SOCL 2001 Chapter : Gender And Sexuality
Document Summary
Essentialism: explaining social phenomena in terms of natural ones, biological determinism, your social behavior should be a direct result of your sex, binary sex, only male and female, heterosexuality assumed. Intersexuals: 1-3 out of every 1,000 babies born with ambiguous genitalia. Social construction of gender and sexuality: normal and abnormal defined by social environment, not by nature, interaction doing gender . Homosexual: social identity of one who has sexual attraction and/or relations with the same sex. Acts vs. identities: until the 19th century, only 2 types of sex acts, socially approved: sex within marriage for procreation, socially disapproved: same-sex acts, oral sex, masturbation. Emergence of sexual identities: late 1800"s growing body of medical literature classified people as homosexuals or heterosexuals, american psychiatric association removed homosexuality from list of disorders in 1973, but they removed it as being a mental disorder. Sambia: semen=vital life force, female fluids=poison, boys are initiated into manhood through regular fellatio on older boys and men.
