Gender, Sex & Sexuality

Dr Nicola McCartney

Barbie, 1959
 Cultural Studies UNIT 4: Notices
• WELL DONE!
• Formative feedback or ‘feed-forwarding’ is released this week - I will notify you
• Please book a 1-1 with Melanie’s team or Language support if this has been indicated on your submission
• Next week we have an extra session at 5-6pm online with Antonis on ‘Living up the Library’

WE WANT TO SUPPORT YOU:

• EVERY TEACHING WEEK there is Language Support for ALL before the seminar:
11:30am in B105 (D109 today) or 1pm in M301
• Help with academic reading and writing is available with Melanie’s Team: book via
academicsupportonline.arts.ac.uk
• Email Nicola or Jade with any questions or absences, and for Student Support
 Glossary:
• Feminism: to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the
sexes.

• Patriarchy: a system of society in which men hold the power.

• Hegemony: the dominance of one group over another, often supported by legitimating norms and
ideas, not by violence.

• Male gaze: the perspective of a typical heterosexual man considered as the audience or intended
audience for visual media, characterized by a tendency to objectify or sexualise women. (we will
discuss this next week in detail)

• Sexism: prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, on the basis of sex.

• Trans*: here includes all those who do not identify as part of the binary system; people who may
transition, are in transition, have transitioned, are gender-fluid, non-conforming or a-gender.

• Gender, Sex and Sexuality will be defined throughout

 Aims & Objectives
• To understand the differences between Gender, Sex
and Sexuality
• To understand how feminism underpins many of these
debates and movements
• To introduce you to Queer Theory
• Find your own examples that exemplify & trouble these
terms and ideas
• To understand that they map onto each other in
‘knotted’ ways, reproduced through society and media,
consumption and production (and by you!)
• To understand how this lecture ties in with the others
• To be able to answer an essay question
 Sexism:

Donald Trump’s sexist speech and 1970s USA

Weyenberg Magazine Advert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwWux5BAczk

Historically, and still in some places, women were/are not able to vote, have their own
bank account, access education, access to birth control, ride a bicycle or drive a car. This is
based on assumptions of women, their capacity, lasting stereotypes, and desire for power
over them and other ‘minorities’.
 Feminism
One aspect of feminism was to prove that ‘femininity’ was
socially constructed and stereotyped:
• ‘fragile’
• ‘indoors’
• ‘passive’
• ‘weak’
• ‘homely’
• ‘emotional’
Whether these are enacted, consciously or not, they can
determine a person’s job, place in the family, and therefore
shape dynamics and distribution of wealth and power. They can
also shape one’s body (see previous lecture).
The essay ‘Why have there been no great
women artists?’ by Linda Nochlin (1971) is an
example of how sexism limits women

Johann Zoffany RA’s The Academicians of the Royal Academy (1771-72)

Feminism: fight for equality of the ‘sexes’
Funeral (1913) of Emily Davison, Suffragette, fighting for
Women’s right to vote in the UK.

One is not born, but rather

becomes a woman […] “woman” is
a manner of doing, dramatizing
and reproducing a historical
situation rather than a natural fact:
De Beauvoir, Simone, The Second
Sex, 1952, p. 301

We learn our genders through a range of constituting acts. In this

sense, gender is in no way a stable identity…from which various acts
proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time – an
identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts:
Judith Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An
Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory, Theatre Journal, Vol.
40, No. 4 (Dec., 1988) p. 519 – 520
 How is sexism or gender stereotyping
enacted in our society?

. . . gender is a concept aiming to give an account of the social

processes of production, legitimisation, transgression and
transformation of hierarchised, sexualised differences between
men and women. Certain principles set by society aim to
“naturalise” such binary differences and to stigmatise any
behaviour going against them.

Buscatto, M. Sociologies of Gender, 2014, p.3

Q. Stereotypes of boys, man,

masculinity?
How might capitalism or Consumer
Culture incorporate sexist resistance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1vnsqbnAkk

Barbie is a fashion doll manufactured by the American

toy company Mattel Inc. that launched in March 1959.
(see image of the 1959 Barbie)

Stereotypes of girls, woman femininity?

