JS 130 - Sex and Justice FA19 PDF

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JS 130 Sex & Justice
Michael Vallerga
TuesThurs 3:00 - 4:15
...

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JS 130 Sex & Justice Michael Vallerga TuesThurs 3:00 - 4:15 Week 1-2 Highlighted = on test 08/27/19 Sexuality and Power Sexuality and Power (Today) ● Psychological theories of power ● How it relates to Sexuality Power and the Justice System (Tomorrow) ● Psychological theories of conformity ● How it relates to the Justice System Power - What is Power? ● Power - The capacity to influence others, even when they try to resist this influence 6 Bases of Power (Raven & French, 1957; Raven, 2008) ● Where does one’s perceptions of others’ power come from? ○ Requiring Surveillance (People need to know they are being watched ● Reward Power (The Carrot) ○ Eliciting a behavior/attitude with promise of a reward ● Coercive Power (The Stick) ○ Eliciting a behavior/attitude with threat of punishment ■ EX: China’s Social Credit System ● “Information Collectors” observe and report to the government ● People lose points for bad deeds and gain points for good deeds ● People who are high enough get rewarded ● People below 1000 (starting points) barred from certain forms of travel ● Legitimate Power ○ Someone accepting a person justly having power (usually from an institution) ● Referent Power ○ Identifying/relating to someone liking them gives them power ● Expert Power ○ Being seen a having more insight than someone ● Informational Power ○ Providing information that persuades someone

Power - Power and Persuasion (Brinol, Petty, Durso, & Rucker, 2017) ● How do perceptions of power influence others? ○ An individual’s sense of their own power and impact their cognition, motivation, and behavior ● A sense of one’s own power is malleable and can be dependent upon: ○ Situation factors m(such as memories of feeling powerful) ○ Larger, more stable and systemic factors (such as economic status) ● How much a person is able to think about the message receive interacts with the power of the speaker ● From least to greatest amount of thinking, it is: ○ Power as a simple cue ○ Power influences the amount of thinking (by influencing confidence or belief) ○ Power Biases the Direction (valence) of Thinking ○ Power Serves as a Persuasive Argument ● The above all involve “Primary Cognition” (thoughts about the world). ● “Secondary Cognition” when even more capacity of thought is available allows for power to confirm the thoughts that were persuaded ● Power validates both one’s own self-esteem and one’s evaluations of others ● When confronted with conflicting evaluations, power: ○ Helps validate ambivalent thoughts and attitude instability ○ Can lead to more inaction ● Power influences judgements through validating thoughts had before feelings of being powerful (rather than after) ● Persuasion induced under high-elaboration (thoughtfulness), as opposed to low-elaboration conditions is more: ○ Persistent over time

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○ Resistant to change influential on thought and behavior Sometimes people who feel powerless to act in a way to signal to themselves or others that they were powerful (Compensatory Displays of Power) People with chronic feelings of power might view feeling powerlessness as a threat ○ People without those feelings experience low status situations as less of a threat

Power and Intimate Partner Violence (Whiting, Oka, & Fife, 2012) ● Author interviewed abusers and survivors of intimate partner violence ○ They are clinicians and took a therapeutic approach with focus on “cognitive distortions” ● Abusers (high power): ○ Assigned blame to partner to rationalize their behavior ○ Dehumanized sn objectify partners ● Survivors (low power): ○ Often ad cognitive distortions that helped cope ○ Many refused to describe their experiences as abuse ■ When reading accounts similar to their own, they would ● Clinical interventions involve explicit discussions of power relations ○ Focus on unwinding cognitive distortions Dominance and Control: Social Dominance Orientation (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) ● Social dominance orientation (SDO) is an endorsement of a constellation of beliefs that: ○ Value power/devalue universalism ○ Want hierarchical social structure/hate of egalitarian social structure ● SDO has been found to consistently correlate with racism specifically and other forms of dominating other groups ● Someone with high SDO beliefs sees lower status person: ○ Feelings of competition/economic threat leads to disgust/disdain (Duckitt, 2006) Social Dominance Orientation and Hostile Sexism ● High SDO leads to Hostile Sexism (Fowers & Fowers, 2010) ● Hostile Sexism- “adversarial view of gender relations in which women are percieved a trying to control men” ● Hostile Sexism items ○ “On1 once a woman gets a man to commit to her, she usually tries to put him on a tight leash” ○ “Women seek to gain power by getting control over men” ● Hostile SEcism tends to provide people justifications for, amongst other things, sexul assualt and secual abuse Power - Power Motivation 1

