THE CONCEPT: Sex, gender and desire/sexuality are linked and ordered through a logic of naturalized heterosexuality that we are compelled to follow in order to be recognized as normal.
note for writing about this concept: See assignment here
- Explain this concept in your own words (200 or less)
- List and properly cite 2 texts that discuss this concept. Briefly describe (with quotations/examples from the text) how your 2 texts support your explanation of the concept.
- Provide example (media, your experiences, other readings) that illustrates concept.
An overview of section one (SYSTEMS): In this first main section of the course, we will closely examine this logic and its implications for the "politics of sex." This examination will include discussions of how this logic is used to shape and regulate what appears to be "normal" and natural (2.9), how the normal becomes (hetero)normative through rituals and repeated practices, like those for/on Valentine's Day (2.14), and how our meanings of the "normal" are predicated on the oppressing of certain experiences, identities, bodies and the privileging of others (2.16). The purpose of this section is to introduce you to this overarching logic and provide you with one tool for making sense of our understandings and experiences of sex, gender and desire.
Section Reading Schedule:
feb 7 Sex/Gender/Desire
- Butler, Judith. Excerpt from Gender Trouble
- Pascoe, C.J. "Becoming Mr. Cougar: Institutionalizing Heterosexuality and Masculinity at River High"
- Lorber, Judith. "Beyond the Boundaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex, Sexuality and Gender"
- Scholar and Feminist Online. "Normativity"
- Tauches, Kimberly. "Transgendering: Challenging the Normal"
- U of MN Map of Gender Neutral Restrooms
- Browse: U of MN Transgender Commission Website
- Warner, Michael and Lauren Berlant. Excerpt from "Sex in Public," 547-557.
- Sociological Images. "Valentine's Day and Heternormativity"
- Ingraham, Chyrs. "Thinking Straight"
- Bornstein, Kate. Excerpt from My Gender Workbook
- McIntosh, Peggy. "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"
- Taking Up Too Much Space. "The cisgender privilege checklist"
- Sue, Derald Wing and David Rivera. "Microaggressions in Everyday Practices"
- Browse the Microagressions blog
- Sex and bodies
- Gender and cultural/social practices
- Desire/sexuality as what is erotic/pleasures/desiring practices
| Sex (bodies) | Gender (rules/roles/social practices) | Desire |
| male | Man | desires Women |
| female | Woman | desires Men |
- How and why are bodies and gender/sexual practices shaped, regulated, policed?
- Where does this policing come from?
- What are the consequences of not following the logic?
- particular racialized and gendered processes of heterosexualizing
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