WMST 1001 Notes - This course provides an introduction to some of the major concepts, issues, PDF

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This course provides an introduction to some of the major concepts, issues, and themes that inform the field of Gender and Women’s Studies. Throughout the course we challenge many taken-for-granted assumptions about gender relations, feminism, and human inequalities. We examine the social, historica...

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WMST 1001 NOTES Week 2) What is a Feminist -Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. NOT being antimale. -Males as a group do benefit the most from patriarchy (the belief that men are superior to women, therefore they should rule women through exploitation, oppression, violence) -Many men fear losing this domination and resist the feminist movement -We must strive to live equal; this includes ending racism, class elitism, and imperialism. -Changes in our nation’s economy, economic depression, the loss of jobs, etc., made it easier to accept and not challenge the notion of gender equality in the workforce -Feminism aims for equal rights, equal pay, equal access to education, reproductive freedom, accessible and affordable child care, ending violence against women. However, many people do not know or understand that this is precisely what feminism is. Feminism is seen to be a negative identity based on stereotypes. -These NOW “common sense” notions about “equality to vote despite race or gender” or that “freedom from discrimination is the common goal” erase the hard work people have put into that movement of making it the way it is. When laws were more discriminating, activists/ feminist protested for the rights we have today – we take these for granted -Mid-twentieth century, many movements were taking off; civil right movement for the ending of segregation, the American Indian Movement to gain status Indian legally, gay liberation movement. Pro-choice movement. Consensual sex in a marriage movement. Equality in the medical treatment and research movement. -Women of all races, sexual orientations, ethnicities, abilities and classes have participated in all movements. This diversity has brought up a variety of current issues faced by those groups, as well as conflicts, debates and exclusions. -Men can also be feminist, despite popular idea of “being a real man”- which reinforces the binary ideology there is only “one or the other” which limits our understanding of gender politics -When men participate in gender justice efforts, it maximizes the potential for deep, sustained social change -Getting men involved means holding men personally and institutionally accountable for the sexist abuse of power -Intersectional feminism: certain groups of women have multi-layered facets in life that they have to deal with, including; race, class, abilities, ethnicity, etc. There is no one-size-fits-all type of feminism. - “Shared female experience” is a myth in that all universal issues are typically more prevalent to women in another oppressed group. Particular women are more vulnerable than others -bel hooks: “movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression” -Victoria Bromley:” is complex, multiple and diverse” -Roxanne Gay: “bad feminist” -Shira Tarrant: feminist men who believe in safety, egalitarian values -Krenshaw: Legal context of term intersectional as a way of describing intersecting experiences of discrimination and the way this ought to be able to be tried together in court. Experiences of multiple and overlapping systems of oppression. Identification of multiple and overlapping systems of oppression so that they can be dismantled

Week 3) Who am I in relation to Indigenous women in this place? (Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, Michi Saagig Anishinaabe Territory) -The condemnation of being a “strong woman” is a norm in white communities, as opposed to on the reservations; being a strong woman is acceptable -Women’s choice to bear children is rooted spiritually within the indigenous community, unlike the white community where a woman’s value is rooted in her ability to bear children -Indigenous community: children are raised as equals and center of the community. There are more genders than two. Account for and value women’s needs, and labour based on their differences. Idea that men can live as women. It doesn’t matter who you sleep with but what responsibilities you take up. Women can have power without violence and aggression. The spirit of an individual should never be crushed. -The “dirty, promiscuous Indigenous women” stereotype was for the colonizers benefit. As a representation of the land; women are easily dominated and are entitled to men. They are savages; therefore, violence is necessary. -Due to the inaccurate representation of Indigenous people, the poor conditions of their treatment led to increased poverty within their communities -Native women were deemed as poor parents are required their children to be removed and sent to residential schools and foster homes. -This negative image of native women is so ingrained within our western culture that children participate in stereotyping and eventually violence– Internalized racism -There is a lack of attention on the violence on Indigenous women. Due to the stereotype of their “looseness,” they are more rapeable and that substance abuse that is predominant within their community, they deemed unworthy of humane treatment. -Perpetrators of violent crimes against Indigenous women only receive a slap on the wrist