White, ‘beautiful’, able-bodied, young…
 What is the role of Dress?

Sacred Heart RC High School (UK) Poster at Adekunle Ajasin

Uniform. University, Nigeria.
(The poster was
subsequently petitioned
and taken down in Oct
Questions to consider: 2018)
Serena Williams at the
2018 U.S. Open, in a
dress by Virgil Abloh.

1. What impact does a uniform have?

2. What impact does ‘dress’ have on your gender performance?

3. Think of examples where your dress ‘coded’ you a gender or made you ‘perform’ differently?
To be woman is to have become woman, to
compel the body to conform to an historical 1. Gender as Cultural Construct
idea of ‘woman’ to induce the body to
become a cultural sign, to materialise oneself
in obedience to an historically delimited
possibility…
Butler 1998: 152

Clothing and other kinds of ornamentation

make the human body culturally visible
…clothing draws the body so that it can be
culturally seen
Silverman, K (1994) ‘Fragments of a Fashionable
Discourse’:189)

Dior perfume ad campaigns, Jonny Depp &

Natalie Portman.
Consider the masculinity encoded in this
ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj-
fT4x3J_s
These stereotypes or cultural signifiers
are DISCURSIVE
Young Boy in Pink, American school
of painting (c. 1840, Honolulu
Museum of Art)
Queen Victoria with her 3rd son, 7th
child, Prince Arthur, by Franz Xaver
Winterhalter (1850, Royal
Collection).
The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys,
and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink,
being a more decided and stronger color, is more
suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more
delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl
Earnshaw's Infants' Department June 1918
‘The Great Masculine Renunciation’:
Man abandoned his claim to be considered beautiful. He henceforth aimed
at being useful. (Flugel, J.C. Psychology of Fashion, 1930, p. 12)

At the end of the 18th century

menswear stopped using brilliant or
refined forms. The Great Masculine
Renunciation was coined by
psychoanalyst John Flugel in 1930, it is
considered a major turning point in the
history of clothing in which the men
relinquish their claim to adornment
and beauty. It encouraged the
establishment of the suit on male
dress codes at the beginning of the
19th century.

Henry VIII by Francis Delaram,

line engraving, early 17th century
 London became the capital of
masculine style. London also gave birth
to the dandy, a male type, lauded by
the French writer, Charles Baudelaire
(the flaneur), the dandy did much to
advance the popularity and importance
of dark suits. Elegant and ‘cool’. Linked
to modernity and access to public
spaces.

For those interested in another

argument, you might was to read the
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in
Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and
London by Elkin (2016).
The 19th C suit. Fashion plate from Sartorial Arts Journal, 1891,
Gladys Marcus Library, FIT

Now, idleness was no longer the usual sign of wealth. […] it was sufficient, therefore,
that a man should demonstrate by means of his black coat, cylindrical hat,
spotless linen ... to show that he was not actually engaged in the production of
goods.
Quentin Bell, (1948) On Human Finery, cited in Hollander, A. (1978) Seeing Through
Clothes, New York: Viking Press, p.345)
 ‘The trophy wife’, who shops, looks good and spends her
husband’s money – a symbol of his wealth and power

Is this still the

George Elgar Hicks: Woman’s
case?
Mission: Companion of Manhood
(1863)

...But the demands of conspicuous consumptionremain. Men might escape them, but
women could not [...] On all public and social occasions it was (woman’s) task to
demonstrate (man’s) ability to pay.
Quentin Bell, 1978: 345
Gender & Taste
Penny Sparkes book (1995)
explores the gendered politics of
taste.
She argues that modernist design
has imposed the idea that ‘good
taste’ is masculine, because it is
designed by men but also
embedded in masculine culture.
 Gender and Craft
There is nothing gendered about making. A sexual division of labour arose
through mechanization whereby craft was given lower status due to the reliability
and availability of mass-produced objects. This consigned craft to become a
leisure activity – usually for privileged women – which contributed to a hierarchy
that simultaneously devalued craft and women’s work.
 ‘heterosexual matrix’ (Butler 1990)
• We see ‘gender’ forms through heterosexuality
• We have only understood ‘gender’ through heterosexuality

