CSS Gender Studies Social Construction of Gender Syllabus

Which theorist is most associated with gender performativity?

Judith Butler, in Gender Trouble (1990).

Define gender performativity according to Judith Butler.

The idea that gender has no pre-existing inner essence but is constituted through the repeated stylized performance of acts, gestures, and norms, which produce the illusion of a stable gendered self.

What does Butler mean by the claim that gender is performative rather than merely a performance?

That gender is not a role consciously put on by a pre-existing subject; rather, the repeated performance itself creates the subject and the appearance of an inner gender identity.

What is the 'heterosexual matrix' in Butler's work?

The cultural grid that naturalizes a coherent alignment of sex, gender, and desire (e.g., female body to feminine gender to desire for men), making heterosexuality appear normal and inevitable.

What is heteronormativity?

The set of norms and institutions that treat heterosexuality and a binary, aligned sex-gender system as the default, natural, and privileged form of human relationship.

How does queer theory problematize the category of 'sex'?

It argues that 'sex' is not a pure biological fact prior to culture but is itself produced through gendered, normative discourse; the boundary between sex and gender collapses.

What is Butler's argument about the relationship between sex and gender?

That 'sex' is already 'gender'—the supposedly natural biological category is retroactively produced by gender norms, so sex was gender all along.

Is 'sex' socially determined too? Summarize the constructionist answer.

Yes; constructionists argue that the criteria, boundaries, and meanings of biological sex (which traits count, how bodies are classified) are shaped by social and scientific conventions, so even sex is partly constructed.

What does the existence of intersex people reveal about the category of sex?

That sex is not a clean binary; bodies exist with mixed or ambiguous chromosomal, hormonal, or anatomical traits, showing male/female to be socially imposed categories on a continuum.

What did Anne Fausto-Sterling argue about biological sex?

That sex exists on a spectrum rather than two discrete categories, and that the medical assignment of bodies to 'male' or 'female' reflects social choices, not pure biology.

What is the relevance of intersex medical assignment to the sex-as-constructed argument?

Doctors surgically and socially assign intersex infants to one sex based on cultural norms about acceptable bodies, demonstrating that sex categorization is a social decision.

Define hegemonic masculinity (R.W. Connell).

The culturally dominant and idealized form of masculinity that legitimizes men's dominance over women and subordinates other masculinities; it represents the currently most honoured way of being a man.

Who developed the concept of 'masculinities' as plural and hierarchical?

R.W. (Raewyn) Connell, especially in Masculinities (1995).

Why does Connell use the plural 'masculinities' rather than 'masculinity'?

To emphasize that there is no single masculinity but multiple forms shaped by class, race, sexuality, and culture, arranged in hierarchical relations of dominance and subordination.

List Connell's four main types of masculinity.

Hegemonic, subordinate (e.g., gay men), complicit, and marginalized masculinities.

What is complicit masculinity in Connell's framework?

Masculinity practised by men who do not fully embody the hegemonic ideal but still benefit from the 'patriarchal dividend'—the advantages men gain from women's subordination.

What is the 'patriarchal dividend'?

Connell's term for the collective advantages (honour, authority, wealth, status) that men receive from the overall subordination of women, even without personally enforcing it.

What is subordinated masculinity?

Masculinities dominated and stigmatized by the hegemonic form, classically homosexual masculinity, which is positioned at the bottom of the gender hierarchy among men.

What is marginalized masculinity?

Masculinity shaped by the interplay of gender with other structures like race and class, in which some men (e.g., ethnic-minority or poor men) are excluded from hegemonic authority.

Define emphasized femininity (Connell).

The form of femininity defined around compliance with women's subordination and orientation to accommodating men's interests and desires; the counterpart to hegemonic masculinity.

How does constructionism explain femininity?

As a set of culturally produced and historically variable norms, expectations, and practices imposed on women, not as a natural expression of female biology.

What is the 'bathroom problem' or sex-segregation example used to show gender as social ordering?

Public sex-segregated spaces (toilets, dress codes) enforce and reproduce the gender binary, demonstrating how social institutions actively construct and police gender.

Compare the sex/gender distinction with the queer/Butlerian view in one sentence.

The classic distinction separates natural sex from social gender, whereas Butler and queer theory collapse the two, arguing that sex itself is produced by gendered discourse.

What is biological determinism's chief weakness according to constructionists?

It cannot explain the wide cross-cultural and historical variation in gender roles, and it naturalizes inequality by treating socially produced hierarchies as inevitable biology.

What is the difference between gender identity and gender role?

Gender identity is a person's internal sense of their own gender; gender role is the set of outward behaviours and expectations a society attaches to a gender.

What did John Money's research originally claim about gender, and how is it now viewed?

Money claimed gender identity was primarily learned and could be assigned through socialization; the failed David Reimer case later undermined the strong nurture-only claim, fuelling the nature-culture debate.

What is the significance of the David Reimer case for the nature-culture debate?

Reimer, reassigned and raised as a girl after a circumcision accident, rejected the female identity, which critics used to argue biology constrains gender identity, complicating pure social-determinism.

What is Foucault's contribution to historicizing sex?

In The History of Sexuality, Foucault argued that sexuality and the modern notion of 'sex' are produced by discourse and power/knowledge regimes, not pre-given natural facts.

How does discourse produce sex and gender according to constructionist/Foucauldian thought?

Through systems of language, knowledge, and power (medicine, law, religion, science) that define, classify, and regulate bodies, thereby creating the categories they claim merely to describe.

Contrast the 'nature' and 'culture' poles using a concrete gender example.

On aggression: the nature view attributes male aggression to testosterone/evolution; the culture view attributes it to socialization that rewards boys for toughness and discourages it in girls.

Summarize the overall constructionist conclusion on the social construction of gender for CSS revision.

Sex and gender are both shaped by society, history, culture, and discourse; categories like man/woman, masculine/feminine are produced and policed through socialization, institutions, and performance, and are variable rather than fixed natural facts.