-After colonial imposition, Indigenous communities are striving to; reclaim indigenous contexts (knowledge, interpretations, values, ethics, processes), rebuild their culturally inherent philosophical contexts for governance, education, healthcare, and economy. To do so, they must engage in Indigenous processes which influences the outcome of the engagement itself. This must be done without the sanction, permission, or engagement of the state, western theory, or the opinions of Canadians. Elders, their native language, their lands, along with vision, intent, commitment, community and action are needed to obtain the goal = antidote to colonialism -As non-Indigenous Canadians; we should aim to decolonize – understand our history and our wrong doings, take responsibility for the abuse. Unfortunately, reconciliation has become institutionalized, such that it is only done do to “level the playing field”/ make it even (we did wrong for centuries but now we apologized so its ok!?). We must support Indigenous people to regenerate their languages, oral cultures, traditions of governance and everything else residential schools has attacked and attempted to obliterate. This will take years -Through the telling and listening of Indigenous stories, Canadians’ attention is called to focus on history to call for a responsible response while building a new and just relationship

- "Xwelitem" means much more than the equivalent term for "settler"; more accurately, the word "xwelitem" means "starving person: • As I understand it, the word came into use because, when settlers first arrived in our territories, they were starving. They were starving literally, for food; but starving also for gold It is an understatement to say that this hunger for resources has not abated with time. Xwelitem hunger has long existed for the rocks, the trees, the water, and the land itself. Each has been thirsted after, each has been consumed. (Dylan Robinson) - As non-Indigenous researchers invest time and energy into sating a hunger to know the Other and to disseminate the knowledge they have extracted, how much time and energy have been invested in locating and mining their own hearts-in remembering themselves? What has brought you to this moment? From what "boat" did you ( or your ancestors) disembark on these shores? On what shore did you first arrive? From what nations? What has been left behind? What languages, spiritual beliefs and practices, attitudes, lifeways, and knowledge systems have been forgotten, ignored, or discarded? Why? What may be worth retrieving and preserving and sharing with ( not imposing upon) others? why do your research questions concern themselves with Indigenous people? For what have you been hungering? (Carter)

Week 4) How have authoritative scripts shaped cultural understandings of gender and what other scripts might we turn to? -Throughout the 19th century, anthropometry (measurement of the human body) was used to scientifically certify that women were inferior. -Since women had smaller brains, they would never have the equal intelligence -This impacted the availability of higher education for women – not deemed necessary -Society has formed their ideas on normal vs. abnormal, superior vs. inferior, etc. -“Freak Shows” proves that social constructions of “norms vs. abnormal” were utilized for performances. Freak shows were used to eradicate distinctions among a variety of bodies; freak or normal. Anybody that seemed different or threatening to the dominant order were condemned -People with disabilities, of different race, visible differences (women with facial hair) were used as exhibits for people to gawk at - “Freaks” weren’t always the “victim” when exploited by the show man, often the worked side by side to make profit by scamming customers. “Freaks” found a way to benefit off their differences -Freak shows did promote ableist and racist ideologies -Although freakshows do not run anymore, there is a new freakdom: Hospitals and doctors’ offices. People with disabilities are often gawked and exploited for the sake of “educational purposes” -Goal is to turn words of hatred/oppression/violence into descriptions of pride -Race is a modern idea as it was not used to divide humans -Race has been used to justify social inequalities, white superiority became “common sense” -Racial practices were institutionalized within the government, laws and society… white privilege -To combat racism, we must identify and remedy social policies, and institutional practices that advantage some groups at the expense of others - Gould cites Le Bon (who is the worst): “A desire to give them (women) the same education, and, as a consequence, to propose the same goals for them, is a dangerous chimera… The day when, misunderstanding the inferior occupations which nature has given her, women leave the

home and take part in our battles, on this day a social revolution will begin, and everything that maintains the sacred ties of the family will disappear.”