Media, gender & Identity

 Feminism – lead to ‘queer theory’
• Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) marks the beginning of a new
academic discipline which comes to be known as “Queer Theory”
• Butler is interested in resisting the category of ‘woman’
• ‘Women’ is limiting because, like other identity categories, it’s a
monolith that denies the complexities and differences both within
and between real, living women
Feminism is complex, intersectional;
there is not one type of ‘sisterhood’

• First Wave Feminism

• Second Wave Feminism
• Third Wave Feminism
• Marxist Feminism
• Liberal Feminism
• Radical Feminism
• Intersectionality
• Eco-Feminism

A linear view of feminism can be

problematic
bell hooks: Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981)

Alison Phipps: Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism
(2020)

J Halberstam: Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability (2018)

Who problematizes this enactment
or gender performance?

Marcel Duchamp as
Rrose Selavy and
Claude Cahun.

Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only

gender that suits me. If it existed in our language …
(Cahun, Disavowals, London 2007, pp.151-2.)
 Who problematizes this enactment or gender
performance?

The 20th century artist Gluck (1895-1978); Marlow Moss (1938), photograph Stephen Storm, private collection, Digital image
Florette Dijkstra © reserved, TATE); Frida Kahlo family portrait. ALL PRIOR TO critical theory gender critiques.

Born Hannah Gluckstein into a wealthy Jewish family, Gluck attended art school in London and
ran away to Cornwall with fellow students during the First World War. The artist mixed with
the Newlyn School of painters, and adopted the name Gluck, creating a controversial
masculine identity incorporating men’s tailoring, barber-cut short hair and a mannish
demeanour.
(Brighton Museums and Art Gallery. Exhibition, 2018)
Who problematizes this enactment or performance? To
what extent? Don’t underestimate the role of dress

Yves Saint Laurent 'Le

Smoking' tuxedo suit,
created 1966 Photo
Helmut Newton 1975

Selfridges Agender Campaign

 Language: ‘Hir’
In 2014, Australia’s highest court effectively recognised a 3rd gender when Norrie Mae
Welby won the right to have ‘hir’ gender formalised.

In other cultures, a 3rd gender is recognised: e.g.. Fa’afafine in the pacific and the kathoey
in Thailand.

WATCH:
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=Ca8Yej4sYLE – 1:40min
 Gender:
• Gender is the social and cultural construction of sex.

• Gender is a contested category and is highly politically charged.

• Gender as an academic concept that arose from the rebirth of feminism in the 1970s.

• Gender has material implications for how we live our lives and the distribution of

opportunity and wealth.

• Gender can be and is ‘performed’, consciously or not.

• Gender identity is how one chooses to express their identity; the extent to which one

identifies as being either masculine or feminine, neither of these, as in between or

non-conforming, and other gender identities.

 One’s Sex:

Sex refers to physical or physiological differences between males and females,

such as sexual organs or hormones.
Cis-gendered is to express that you identify as the gender which matches your
assigned sex at birth. This is also seen as supportive of those who do not
identify as their assigned sex, who have to explain their ‘difference’ all the
time.
This is because society is largely heteronormative; gender is seen through the
heterosexual lens, as Butler describes.
 DRAG subverts gender norms because the gender
performed is not the same as the body’s sex, but to
what extent?
The drag king provides a
rare opportunity for the
wholesale parody of,
particularly, white
masculinity.
Halberstam (1998: 238-9)

Drag is an open possibility, a possibility to transcend the norms of sexual difference

and gender identity.
Butler, J. (1993) Bodies that Matter, p. 12
 Paris is Burning (1990)
WATCH:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78TAbjx43rk

