Gender

Sex & Sexuality

MODERNITY & IDENTITY
Sex >> labels as male or female based on their biological
characteristics at birth.

Gender >> Refers to the social roles, behaviors,

norms, and expectations that society assigns to a
person based on their biological sex.

Sexuality >> Refers to a person's sexual

orientation, their emotional, romantic, or
sexual tendencies (Heterosexuality,
homosexuality, bisexuality )
 Feminist Philosophers of
Science
“The majority of academic university staff and academy members are male ”
Feminist philosophers of science were second-wave feminists in the 1960s and 1970s
In the 1960s - the increasing access of women to higher education, this demand was
complemented by demands for equality of rights in education and employment.
The influence of feminist activism led many universities to establish departments of
women's studies
The field of women's studies has gradually expanded their territory.
“Gender is not a natural scientific fact; rather it is concerned with the social and
cultural meanings shared by sex variations in different times and places, as well as
the ways in which these differences are expressed and impact science and other
practices. Gender must be strictly separated from biological sex. Therefore, gender
“studies is a common term today.”
 “In the early research of gender studies in the
representation and imagination of gender identity
in contemporary mass culture.”

Gender studies are increasingly looking at how male and

female gender identities and symbolism are constructed
and no longer focus on how women are oppressed.

'dumb
This research not only focuses on gender identity and female
gender norms, but explains how feminine and masculine blonde'
gender identities form simultaneously and contradict each
other.
 "Women’s Studies"
Feminist approaches to science maintain an
ambivalent relation to postmodernism. They argue
that the traditional image of science is strongly
androcentric. Initially, the main focus of attention
within women’s studies was demonstrating the
oppression of women in and by scientific
knowledge. Later, the theoretization of the concept
of gender in the sciences took centre stage.
 Gender and Gender Metaphor

The concept of gender is based on the idea that in different periods and
places, people have very different ideas about the relationship between
masculine and feminine. Therefore, one of the achievements of gender
studies is insight into how deep these historical differences and
changes are and how historically varied ideas have shaped everyday
practice and science practice.

Gender metaphors – representations or imaginations of phenomena

and things that are 'usually' masculine or feminine – in shaping the
goals and values of a new mechanistic philosophy of nature.
 Gender and Perfomativity

Queer theory
HER CONTRIBUTION TO THIS THEORY IS DIVIDED INTO 5 PARTS

Perfomativity
Normativity
Heteronormativity

Judith Butler
Gender is not to culture as sex is to nature;
gender is also the discursive/cultural means by
which ‘sexed nature’ or ‘a natural sex’ is produced
and established as ‘prediscursive’, prior to
culture, a politically neutral surface on which
culture acts

Gender Trouble
Gender and Culture:
The social, cultural, and psychological attributes and roles
associated with being male or female. The shared beliefs, customs,
values, and practices of a particular group of people
Sex and Nature:
The biological differences between male and female organisms. The
biological or inherent aspects of being, often associated with
genetics and evolution.
Perfomativity
Performativity: determined and reinforced by the
repeated performance of socially prescribed acts and
behaviors rather than by biological factors.

Gender identity is not an inherent or natural

quality but is performative

Clearest Example:
Drag / Travesty

speech acts
 Normativiry
Contemporary biology therefore does not
simply describe natural facts but also
contains tacit normative assumptions
does not function in biology alone but at various levels, She finds fault with the
psychoanalytical theories of Freud and Lacan
 Heteronormativity
Which assumes that heterosexuality is the norm
and other sexualities are deviations

The Netherlands was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage on April 21, 2001.
THANK YOU!
POSTCOLONIALISM
 THE USE OF POSTCOLONIALISM

A reflection of Find out the Works as a key

modern colonial relation point for modern
humanities which alongside with its Western
can be found legacies towards Civilization to
through the the colonized highlight the
postcolonialism ethnocentrism
countries.
critics. and universalism.
 FRANTZ FANON

Focusing on the consequences of colonial

relations in the process of decolonization
through difficult and violent processes.