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What are the consequences of being motivated by power? David Winter (1973) wanted to know what makes people who seek power itself different from those who do now Power Motivation - “the desire to have an impact on people” For someone w/ high power motivation, exercise of power is its own reward

Power Motivation and Sexuality - Zurbriggen (2000) ● Zurbriggen examined predictors and motivations of sexual aggression: ○ ‘Power Motivation’ (Related to physical/verbal aggression and sexuality in general) ■ Detrimental to relationship satification, especially me (gay, straight) ■ ‘Affiliation-Intimacy Motivation’ - desire friendship/warm intimate relationships (Related to collaboration and relationship satisfaction) ■ Power-Sex Connection - having an unconscious connection between sex and power ● Measured by the Implicit Associations Test ● Results: ○ For men (not women), power motivation interacted with a high power-sex connection to increase coercive sexual behavior ○ These gender differences could be the result of cultural context and expectations of gender and sexuality ○ For men, associating power and sex is related to being on the “offensie’, but not for women Power Over Others vs Power To/With/Empowerment ● “Don’t people need power to do anything’/ Is it bad to ever have or use power?” ● An important distinction needs to be made: ○ Power over others (Dominating others) -That is the research we talked about ○ Power To/With or Empowerment - That is something a bit different and less intrinsically harmful ● Power Over ○ Domination ○ Control ● Power With ○ Voluntary Participation ○ Collaboration ● Empowerment ○ Agency ○ More Self-Direction ○ Gaining rights ○ Starting from Having Less Power, Sexuality and Gender

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Most power imbalances we’ll discuss related to sexulit and justive will have a gender component. ○ Men/Women/NonBinary People ○ Cisgender/Transgender People This is systemic, due to many centuries of: ○ Patriarchy - a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property ○ The responsibility of these injustices is in systems Patriarchy developed because a cycle of domination of others in fear of domination by

Sexuality ● Sexuality is - “unique pattern of sexual and romantic desire, behavior, and identity that each person possesses” (eh miller, 2014, p. 145, as cited in Englert & Dinkins, 2015) ● Sexual Attraction -The people [and other contextual aspects] one attractive and sexually desirable ● Sexual Behavior - concert the people with [and the ways in whicih] one engages in sexual activity ● Sexual Identity - refers to how one classifes one’s sexuality, such as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual [as an aspectof one’s understanding of who one is] Adversarial Sexual Beliefs (Burt, 1980; Klement et al.,2019) ● Adversarial Sexual Beliefs - world where men and women oppose each other in courtship and sexual interactions ● Those who endorse adversarial sexual beliefs think that: ○ One gender is always dominant in romantic in romantic relationships ○ To become and remain dominant one needs to use manipulation and ‘out-play’ the other person ● This is an endorsement of one person holding power over their partner – to ‘fight and win’ ● Correlated with: ○ Sexual Entitlement ○ Sexual Exploitation ○ Sexual Aggression

08/29/19 The Justice System and Power 14th Amendment ● All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State when they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens

of the due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws The Due Process Clause ● “No State shall make or enforce any law… without due process of law” (also present in the 5th) ● Procedural Due Process - Government must follow fair procedures ○ Basically, every step of the princess must be fair ● Substantive Due Process - Court has an interest in protecting fundamental rights ○ Such as voting rights or the right to privacy ● Judicial Review of a Law: (level of scrutiny, how intercept 14th amendment): ○ Minimal Scrutiny: refers to the government as long as: ■ “Rational relationship” to state interest and law will reasonably accomplish it ○ Strict Scrutiny: Government bears the burden of showing law’s validity ■ “Compelling” and absolutely necessary” The Due Process Clause and Sexuality ● Most Substantive Due Process cases (Loving v. Virginia & Roe v. Wade) ○ Griswold v. Connecticut ( 1965) ■ Planned Parenthood challenged Connecticut’s ban on contraception ■ Warren court ruled 7-2 that it violated the “right to privacy” ■ Not in Bill of RIghts, but found in the “penumbral”/”emanations” of other rights that protect from government intrusion ● Self-incrimination clause of the 5th ● Freedom of association clause of the 1st ○ Lawrence v. Texas  (2003) The Equal Protection Clause ● “No State shall make or enforce any law… nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws ● Judicial Review of Law: (level of scrutiny, how interpret 14th amendment): ○ Minimal Scrutiny: Defers to the government as long as: ■ “Rational relationship” to state interest and will reasonably accomplish ○ Strict Scrutiny: Government bears the burden of showing law’s validity ■ “Compelling” and “absolutely necessary” ■ Relating to distinctions made based on “a suspect classification’ ■ Textbook defines Suspect Class as “having experienced tangible discriminations while having the ability to make contributions to society, with the discirination being based in an immutable… characteristic, and with one result being political marginalism ○ Intermediate Scrutiny Government bears burden or proof ■ Only has to be a close, but not perfect fit of meeting the state interest