Q. Consider concepts of passing, that intersect

with gender

whether parodying the dominant norms is enough to displace them [or if such parody is
actually] the very vehicle for a reconsolidation of hegemonic norms
(Butler, Bodies that Matter, 1993: 125)
How transgressive is the male to female transsexual body who then proceeds to perform pre-
feminist, highly normative femininity? Exactly what challenge is presented to the sex/gender
hierarchy by this cross or transgressing the binary?
Richardson, Niall (2010) Transgressive Bodies: Representations in Film and Popular Culture,
London: Routledge, p.15

Caitlyn Jenner,
‘Reality TV
Celebrity’ 2015,
Photographer:
Annie Leibovitz

Victoria Secret’s Runway, 2017

Q. Why is it the trans* responsibility to
challenge gender stereotypes or the
objectification of the female form? This is
a shared feminist issue.
What are the problems with performing an exaggerated gender?

Do we re-emphasise gender boundaries, stereotypes or sustain

the masculine hegemony?
Hegemony:
relations of domination which are
not visible as such
Simon During, ‘Introduction’, The Cultural
Studies Reader, 1996), p.5

Marlene Dietrich in Morocco (1930); lady Gaga as Joe Calderone at MTV awards (2011)
Drag can still play with sex/gender if
you’re cis-gendered or non-conforming:

Gottmik, trans man in drag on RPDR 2021 & Crème Fatale, cis woman drag.

Watching this ‘Meet the Queens’ video –

consider how sex and gender are ‘knotted’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv9AXdRpRVY
Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs): Women who were born men cannot
possibly understand the suffering of the sisterhood. These women were born with
the privilege of manhood.

For some, the notion that all gender is performed is

simply not enough, for them to live their authentic
selves, they might feel they need medical
intervention/support.

Museum of Transology, Brighton, until 19

July 2018

An essentialist view would be to make one’s body a proxy for

identity…queer theory still promotes gender-role stereotyping…There is
thus a need for a theory of gender identity that would incorporate both
fluid self-embodiment and a self-construction of identity:
Nagoshi and Brzuzy, ‘Transgender Theory’ in Journal of Women and Social Work, 25(4), 431-443, 435.
Can essentialist ideas of gender be
reconciled?

Sectors of both radical feminism and tans activism appeal to an essentialist

idea of sex/gender. The former relies on a binary of sex that cannot be
crossed, the latter argues that it is the sense of sexed embodiment that is
essential.
“We do not have to agree upon the ‘origins’ of that sense of self to agree
that it is ethically obligatory to support and recognize sexed and gendered
modes of being that are crucial to a person’s well-being.”
J Butler in C. Williams ‘Debunking TERF Essentialism: Part III of “Sexing the
Body is Gender” series’ in transadvocate.com

Dr Nicola McCartney
Posthumanism:
A Manifesto for Cyborgs (Haraway, 1985) celebrates the confusion between man and
machine, and sees this as an opportunity for feminists and socialists to undo some
infrastructures of patriarchy.

Social Media, Virtual Reality. Are these places that open up gender fluidity and can be
called democratic for all?
 Sexuality
Sexuality has to do with the way you experience sexual and romantic attraction,
and your preferences around these relationships and behaviours.

Sexual orientation refers to a person’s emotional and sexual attraction to a

particular sex.

Sexuality is typically divided into categories, such as:

• Heterosexuality
• Homosexuality
• Bisexuality
• Asexuality
• Pansexuality and more

A heteronormative society is one that presumes and supports heterosexuality.

 What does QUEER mean?
‘Queerness’ describes any bodily act or representation that seeks to overturn
notions of: gender, sexuality, desire or ‘normality’ itself

• Was an offensive word to describe effiminate men or those that engaged in sex with
other men.
• It was reclaimed in the 1980s.

yes, "gay" is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in
the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we've chosen to call ourselves
queer. Using "queer" is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the
world.

(Queer Nation 1990 flyer, ‘Queers Read This’, circulated at NY Gay Pride)
 Queer Theory
• Queer = celebration of ‘difference’ from what is understood to be ‘normal’
• Context of rise in HIV infection – identified as a disease that only affected gay men
and IV drug users
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick: queer can refer to the open mesh of possibilities, gaps,
overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning that arise
when the constituent elements – the different aspects – of anyone’s sexuality aren’t
made – or can’t be made – to signify monolithically.
 To be ‘queer’ was previously deemed criminal and
is still an offence in some places or seen as ‘taboo’

Sappho was a 4thC AD female poet who wrote to Aphrodite

asking for help in her same-sex relationship.
The term ‘lesbian’ derives from her because she was from the
Greek island of Lesbos.

