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Sex, Sexuality and Gender: Basic Concepts
Sex, Sexuality and Gender: Basic Concepts
Basic Concepts
From Advancing Sexuality Studies:
a short course on sexuality theory and research
methodologies
The International
Resource Network
Developed by:
The Caribbean International Resource Network
Presented in collaboration with:
The Institute for Gender & Development Studies at the University
of the West Indies, St. Augustine (Trinidad & Tobago)
With funding from The Ford Foundation & the International
Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society
(IASSCS)
Available under an Attribution, Non-Commercial,
Share Alike licence from Creative Commons
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Schedule
Learning activity Time allowed
Introduction & aims 10 mins
Session 1. Challenging biological determinism and defining 160 mins
sex, sexuality and gender
Group work & lecture (x2) 130 mins
Reading images 20 mins
Session wrap-up 10 mins
Session 2. Heteronormativity and sexual stratification 100 mins
Introduction and lecture 30 mins
Group work 20 mins
Lecture & group work 50 mins
Session 3. Understanding sexuality as historically & socially 80 mins
constructed
or Transgender issues in cross-cultural perspective
Guided reading and group work 80 mins
Conclusion & personal reflection 45 mins
Total 395 mins
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Module aims
To:
– Introduce and critique biologically determinist understandings of
sex, gender and sexuality
– Introduce Critical Sexuality Studies definitions of sex, sexuality
and gender and examine the history of the construction of
sexuality
– Examine the relationships between sex, sexuality and gender
through consideration of heteronormativity and sexual/gendered
inequity
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Participants will:
– Critique biologically determinist constructions of sex and
sexuality
– Identify key theorists and concepts in the study of sexual
inequality
– Think critically about the relationships between sex, sexuality
and gender
– Reflect on the effects of normative constructions of sex,
sexuality and gender as these are relevant to their own
sociocultural and research settings
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Session 1.
Challenging biological
determinism and defining sex,
sexuality and gender
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Group work
• Divide into two groups
Group 1
– List differences between women and men and consider:
• On what are these perceived differences based? (e.g. biological, social,
cultural or religious beliefs)
Group 2
– List similarities between women and men and consider:
• On what are the perceived similarities based? (e.g. biological, social,
cultural or religious beliefs) (10 mins)
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Discussion
• All participants to consider together:
– What are the effects of highlighting differences rather than
similarities between men and women?
– To what extent do assumptions about biologically determined sex
differences between women and men influence popular culture,
sayings or beliefs in the Caribbean? (10 mins)
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Biological determinism,
sex and sexuality
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‘The gay gene’
• Geneticists search for a ‘gay gene’ to prove there is a
biological basis for, and explanation of, male homosexuality
– Small differences found between the post-mortem brains of
heterosexual and homosexual young men (LeVay, 1991)
– Research on pairs of homosexual brothers found that some had
similar markers on the X chromosome, indicating a genetic basis
for sexuality (Hamer et al. 1993)
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Definitions
• Write down your own definitions of the terms sex, sexuality,
and gender (5 mins)
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Complexities of sex & gender
• Is there a difference? Yes, on one level
– Sex is biological – male, female, also intersex (reproductive
differences based on genitalia, chromosomes, hormones)
• Also refers to sexual acts, as in ‘having sex’
15
Hijra in India Caster Semenya, South A ‘Tom’ in Thailand
African athlete
Trinidadian
Jowelle De Souza
16
• Temptation to make an absolute distinction between sex and
gender:
– ‘Nature vs nurture’ or ‘essentialism vs social constructionism’
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• Cannot neatly separate the sexed body from the gendered
body
– Mutually constituted through sociocultural processes
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‘Bodies cannot be understood as just the objects of
social process…they are active participants in social
process...
They participate through their capacities, development
and needs … through the direction set by their
pleasures and skills.
Bodies must be seen as sharing social agency.’
(Connell 2002: 40)
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Discussion
• Bodies have physical capacities and limitations
– These influence how bodies can be socially experienced or
intervened with
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What is ‘sexuality’?
• Quite a new term
– Came into English, French and German usage at the end of the
18th century
• Usually meant reproduction through sexual activity among plants and
animals
– Used in relation to love and sex matters in European discourse in
the 1830s
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• Four intertwining strands of sexuality:
– Sexual desire or attraction
• To whom (or in some cases what) someone is attracted (physically and
emotionally)
– Sexual activity or behaviour
• What a person does or likes to do sexually (intercourse, masturbation, oral
sex, sexual fetishes)
– Sexual identity
• How someone describes their sense of self as a sexual being (e.g.
heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, homosexual)
– Sexual experience
• Observations of others’ sexualities; education or training related to
sexuality; experiences that may not have been consensual
• No clear boundaries!
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The sexuality matrix
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General theoretical definition
Sexuality … [is] an historical construction which brings
together a host of different biological and mental
possibilities, and cultural forms — gender identity, bodily
differences, reproductive capacities, needs, desires,
fantasies, erotic practices, institutions and values — which
need not be linked together, and in other societies have not
been.
Weeks, J (2003: 7) Sexuality: Second Edition, Routledge
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Caribbean theoretical definition
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• Are these images of sex, sexuality or gender?
