repetition of these citations that makes gender appear inevitable/natural
      - Creates the opportunity for subversive actions-if gender is a performance then it may be performed differently
    - - Illustrates how gender is socialized in children beginning in early childhood through continual reinforcement/instruction
      - The never-ending commands instruct young girls how to act, dress, talk, and move
      - Gender norms are reinforced through repetition and discipline
      - Illustrates how performance is learned-not innate
  - - - "One is not born, but becomes a woman": The famous quote illustrates that womanhood is acquired through social conditioning-not biology
      - "Woman" is defined as the Other in relation to man (man = Subject-woman = Object)
      - Societal expectations and limitations-socialization-shape girls into women
    - - Extends De Beauvoir's work: argues "woman" only exists as a category in relation to "man"
      - "Woman" is a politically constructed category by heterosexual systems
      - Challenges the notion that "woman" is a natural group with a common essence
      - Lesbians evade the category "woman" through rejecting heterosexual systems (we will return to this in Resistance)
  - - - Challenging the binary model of sex (male/female)
      - Pointing out that there are intersex individuals-but they are pushed into binary categories through medical practice
      - Advancing the concept of recognizing five types of sex: male, female, herms, merms, ferms
      - Biology does not provide us with clear-cut categories-we socially/medically assign categories to biological variability
    - - Showing how scientific nomenclature incorporates gendered presumptions
      - Linnaeus chose the name "Mammalia" (mammals)-based on the female mammary gland
      - Choosing to highlight female reproductive functions at a time when feminist arguments regarding women's social roles were being debated
      - Exhibiting that science is not objective, it is informed by culturally accepted ideas about gender
    - - Explaining how researchers have historically studied and defined sex
      - What constitutes "sex" in biology has undergone continuous redefinition
      - Science is socially constructed through research methodology-not simply discovered
  - - - Across time and geography, societies organize sexuality in vastly different ways
        
        Categories that are now commonly used to describe people (gay/straight/bi) are very recent creations
        
        Sexual norms are not absolute; they are culturally created to fit within their own specific cultural context.
    - - Power does not suppress sexuality, it produces it through discourse
      - Modern power doesn't forbid us from talking about sex, it compels us to confess it endlessly
      - Sexuality is a significant location where modern states can control and monitor their populations (biopolitics)
      - What we call liberation (the ability to speak openly about sex), is actually a form of power and regulation.
    - - Historical examples of other cultures expressing same-sex desire in different ways
      - Ancient Greece had its own categories of sexuality, which differ significantly from those of the modern Western world
      - Same-sex desire is not universally understood or expressed in the same way throughout all cultures and time
- - - - Transgender individuals resist the health-care gate-keepers that require them to meet the standards of the gender binary in order to receive medical care.
      - Healthcare providers attempt to restrict who can undergo surgery (or other medical interventions) to undergo transition and when they may do so.
      - Resistance by trans individuals contests the notion that there is only one correct means of having a gendered body.
    - - Gender is an act if it’s an act, then it can be acted on in many different ways, to contest the usual norms.
      - Drag, gender nonconformity, etc., show how gender is created, not biological; therefore, all gender is a performance, imitation.
  - - - Individuals find ways to survive and assert their agency by engaging in hustling and using creative methods to navigate limited options and exploitational systems.
      - Hustling represents both exploitation and the assertion of agency.
      - Survival strategies are reflective of structural inequalities, however, they also represent resourcefulness and resistance.
    - - Sex work is labor, and claiming agency is not asking for rescue, but rather for workers’ rights
      - Criminalizing sex work causes harm to sex workers by forcing them to operate in unsafe environments
      - Sex workers are organizing to advocate for decriminalization, safety and labor protections
    - - Marine mammals are used as metaphors for social connections and collective survival
      - Social connections, care and the ability to breathe together are forms of resistance
  - - - Sexual pleasure and the erotic as a source of empowerment and resistance.
      - The erotic is a source of personal strength and empowerment; it is an internal resource that links feelings to action.
      - The systems of oppression seek to suppress the erotic because it undermines the systems of hierarchical control.
    - - Lesbianism is a political identity, not simply a sexual one.
      - Lesbianism rejects the category “women,” which is defined by heterosexuality and the societal systems that create definitions of women as secondary to men.
      - Lesbianism is a rejection of the entire social system that is responsible for producing gendered oppression.
  - - - Organizing as black feminists represents a model for liberatory politics.
      - Freedom for the most marginalized will create conditions for the freedom of others.
      - Collective organizing across differences while prioritizing those impacted by multiple forms of oppression.
    - - Colonizer settler obsession with population growth and nuclear family structures are challenged and proposed to be replaced with making kin.
      - Indigenous kinship systems offer alternatives to capitalist/colonial family structures
- - - - Biopower operates through discipline (control of individual bodies) and regulation (management of populations)
      - The state became interested in controlling reproduction and the conditions under which people reproduced, the state now cares about who reproduces, where and under what conditions
      - Power today is exercised through normalization, defining “normal” and pathologizing the abnormal
    - - Case study, Baby Manji: reproductive technology has moved beyond existing legal frameworks (three mothers, no one legally recognized mother)
      - States determine who can reproduce, where, and under what circumstances through surrogacy laws
      - Commercial Surrogacy Turns Reproduction into International Labor, Poor women are Gestational Workers
    - - U.S. states have regulated Black women’s reproduction through forced sterilization and the criminalization of pregnancy
      - Reproductive control is a mechanism of racial capitalism, determining which populations grow and which are destroyed
      - Introduces reproductive justice: right to have children, not have children, and to parent safely
    - - Necropolitics (power over death) is applied to sexuality in prisons
      - Prison rape and other forms of sexual violence are mechanisms of the state, not failures of the system
      - Some populations are subjected to death-making conditions through state sexual violence
  - - - Experiencing Blackness and womanhood simultaneously means experiencing race, class, gender and sexuality oppressions — at the same time
      - Radical politics will always emanate from groups that experience multiple oppressions
      - Black feminism is needed — it was created as a response to two forms of oppression: White feminism ignores Black women; Black male-based liberation movements ignore Black women
    - - Provides the theoretical basis for understanding how intersections of identity produce unique experiences of discrimination
      - Intersectional metaphor, traffic intersections: each road represents a different form of oppression
      - In addition to racism and sexism, the intersection of race and sex produces something new, Black women’s experiences cannot be reduced to either
    - - Criticizes Western feminist scholarship for viewing Third World women as monolithic victims
      - Colonial power dynamics reinforce Western feminist scholarship
      - Context is important in understanding women’s oppression — historical context, cultural context and economic context
  - - - Oppression of women arose when private property and class existed
      - Marriage arose due to economic need, to insure that only legitimate heirs would inherit property
      - Once women were recognized as property, they were exchanged between families to accumulate wealth
    - - Describes the “sex/gender system”the arrangements in which societies convert biological sex into gendered social relationships
        
        Women are objects of exchange in kinship systems while men are the ones exchanging them
        
        Gender oppression exists even in non-capitalist societies, the root of oppression of women cannot be limited to capitalism alone
    - - Dependence of women economically on men provides the base for their oppression
      - Marriage is an economic exchange and therefore commodities women
      - Liberation of women depends on economic independence — and this liberation must occur along side an economic transformation