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Mostly gender (possibly also sexual orientation)

The Equal Protection Clause and Sexuaity ● Romer v. Evans (1996) ● Glenn v. Brumby  (2011) The 14th Amendment The Justice System and Power ● Due Process and Equal Protection are essential for ensuring rights for minorities of all types ○ Including sexual minorities ○ These rights protect sexual behaviors outside of distinct, recognised sexual identities (other examples in book) ● This amendment forms the basis of one important aspect of power ○ As we have seen previously, there are more subtle influences of power ■ These influences have serious consequences for the justice system Critical Theory ● Critical Theory examines the cultural, historical, and ideological forces that produce articular social behavior ○ Helpful to discuss power ● It concerns itself with the way power differences between social classes and groups can affect the mental and physical well-being of individuals or groups of people ○ This is the opposite of traditional individual explanations ● Several critical theories, each has specific lens to view power in different situations, like” ○ Queer Theory ○ Critical Race Theory ○ Feminist Theory Asch Experiment (1952) ● Conformity ● Which letter line on the right, matches the left card. ○ What if everyone else in the class said “B” ● Actors provide a consensus of a false line ○ In this situation 68% of judgments were correct ○ 100% were correct when actors were accurate Cognitive Dissonance ● When someone holds two conflicting attitudes, values, or goals ○ This causes feelings of discomfort, tension, and heightened physiological ○ Cognitive Dissonance strongly incentivises people to resolve it ■ Attitude Behavior change - Making these attitudes not conform anymore ■ Distraction - trying not to think about ti

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Trivialization - Trivialization a behavior when it conflicts with an attitude

09/03/19 Lecture 4 Sex and Intersectionality Race Gender and Class Intersectionality ● Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. It’s not simply that there’s a race problem here, a gender problem here, and a class or LGBTQ problems there. Many times that framework erases what happens to people who are subject to all of these things ● Traditionally thought of as race and gender ● Can Include any combination of different identities that have differing levels of social power ● It is not just intersections of marginalized identities Intersectionality – Race and Gender ● Kimberle Crensha coined the term 30 years ago in a law journal (1989) ● Black women were having difficulty having legal standing asa a gropu, from which to bring racial discrimination suits ● This is directly related to attempts to establish black women as a suspect class, so they could be able to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment ● Crenshaw argued that black women have a unique experience different from black men and white women Critical Race Theory ● Derrick Bell was the first tenured black law professor in Harvard ○ One of the first to work on CRT in the 1970s & 1980s (Hughes, Noblit & Cleveland, 2013) ● Critical Race Theory ○ Identify the law historically enables white supremacy (COnstitution/Jin Crow) ○ Often gains made in Civil Rights was the least painful option for elites ○ Focusing on a race-conscious approach rather than a colorblind approach ● It will allow us to see and understand power imbalances due to race ● We can better contextualise out topics by looking at how race plays a role ○ Often discussions of sexuality involve mostly gender-based examination Race and Sexuality – Loving v. Virginia ● Race and Gender ○ Mildred Loving is a black woman and Richard Loving is a white man ○ This interracial pairing doesn’t invoke the same kins of fears as a black man and a white women ■ “All black people are men and all women are white”

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Class ○ The Lovings were working class he was a construction worker) ○ This caused their distance from their family and support networks in Virginia to be a point of pain ■ Example as to why simply moving to a place that doesn’t have this ban is possible for most people