• What would we need to know in order to make sense of this
question? (5 mins + 5 mins feedback)
• Images by Rodell Warner from the “Photobooth” series (2009-2011)
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• Are these images of sex, sexuality or gender?
• What would we need to know in order to make sense of this
question? (5 mins + 10 mins feedback)
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Session summary
• Review the notes made at the start of the session on
definitions of sex, sexuality and gender and consider:
– To what extent do they equate with working definitions so far?
(5 mins)
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Session 2.
Heteronormativity and
sexual stratification
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Like gender, sexuality is political. It is organised into
systems of power, which reward and encourage some
individuals and activities, while punishing and suppressing
others.
Gayle Rubin (1984: 309)
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Lecture
• Heteronormativity
… the institutions, structures of understanding and practical
orientations that make heterosexuality seem not only coherent—
that is, organized as a sexuality — but also privileged.
(Berlant and Warner (2000: 312))
• Heteropatriarchy
…the systems that support the combination of heteronormativity
and patriarchy (male dominance)
• Maintained and perpetuated by social institutions
– e.g. media, education, law, family, religion, healthcare systems
– usually through exclusion and marginalisation
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Brainstorm
• Can you think of examples of heteronormative assumptions
that are present in the Caribbean? (5 mins)
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Inducements & punishments
Inducements Material
The marriage contract (legalised sexual subordination of women)
Financial and material support (husband)
Sphere of influence (the domestic)
Stay-at home child allowance for women
Reduced earning capacity for women compared with their male partners
Symbolic or ideological
Romance and love – made complete with a man (heterocoupling)
Female beauty as an ideal of female worth
Motherhood within marriage as female self-fulfilment
Women valued only insofar as they are valuable to men
Punishments • Social ostracism for unmarried mothers, women who leave their husbands and
financially independent women
Women who are sexually independent labelled as ‘loose,’ ‘skettels,’ sluts’
Criminalisation, pathologisation and abuse of lesbians and women who are not
exclusively heterosexual
A system of gendered sexual violence that keeps women (and their sexuality) in its
proper place
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Group work
• Divide into groups
• Using the handout supplied on Rich’s work re: inducements
and punishments, consider the following focus questions:
– Is this model of inducements and punishments relevant in the
Caribbean – historically and/or in the 21st century? If not, can it
be rewritten?
– Can this table be rewritten to apply to men? (10 mins)
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Gayle Rubin
• Thinking Sex (1984)
– Hierarchies of sexual value
• People and practices high in the hierarchy rewarded with a range of
benefits, those low in the hierarchy punished and vilified
• Heterosexual couples who are married, monogamous and of the same
generation accrue more benefits than those who are not married and/or
who engage in more marginalised sexual practices
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Charmed circle: summary
• Diagram not intended to be a fixed representation of how
heteronormativity works at all times, in all places
– The inner circle boundary line can shift over time, and from place-to-place, for
instance:
• Homosexuality was never illegal in French colonies but was criminalised by the
British in all of its colonies; today, same-sex marriage is technically legal in the
Dutch Caribbean territories that remain part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands,
but very few have been performed.
• Polygamy is illegal in Caribbean territories, but it is commonly practiced.
• Intergenerational sex between males was permitted in Ancient Greece but is
illegal in Greece now.
– Whoever controls the boundary determines what is normal and abnormal,
and controls the system of rewards and punishment
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Session 3.
Either: Understanding
Caribbean sexualities as
historically and socially
constructed
or: Transgender identities in a
Caribbean context
39
Session 3, Option 1.
Understanding Caribbean
sexualities as historically and
socially constructed
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Guided reading
• Read G. Wekker “What’s Identity Got to Do with it:
Rethinking Identity in light of the Mati Work in
Suriname.” (2005)
Or
• J. Alexander “Erotic Autonomy as a Politics of
Decolonization: Feminism, Tourism, and State in
the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago”
(30 mins)
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Focus questions
(30 mins reading, 15 mins discussion, 30 mins feedback)
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Session 3, Option 2.
Transgender issues in
a Caribbean context
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Guided reading
• Read Caricco (2012) Collateral Damage:
the Social Impact of Laws Affecting LGBT
Persons in Guayana
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Guided reading
• Focus questions:
– How do Guyanese legal and cultural systems affect transgender people?
– What (if anything) in the reading is particular to the Caribbean and local
understandings of gender and sexuality?
– How can transgender identities challenge heteronormativity? How might they
reinforce heteronormativity?
– What challenges do transgender individuals present for biological determinists?
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Conclusion
• In Critical Sexuality Studies, human sexuality is understood
as:
– Diverse
– Dynamic and
– Deeply inventive
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Personal reflection
• In pairs: discuss the aspect of the module that you
personally found to be the most thought-provoking (5 mins)
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Module adapted for the Anglophone Caribbean by:
Dr. Rosamond S. King, The Caribbean International Resource
Network
Original module created by:
Dr Deb Dempsey, Swinburne University of Technology and Mr William Leonard,
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society with supporting material from
Professor Gary W. Dowsett, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society
Caribbean short course developed by:
The Caribbean International Resource Network
with the Institute for Gender & Development Studies, The University of
the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago
Original short course developed by:
The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe
University, Melbourne, Australia and The International Association for
the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS)
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