The Outline: Sociological Theories Of Gender

Words: 853
Pages: 4

II. Summary of The Outline
a. Foundational Theories
I use this section to construct a foundation of primarily sociological theories of gender/sex-marked identity development to set a working baseline upon which to build further arguments and conversations. The assembled works here describe concepts and mechanisms upon which many current Western interpersonal, institutional, and spatial relations are founded. From these theoretical arguments various discourses have emerged, framing the conversations taking place within academic, administrative and public realms.

b. Gender and Sexual Embodiment
One cannot consider how power circulates through gender and sexuality discourses without examining its material effects, especially given that as individuals,
…show more content…
The daily behavioral choices we make to publicly announce gender and sexuality may seem to originate from either a biologically-determined point (the essentialist argument) or a place of individual agency (the liberalist argument) but neither cannot escape a reiterated performativity informed by social constructionism. The bodies which house our social identities emerge through various intersubjective and/or institutional relations that rely on what Butler (1990) argues as “contingent foundations”. In a gendered and sex-marked hierarchy, embodiment becomes the telltale directional that can point an observer toward the stakeholders of …show more content…
How these arguments manifest in the public/quasi-public spheres sets off various tension-ridden queries: can a beard, mustachioed female-to-male transsexual or individual on the male spectrum still claim a cultural phallus if they still possess their reproductive organs and become pregnant; what is a cisgender-woman if a penis-bearing transwoman enters a women-only space? How does a cisgender individual identify themselves in relation to a genderqueer or non-binary person? What does it mean that those identities once considered social deviances now seek political acknowledgement and protections? Are all non-normative gender identities treated equally across other social indexes such as race and class? How would this new understanding of gender alter the definition of gender-specific spaces, such as women-only colleges or male-only armed