Transcript Document

Sex vs. Gender
Calpernia Addams is a
pre-operative transsexual
Hermaphrodites
a.k.a.
Intersexuals
Jamie Lee Curtis
* * * * *
Male or Female?
Third Genders
Hijras
Two Spirits
Fa’afafines
(Berdache)
Guevodoche
Castrati
Sworn Albanian Virgins
Eunuchs
Sunflowers
Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling has proposed that
we replace our two-sex system with a five-sex
system:
1. Males
2. Females,
3. Herms ("true" hermaphrodites)
4. Merms (male "pseudohermaphrodites")
5. Ferms
(female "pseudohermaphrodites")
Forms of Sexuality
From a Dichotomous to a Continuous
Model of Sexuality
Dichotomous
Male
Female
Continuous
Male
Female
Homosexuality
•
64% of human societies surveyed either condone of encourage samesex relationships.
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Platonic love in ancient Greece
•
Presentation of the body (with women)
•
Presentation of the mind (with men)
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Greek soldiers brought young boys on military campaigns
Azande military homosexuality
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Warriors have boy-wives
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Boy wives become warriors with their own boy-wives
The Sambia of Highland New Guinea
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Boys Fallate older men
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Build up store of semen
•
Prohibition against masturbation
Gender-Related
Behavior
GENDER-RELATED BEHAVIOR
Concepts
Sex
vs. Gender
Biological vs. Social Male
Biological vs. Social Female
Third Genders
Berdache
Hijras
Fa’afafines
Guevodoche
Eunuchs
Castrati
Sworn Albanian Virgins
Sunflowers
Pseudo-hermaphroditism
Institutionalized Homosexuality
Patriarchal Society
Matriarchal Society
Uniformitarianism
Occam's Razor
Correlation does not prove causality.
Typical does not mean "natural."
A constant cannot explain a variable.
Ethnobiology
Dichotomous vs. Continuous Sexual Paradigm
Aristotelian
vs.
essentialist
vs.
Infrastructure

Structure
Galilean
conditional

Superstructure
The issue is not whether differences exist
between men and women --which of course they
do-- but rather whether those differences are
relevant for explaining differences in behavior
from one society to the next.
“There are more methodological problems in
regards to the study of cognitive sex differences
and sex differences in general than there are
actual sex differences.”
--Dr. Caroline Jaklin
The Role of Prediction in Science.
(Given a, . . . Then b.)
•
The goal of scientific research is to develop theories and
models that lead to better and better predictions of behavior.
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Predictability is, thus, fundamental to doing science.
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Yet, predictability is severely lacking in sex-difference
research.
•
“We gain little in prediction by knowing the sex of a child.”
(Jacklin)
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Differences generally range from 1- 5% when, in fact, they
differ (Caplan & Caplan)
•
Which means that between 95 - 99% of sex-related behavior
is indistinguishable
Why Does Sex-Difference Research Persist?
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Given all of the methodological problems associated
with such studies and the consistently small (and
frequently non-existent) differences found, it is
reasonable to ask why such research persists?
•
Would we continue to conduct such inconclusive
research in physics, chemistry, biology or medicine?
•
Would we continue to fund research that after 30
years could not point to conclusive results?
•
Whose interests might be served by such research?
Aristotelian approaches to
the study of Sex and Gender
Commonly used
Aristotelian
Concepts:
Maternal Instinct
Patriarchal Society
Male Aggressiveness
Machismo
Human Nature
Matriarchal Society
Aristotelian concepts of Gender cannot explain . . .
1. Why Net-hunter Pygmy women enjoy a higher social status than
archer women.
2. Why Yanomamo women have much lower social status than
Dobe !Kung women, or why they also have a lower social status
than women in most other Amazonian societies.
3. Why Inuit (Eskimo) women have among the lowest social status
of all women in hunter-gatherer societies.
or . . .
. . . why the role of women and their status in both the
domestic and political economy changed dramatically
among the Plains Indians as they moved onto the Great
Plains and became increasingly dependent on mounted
bison hunting.
1. Among the Sioux, the Cheyenne and other eastern tribes,
the family structure changed from being matrilocal and
matrilineal extended kin groups to individualized
patrilocal and polygynous ones.
2. Among the western Plains Indians, such as the Blackfoot,
which had previously been organized along extended
patrilocal and patrilineal lines evolved male-focused
independent polygynous households.
or . . .
. . . why most of those executed for witchcraft in
Europe and North America during the Great Witch
Craze were women, whereas most of the Pueblo Indians
in the Southwest that were executed as witches by the
early Spanish Conquistadors were men.
. . . or why most witches among the Pueblo, Apache
and Navajo in the American Southwest are believed to be
men.
. . . or why among the Yoruba of Nigeria, not only
do most men suspect their wives of witchcraft, but most
women suspect their co-wives and their mothers-in-law
of witchcraft.
or . . .
. . . why . . .
1. 47% of the 95 societies she surveyed were "rape-free",
while 17% proved to be "unambiguously rape-prone.”
2. The Ashanti of West Africa and the Mbuti Pygmies of
the Ituri Forest are rape-free societies, whereas 47.2
rapes per 100,000 persons were recorded for the Gusii
of Kenya.
3. The highest rape rate among Industrial societies occurs
in the U.S. at 13.5 rapes per 100,000 inhabitants. In
contrast, the incidence of rape in Japan, a more
“patriarchal” society than the U.S., is far below that of
the U.S.
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SOUCE: B. L. Benderly, “Rape Free or Rape Prone” Science 82 (1982)
. . . why female income relative to male income in the U.S.
increased from 59¢ to 60¢ per dollar between 1960 and 1980,
whereas it increased from 60¢ to 73¢ per dollar between 1980
and 1990 (during the politically conservative Reagan and
Bush administrations), and only increased from 73¢ to 76¢
per dollar between 1992 and 2000, when Bill Clinton and Al
Gore were in office.
. . . or why average female income increased 10% from
1979 to 1990, while average male income decreased by 8%.
. . . or why White female employment increased 72%
between 1974 and 1977 at the same time that Black male
employment declined by 11%.
Finis