Week 5) What is sex? What is gender? -The opinion: “social inequalities are rooted from biological sex differences” states that biological factors, rather than society, set constraints on the behaviour and abilities of women. -It is now impossible to imagine a world without sex hormones. Women all over the world take hormonal pills to control their fertility and estrogen and progesterone have become the most widely used drugs in the history of medicine. But why has the female rather than the male body become increasingly subjected to hormonal treatment? Nelly Oudshoorn challenges the idea that there exists such a thing as a natural body and shows how concepts such as the hormonal body assume the appearance of natural phenomena by virtue of the activities of scientists, rather than being rooted in nature. Beyond the Natural Body tells the fascinating story of scientists’ search for the ovaries, testes and urine required to develop the hormonal body concept; investigating how sex hormones have shaped our understanding of sex and the body, transforming science and medicine and ultimately redefining the relationship of women to reproduction. Nelly Oudshoorn concludes by evaluating the mixed blessings of the hormonal revolution. -Intersex people are born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies" -While sex has been maintained as a biological category in science, gender is a combination of biological and social constructions. That is to say that gender is based on an individual’s conception of him/herself and is often affected by how they’re socialized, their biological characteristics etc. The ideals of fair play in sports are not motivated by a “need” for segregation but by needs of gender policing. However, this biological category itself must not be understood as a binary. That is to say that sex is complex and methodically undetectable. The presence of XX or XY chromosomes at birth, the presence of certain hormones or physical manifested traits are not sole criteria for someone to be regarded as male or female. Then where does this biological sex reside? And can it be separated from who we’re socialized as from birth, i.e. our gender? Research now suggests that sex and gender must be understood on a spectrum, where each individual will fall somewhere on the continuum owing to a myriad of reasons (not all of which are known to us). Hyperandrogenism and other Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) are thus, scientifically difficult to understand, let alone regulate. -The practice of sex testing is not a site for preservation of ideals of fair play, but a mechanism for social control demanding a form of bodily impassiveness in accordance with socialized codes of feminine bodies. Scientifically backed accounts of the complexity of sex and bodily hormone interaction when coupled with the performative and constructed nature of gender, essentially point to how our cultural and lived experiences situate our performativity on a continuum not a binary. -The premise of sex segregated sport is rooted in the belief of male biological superiority and female subordination owning primarily to strength. -Biomedical inspection, at least the kind in sex testing directed at women, matches the institutionalized forms of racism, sexism and global politics by othering a kind of “strange”