Solomon, a man who was attracted to men perhaps painted her

as a playful or beguiling code of his sexuality; two men kissing
would have been completely taboo.

His own sexual preferences eventually led to his incarceration.

When he was released from prison he was rejected by many of
his acquaintances, struggled to find work and soon became
homeless.
Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at
Mytilene (1864) by Simeon
Solomon (1840-1905): An English
Pre-Raphelite painter, known for
Q: So, how was and is ‘queer’
his depictions of Jewish life and materialized or visualised culture?
same-sex desire.
 Pageants/Balls/Clubs:
significance of spaces and dress
The Caravan, ‘London’s most bohemian
rendezvous’, a queer-friendly members
club of 1934. (located in the West End
near Covent Garden.)

The Caravan, 1934, National Archives; Police

Raid on Queer Venue in Fitzrovia Sq, 1928.
 Club Culture
Leigh Bowery (26 March 1961 – 31
December 1994) was
an Australian performance artist, club
promoter, and fashion designer. Based in
London for much of his adult life, he was a
significant model and muse for the English
painter, Lucian Freud. He set up the
nightclub, Taboo, in London, in 1985,
famous for its queer culture, defying sexual
convention.

Leigh Bowery and Boy

George, Taboo, London
 New Romantics
(music and Fashion incorporates queer ‘resistance’?)

Vogue UK October 1987 Paris Vogue, November 1980

Couture - The New Romance
Photographer: Patrick
Demarchelier
For a many growing up gay, experimentation
with clothing offered a means of exploring that
sense of difference. “Straight men never [have to]
question their identity”, stated John, “but growing
up gay and realising that one is different means
a constant questioning of who you
are. Experimenting with clothes is a way of
exploring this difference, a way of showing or
accepting your difference.
(Cole 2000: 2-3)

Public and private codes of one’s sexuality:

• Red hanker chief or scarf, in particular pockets
• piercings
• Being effeminate
 Queer Consumerism / Capitalism
…the same faith in emancipation through consumerism . . . seems to have persuaded the
1990s gay generation that the most important thing in life is to be here, queer and always
shopping, and that the only thing that worth fighting for are the rights to look good and
party.

(Paul Burston, Queen’s Country: A Tour around the Gay Ghettos, Queer Spots and Camp Sights
of Britain. (1998), p192)

Advertisement for queer

boutique Vince Man's Shop, 15
Newburgh Street, London, 1959
(Films and Filming, July 1959, p.
2)
Queer Culture is also intersectional & has an ongoing
history of gender stereotypes, racism & class issuesa

The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson Issues of masculinity, permeate online gay
Netflix (2017) Documentary: culture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pADsuu
Pd79E&feature=youtu.be

Sylvia Rivera speech at 1973 NY Pride:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb-
JIOWUw1o
Gender, Sex & Sexuality are all ‘knotted’
These three concepts have been debated as attempts to untangle them have generated
cultural anxieties regarding nature versus nurture, boundary maintenance, and power
relations.
Kaiser, S. B. (2013). Fashion and Cultural Studies, p. 265

Kaiser unpacks this ‘knot’ through her example of the wearing of garments styled as
masculine by women whose sex may be female whilst their gender identity can be described
as butch or ‘masculine-of-center’ and their sexuality is lesbian (Kaiser, 2012: 150).
 Aims & Objectives

• To understand the differences between Gender, Sex and

Sexuality
• To understand how feminism underpins many of these
debates and movements
• To introduce you to Queer Theory
• Find your own examples that exemplify & trouble these
terms and ideas
• To understand that they map onto each other in ‘knotted’
ways, reproduced through society and media, consumption
and production (and by you!)
• To understand how this lecture ties in with others of the Unit
• To be able to answer an essay question