Colonizers include as a form of violence as it is

robs dignity and humanity of colonized people.

He stated that colonial relations do not rest

on a mutual desire for recognition.

Gain a national consciousness as an empty

shell for the colonized people.
 EDWARD
SAID

The study of Orientalism consisting of

stereotypes and prejudices towards the East,
and reinforcing power imbalances between
The West and East.

Orientalism study also related to the

philological study of Arab-Islamic
civilization.
MARTIN BERNAL
The modern philological image that arose in the nineteenth
century of classical Greek civilization as the origin of
modern Western culture and democracy has unmistakably
racist traits (Black Athena, 1987)

The formation of this image involved the transformation of

the ancient Greeks into a racially pure, white, European,
and Aryan Herrenvolk that had allegedly developed itself all
by its own powers into an advanced civilization out of its
erstwhile primitive barbarism and that had justifiably
exercised a cultural dominance over other ancient peoples.
 SUBALTERN STUDY GROUP

This group focused on the social and economic

history of modern India, but soon their work was
also to become a source of inspiration for
postcolonial studies concerned with other parts of
the world and with literature, the visual arts, film, and
other forms of cultural expression.
 FIGURES

Ranajit Guha Partha Chatterjee

rejects the widespread image of these groups as criticizes both liberal, conservative, and Marxist views of
backward, that is, as premodern, dominated by Third-World nationalism.
religion (or, even worse, superstition), lacking These presuppose the same idea of modernity as
political consciousness, and only mobilized to founded on scientific rationality and as specifically
action by the leadership of modernized, secular European –a very notion of modernity that had also been
higher classes. used to justify British colonial rule over India
represented as unenlightened, pre-modern, and irrational.
GAYATRI SPIVAK
She gave questions of gender a far more central place than
the members of the group had done hitherto

Subaltern subjects could not unproblematically speak or act

in their own name by discussing the notorious practice among
Hindus of widow burning (sati)

The consciousness of Indian subaltern women is partly shaped

by the sign systems of both British colonial liberalism and
Indian religious patriarchy,

The subaltern subject is not an autonomous, authentic, or

self-conscious actor but an effect of colonial and other
mechanisms of power

The subaltern are shaped by hegemonic sign systems and

hence cannot speak as subaltern.
HOMI K. BHABHA

Bhabha shares Spivak’s argument that the subaltern subject is not an

autonomous or homogeneous entity, but he extends this line of
argument to include the dominant or hegemonic subject.

Hegemony requires repetition (or iteration) and alterity in order to be

effective.

Bhabha thus argues against the belief that a subject or consciousness

stands at the basis of, or can dominate, possible meanings, for the
speaking subject.

This vision also shapes Bhabha’s notion of *hybridity’ (the blending of

divergent and possibly contradictory traditions)
BEYOND POSTCOLONIALISM:
GLOBALIZATION AND GLOBAL
HISTORY
In the early twenty-first century, postcolonial theory is
giving way to theories about globalization. Postcolonial
theory has shifted from liberal, Marxist, and
consciousness philosophical approaches to sign-
oriented and/or poststructuralist perspectives.
The term "globalization" initially referred to the
worldwide spread of free-market capitalism after the
fall of the communist East Bloc in 1989, but more
recently, it has also been used to interpret cultural
phenomena.
WHAT ARE FREDERICK COOPER'S
DOUBTS ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF
GLOBALIZATION?
Frederick Cooper expresses doubts about the concept of
globalization, which he believes is too unclear and too diffuse in
meaning to serve any analytical purpose.
Cooper does not deny that the contemporary world economy has
qualitatively novel features, but he doubts whether these features
are best captured under the heading of 'globalization'.
He argues that both proponents and opponents of globalization
proceed from the unquestioned assumption that they are dealing
with a single, unitary, and unambiguous phenomenon in the first
place.
Cooper compares the present-day enthusiasm for the concept of
globalization to the popularity of the notion of 'modernization' in
the 1950s and 1960s, which he believes also risked depicting a
unilinear and teleological view of history.
THANK
YOU!