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12.2: Foundations of the Anthropology of Gender

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    56482
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    GENDER VS SEX

    Although the terms sex and gender are sometimes used interchangeably and do in fact complement each other, they nonetheless refer to different aspects of what it means to be a woman or man in any society.

    Sex refers to the anatomical and other biological differences between females and males that are determined at the moment of conception and develop in the womb and throughout childhood and adolescence. Females, of course, have two X chromosomes, while males have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. From this basic genetic difference spring other biological differences. The first to appear are the different genitals that boys and girls develop in the womb and that the doctor (or midwife) and parents look for when a baby is born (assuming the baby’s sex is not already known from ultrasound or other techniques) so that the momentous announcement, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” can be made. The genitalia are called primary sex characteristics, while the other differences that develop during puberty are called secondary sex characteristics and stem from hormonal differences between the two sexes. In this difficult period of adolescents’ lives, boys generally acquire deeper voices, more body hair, and more muscles from their flowing testosterone. Girls develop breasts and wider hips and begin menstruating as nature prepares them for possible pregnancy and childbirth. For better or worse, these basic biological differences between the sexes affect many people’s perceptions of what it means to be female or male.

    Definition: sex

    The anatomical and other biological differences that determine male and female.

    GENDER: A CULTURAL CONSTRUCT

    If sex is a biological concept, then gender is a culturally constructed concept. Gender is the meanings, values, and characteristics that are culturally assigned based on sex, such as masculinity and femininity (Blackstone 2003). Femininity refers to the cultural expectations we have of girls and women, while masculinity refers to the expectations we have of boys and men. A related concept, gender roles, refers to the set of expectations about tasks, attitudes, and behaviors that are culturally assigned based on sex and gender (Blackstone 2003). How we think and behave as females and males is not etched in stone by our biology but rather is a result of how society expects us to think and behave based on what sex we are. As we grow up, we learn these expectations as we develop our gender identity, or our beliefs about ourselves as females or males.

    Definition: gender

    The meanings, values, and characteristics that are culturally assigned based on sex such as masculinity and femininity.

    Definition: gender roles

    The set of expectations about tasks, attitudes, and behaviors that are culturally assigned based on sex and gender.

    Definition: gender identity

    Our beliefs about ourselves as females or males.

    REJECTING BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM

    In the past, influenced by Judeo-Christian religion and nineteenth and twentieth-century scientific beliefs, biology (and reproductive capacity) was literally considered to be destiny. Males and females, at least “normal” males and females, were thought to be born with different intellectual, physical, and moral capacities, preferences, tastes, personalities, and predispositions for violence and suffering.[3]

    Ironically, many cultures, including European Christianity in the Middle Ages, viewed women as having a strong, often “insatiable” sexual “drive” and capacity. But by the nineteenth century, women and their sexuality were largely defined in reproductive terms, as in their capacity to “carry a man’s child.” Even late-twentieth-century human sexuality texts often referred only to “reproductive systems,” to genitals as “reproductive” organs, and excluded the “clitoris” and other female organs of sexual pleasure that had no reproductive function. For women, the primary, if not sole, legitimate purpose of sexuality was reproduction.[4]

    Nineteenth and mid-twentieth century European and U.S. gender ideologies linked sexuality and gender in other ways.[5] Sexual preference—the sex to whom one was attracted—was “naturally” heterosexual, at least among “normal” humans, and “normal,” according to mid-twentieth century Freudian-influenced psychology, was defined largely by whether one adhered to conventional gender roles for males and females. So, appropriately, “masculine” men were “naturally” attracted to “feminine” women and vice versa. Homosexuality, too, was depicted not just as a sexual preference but as gender-inappropriate role behavior, down to gestures and color of clothing.[6] This is apparent in old stereotypes of gay men as “effeminate” (acting like a female, wearing “female” fabrics such as silk or colors such as pink, and participating in “feminine” professions like ballet) and of lesbian women as “butch” (cropped hair, riding motorcycles, wearing leather—prototypical masculinity). Once again, separate phenomena—sexual preference and gender role performance—were conflated because of beliefs that rooted both in biology. “Abnormality” in one sphere (sexual preference) was linked to “abnormality” in the other sphere (gendered capacities and preferences).

    In short, the gender and sexual ideologies were based on biological determinism, the belief that there are innate biological differences in intelligence, the capacity for language, and modes of behavior between human populations (as defined in Chapter 3). Expanding on that theory to include male and female populations, these ideologies assumed that biological differences between males and females leads to fundamentally different capacities, preferences, and gendered behaviors. This suggests that gender roles are rooted in biology, not culture, which is scientifically unsupported.

    Decades of research on gender and sexuality, including by feminist anthropologists, has challenged these old theories, particularly biological determinism. We now understand that cultures, not nature, create the gender ideologies that go along with being born male or female and the ideologies vary widely, cross-culturally. What is considered “man’s work” in some societies, such as carrying heavy loads, or farming, can be “woman’s work” in others. What is “masculine” and “feminine” varies: pink and blue, for example, are culturally invented gender-color linkages, and skirts and “make-up” can be worn by men, indeed by “warriors.” Hindu deities, male and female, are highly decorated and difficult to distinguish, at least by conventional masculine U.S. stereotypes (see examples and Figures 12.2.1 and 12.2.2).

    Hindu deities
    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Hindu deities: Vishnu and his many “avatars” or forms (all male).
    Hindu Deities
    Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Hindu Deities: Vishnu and Goddess Shiva plus avatars.

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

    Blackstone, Amy. 2003. "Gender Roles and Society." Pp 335-338 in Human Ecology: An Encyclopedia of Children, Families, Communities, and Environments, edited by Julia R. Miller, Richard M. Lerner, and Lawrence B. Schiamberg. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.


    NOTES

    1. See Carolyn B. Brettell and Carolyn F. Sargent, Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2005). Also, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Myths of Gender. Biological Theories About Women and Men (New York: Basic Books, 1991). For some web-based examples of these nineteenth century views, see article at http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gender-roles-in-the-19th-century. For a list of descriptive terms, see www2.ivcc.edu/gen2002/Women_in_the_Nineteenth_Century.htm.
    2. For an example of a textbook, see Herant A. Katchadurian, Fundamentals of Human Sexuality (Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1989). See also Linda Stone, Kinship and Gender: An Introduction (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2013).
    3. Material in the following paragraphs comes from Mukhopadhyay, unpublished Human Sexuality lecture notes.
    4. Herant A. Katchadurian, Fundamentals of Human Sexuality, 365.

    Derived From

    "Gender and Sexuality" by Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, San Jose State University and Tami Blumenfield, Yunnan University with Susan Harper, Texas Woman’s University, and Abby Gondek. In Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition, Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges, 2020, under CC BY-NC 4.0.

    "Understanding Sex and Gender" in Sociology by University of Minnesota is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.


    12.2: Foundations of the Anthropology of Gender is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.