Intersectionality - Class ● Income Inequality has returned to the levels that precipitated the great depression ● Poverty Complicates Everything ● Often, criminal sentences involve some financial penalty (tht increases if not paid; Brand, 2018; Dewan & Lehren, 2016). ● People miight do illegal or dangerouis things (sex work, staying with abusr) because poverty is more dangerous (Grtne & McCarthy, 2014) ● There are many challenges for low-income people to get access to and use contraceptives (especially under this administration; Sebelius, 2018) ● People can use the money to insulate themselves from both the need to commit crimes as well from becoming victimized ● In many ways, money is power, and power is central to this course

09/05/19 LGBT Sex, Gender, and Sexual Orienation ● Biological Sex ○ Traditionally thought of as a strict binary based on chromosomal expression (XX or XY), hormones, and genitals ■ This is not true, as intersexed people exist ● Approximately 1% to 2% of the population ● Gender ○ A socially constructed c ategory that reflects a set of behaviors, marker, and expectations associated with a person’s biological sex and social norms concerning masculinity and feminity ● Sexual Orientation ○ A combination of sexual identity, behavior, and attraction ● Sexual Identity ○ How one classidies one’s sexuality as being described by a socially constructed identity, such as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, etc ● Sexual Behavior ○ Concerns the people with whom [and the manner in which] one engages in sexual activity

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Sexual Attraction ○ Concerns the people one finds attractive and sexually desirable

Social Constructionism and Essentialism ● Social Constructionism ○ “How we understand and even perceive the world and the objects (including people) and events within it does not necessarily reflect the nature of that world but rather is a product of how the world is represented or produced through language” (Burr & Dick, 2017) ■ How we talk about ourselves and each other heps shape expectations and understandings  efine who we are or what we do ■ Nature and history doesn’t have to d ■ Societal pressures and constructs influence how people present or perform ● Essentialism ○ Any entity possesses a core set of attributes that are essential and, therefore, necessary to the entity's identity and function ■ People’s sexuality and gender are innate parts of their being that are inherent (biologically determined) and universal ■ Historical oppression has consistently used essentialist reasoning: ● “This group is inherently t his was is inferior or should be treated differently” ● “This way of being is inherently good and all others of being should be punished.” Transgender and Cisgender People ● Transgender (trans) Person ○ Someone who does not identitfy with ex assigned at birth ● Cisgender Person ○ Someone who does identitfy with sex assigned at birth ● Genderqueer or Gender NonBinary (NB) Person ○ Someone who identifies as a gender other than male or female. NB individuals may or may not self-identify as trans. ● Intersexed Person ○ Born with variance in chromosomes, sex hormones (testosterone.estrogen) or genitals that don’t fit with binary biological sex (aka, people with Differences in Sex Development) ● Transsexual Person ○ An outdated medical term for someone completely transitioned via hormones and surgery (don’t use!) Queer Theory

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Centered around the idea that gender and sexual orientation are fluid aspects of identity that reject containment and consistencies. Gender and sexual orientation are two layers of identity that societies and institutions associated with power. Societal pressures and constructs influence how people present or perform gender and sexual orientation ○ Queer Theory can be used as a lens to examine how gender and sexuality influences and is influenced by social structures an social categoeis and constructs –––––––––––––––

09/10/19 A Brief History of LGBT Rights Introductions ● Origins of prohibitions: ○ Religious tenets influence law ○ Essentialist beliefs about marriage and sexuality being for procreation ○ Beliefs that sexuality ought to be controlled ○ Constructive gender norms ● 18th century (1700s) ○ No LGBT movement (U.S largely rural/LGBT people were isolated) ○ Death sentence was common for those convicted of ‘sodomy’ ● 19th century (1800s): ○ Some gay communities in cities such as New York and Chicago (especially in the 1890s), but no organized policitcal actions in U.S. ■ Germany - 1st gay rights org (Scientific-Humantiarian Committee) founded 1897 1900 to 1950: Beginnings of a Cultural Movement ● At the beginning of the 20th century, as ever in the UNited States, no LGBT rights: ○ Same-sex marriage was illegal everywhere ○ Same-sex sexual behavior was illegal everywhere ● LGBT subcultures were growing in more cities ○ By the 1920s, gay bars and clubs operated openly ○ There were even prototypical versions of drag balls in Harlem ■ Attended by gay and ...