female body as “too good” to compete with the “natural”. By discarding intersex athletes, athletes with cases of hyperandrogenism or Disorders of Sex Development, these organizations are claiming to make it a level playing field, fair for all. But can the same be said about men? No man has ever been decried as being too manly to compete with the rest. Then why do women need the playing field leveled so unjustly? Research suggests that judging athletic capability on the sole basis of testosterone levels doesn’t take into account other genetic advantages such as height, muscle mass, oxygen uptake etc. Is it fair then as a man to compete against LeBron James, Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt who obviously have these kinds of genetic advantages? The institution of sports rejoices outliers on the gamut of genetic diversity when it’s the men. No one is pursuing male sportspersons who might have higher levels of testosterone than their peers, or revel in any other freakish benefit -As for cheaters (steroids), there is little evidence that synthetic testosterone behaves the same as real testosterone -We cannot read testosterone on people’s bodies, there is no such thing as surface masculinity. Testosterone levels are also a very poor predictor of sex or gender. -This is a highly sensitive topic and has been written poorly about even by historians. There have been inaccurate assertions about gender “fraud” and we must question everything we read on the topic. - Just because the policy was officially abandoned, it doesn’t mean the oppression is over. It is a kind of sexual harassment to scrutinize female bodies the way they’re done right now. We must move beyond testing and towards real diversity in athleticism. -Look at obstacles put in front of these athletes- social, cultural, economic, racial, gender-based etc. and ask what can be done to remove those? Which gender? Which obstacles? Think intersectional identities. -Georgiann Davis's brief history of modern intersex treatment and advocacy organization begins with the founding of the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) by Cheryl Chase and others in 1993. The group's mission, through its newsletter and later through its website, was to directly confront medical authority, to question the medical protocols for diagnosing and treating intersex conditions, and to protest the injustice of performing surgery on children. She notes that some endocrinologists, urologists, and other specialists in the field had begun to question the standard procedure devised by the Johns Hopkins psychologist John Money, which required doctors to operate on the ambiguous genitalia of newborns and to counsel parents to raise them in the gender that corresponded to their modified genitals. -Davis acknowledged the need for "patient advocacy," renounced unnecessary newborn surgery, and privileged genital orgasmic function over cosmetic appearance. In light of this new collaborative spirit, Chase and others shuttered their combative advocacy organization (ISNA) in 2008 and replaced it with a more collaborative support group (AISSG) that adopted the DSD terminology and encouraged intersex people to work with doctors to achieve the best medical outcomes. -Davis's interviews and research suggest that the new medical regime is more sensitive to the concerns of parents and their intersex children, but the highly coordinated medical teams that analyze each case and provide recommendations still cannot escape the language of sex/gender congruity that plagued the previous generation. Parents are still pressured under the aegis of a "medical emergency" to make decisions after the birth of an intersex child and accede to surgery that will give him/her a gender identity consonant with a sexed body, however imperfect. These medical teams seldom include a psychiatrist. Intersex children whose parents resist surgery might

not have access to the psychiatric care that could lessen the identity crises they undergo as they mature in terms of both their gender identity -Between 1.7% to 4% of the population are born intersex. The current recommended treatment for babies is genital reconstruction surgery to render the child as clearly sexed either male or female. This may leave children with permanent physical and emotional scars. -The size of the genitals matters for the physicians “choosing” the sex of the child. Ex. Too big of a clitoris to be female, too small penis to be male. -Our notions of gender and sexuality are socially constructed, despite physiological differences. Fausto-Sterling begins by telling the story of Maria Patino, who was banned from competing for Spain in women’s hurdling for the 1988 Olympics. According to the International Olympic Committee, Patino had failed the sex test because her cells not only contained a Y chromosome, but she was also lacking ovaries and a uterus. Because these results did not match up with the Committee’s definition, Patino was deemed as not being a woman as her whole world disintegrated before her eyes. -The Mobius strip serves as a metaphor for the connection between the body and the mind, in which the body is at the core of the strip while society, culture, and experience is on outer surface. The body and the mind are connected by the Mobius strip and can continuously move to and from one another. -The Mobius strip rejects the idea of nature versus nature and provides a model for thinking about the mind and the body functioning in conjunction with each other, inside and out. FaustoSterling concludes this chapter by stating that sex and gender may appear to be biologically found in nature, but like gender and culture, they too are constructed. In order to fully understand gender and sexuality, we need to look inside and outside of our bodies, just as the Mobius strip model suggests. - Remember: we want to be suspicious of the claim that science is neutral - John Money: Distinguished between gender identity (sense of one’s gender) and gender role (relationship to social behavioral norms) and argued that heterosexuality was only ’normal’ insofar as it had been socially constructed -David Reimer – re-assigned biological sex and nurtured gender identity and role that resulted in Reimer’s suicide. - These readings, part of a much larger debate on the topic of intersex, are a response to the arguments made by people who turn to biological essentialism to justify their discomfort with/negative feelings toward gender variant people or even just people who challenge gender roles. -Remember last week – women have little brains and are susceptible to breakdowns because they have uteruses, are built for childbearing and so should avoid cafes, education and simply sta...