Gender studies
Encyclopedia
Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study which analyses race, ethnicity, sexuality
and location
.
Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir
said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one". This view proposes that in gender studies, the term "gender" should be used to refer to the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities, not to the state of being male or female in its entirety. However, this view is not held by all gender theorists. Other areas of gender study closely examine the role that the biological states of being male or female have on social constructs of gender. Specifically, in what way gender roles are defined by biology and how they are defined by cultural trends. The field emerged from a number of different areas: the sociology of the 1950s and later (see Sociology of gender
); the theories of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; and the work of feminists such as Judith Butler
.
Gender is an important area of study in many disciplines, such as literary theory
, drama studies, film theory
, performance theory, contemporary art history
, anthropology
, sociology
, psychology
and psychoanalysis
. These disciplines sometimes differ in their approaches to how and why they study gender. For instance in anthropology, sociology and psychology, gender is often studied as a practice, whereas in cultural studies representations of gender are more often examined. Gender studies is also a discipline in itself: an interdisciplinary area of study that incorporates methods and approaches from a wide range of disciplines.
Each field came to regard "gender" as a practice, sometimes referred to as something that is performative. Feminist theory
of psychoanalysis
, articulated mainly by Julia Kristeva
(the "semiotic" and "abjection") and Bracha Ettinger (the "matrixial trans-subjectivity" and the "primal mother-phantasies"), and informed both by Freud, Lacan and the Object relations theory
, is very influential in gender studies.
as sexist, because of his view that women are 'mutilated and must learn to accept their lack of a penis' (in Freud's terms a "deformity").
On the other hand, feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell
, Nancy Chodorow
, Jessica Benjamin
, Jane Gallop
, Bracha Ettinger, Shoshana Felman
, Griselda Pollock
and Jane Flax have argued that psychoanalytic theory is vital to the feminist project and must, like other theoretical traditions, be adapted by women to free it from vestiges of sexism. Shulamith Firestone
, in "Freudianism: The Misguided Feminism", discusses how Freudianism is almost completely accurate, with the exception of one crucial detail: everywhere that Freud writes "penis", the word should be replaced with "power".
Critics like Elizabeth Grosz
accuse Jacques Lacan
of maintaining a sexist tradition in psychoanalysis. Others, such as Judith Butler
, Bracha Ettinger and Jane Gallop
have used Lacanian work, though in a critical way, to develop gender theory.
, she structures subjectivity upon the abjection of the mother and argues that the way in which an individual excludes (or abjects) their mother as means of forming an identity is similar to the way in which societies are constructed. She contends that patriarchal cultures, like individuals, have had to exclude the maternal and the feminine so that they can come into being.
Cultures can have very different norms of maleness and masculinity
. Blechner identifies the terror, in Western males, of penetration. Yet in many societies, being gay is defined only by being a male who lets himself be penetrated. Males who penetrate other males are considered masculine and not gay and are not the targets of prejudice. In other cultures, however, receptive fellatio
is the norm for early adolescence and seen as a requirement for developing normal manliness.
's legacy as well as "Adrienne Rich
's call for women's revisions of literary texts, and history as well, has galvanized a generation of feminist authors to reply with texts of their own". Griselda Pollock
and other femininsts have articulated Myth and Poetry and literature, from the point of view of gender.
away from the concept of fixed or essentialist gender identity, to post-modern fluid or multiple identities .
See Donna Haraway
, The Cyborg Manifesto, as an example of post-identity feminism.
More recently, the relation between post-modernism or post-structuralism and masculinity has been considered. Masculinity can be taken as always in movement and never fixed or stable. See Reeser, Masculinities in Theory (2010) for a comprehensive overview of this approach.
, gender
, and politics
. It often includes feminist theory
, women's history
(e.g. a history of women's suffrage
) and social history
, women's fiction
, women's health
, feminist psychoanalysis and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities
and social sciences
.
, gender
, and politics
. It often includes masculist theory, men's history and social history
, men's fiction, men's health
, masculist psychoanalysis and the masculist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities
and social sciences
. Key theoretical contributions reconciling the relationship between masculist/feminist interpretation of gender studies include Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men by Dr Warren Farrell and James Sterba, and Gendering, Courtship and Pay Equality by Dr Rory Ridley-Duff.
. In Butler’s terms the performance of gender, sex, and sexuality is about power in society. She locates the construction of the "gendered, sexed, desiring subject" in "regulative discourses".
A part of Butler's argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of "natural" or coherent gender and sexuality. In her account, gender and heterosexuality are constructed as natural because the opposition of the male and female sexes is perceived as natural in the social imaginary.
Pope Benedict XVI has denounced some of the gender theories, warning that they blur the distinction between male and female and could thus lead to the "self-destruction" of the human race.
Rosi Braidotti
has criticized gender studies as: "the take-over of the feminist agenda by studies on masculinity, which results in transferring funding from feminist faculty positions to other kinds of positions. There have been cases...of positions advertised as 'gender studies' being given away to the 'bright boys'. Some of the competitive take-over has to do with gay studies. Of special significance in this discussion is the role of the mainstream publisher Routledge who, in our opinion, is responsible for promoting gender as a way of deradicalizing the feminist agenda, re-marketing masculinity and gay male identity instead." Calvin Thomas countered that, "as Joseph Allen Boone points out, 'many of the men in the academy who are feminism's most supportive 'allies' are gay,'" and that it is "disingenuous" to ignore the ways in which mainstream publishers such as Routledge have promoted feminist theorists.
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
and location
Location (geography)
The terms location and place in geography are used to identify a point or an area on the Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term 'location' generally implies a higher degree of can certainty than "place" which often has an ambiguous boundary relying more on human/social attributes of place identity...
.
Gender study has many different forms. One view exposed by the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
said: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one". This view proposes that in gender studies, the term "gender" should be used to refer to the social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities, not to the state of being male or female in its entirety. However, this view is not held by all gender theorists. Other areas of gender study closely examine the role that the biological states of being male or female have on social constructs of gender. Specifically, in what way gender roles are defined by biology and how they are defined by cultural trends. The field emerged from a number of different areas: the sociology of the 1950s and later (see Sociology of gender
Sociology of gender
Sociology of gender is a prominent subfield of sociology. Since 1950 an increasing part of the academic literature, and of the public discourse uses gender for the perceived or projected masculinity or femininity of a person...
); the theories of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; and the work of feminists such as Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
.
Gender is an important area of study in many disciplines, such as literary theory
Literary theory
Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
, drama studies, film theory
Film theory
Film theory is an academic discipline that aims to explore the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large...
, performance theory, contemporary art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
. These disciplines sometimes differ in their approaches to how and why they study gender. For instance in anthropology, sociology and psychology, gender is often studied as a practice, whereas in cultural studies representations of gender are more often examined. Gender studies is also a discipline in itself: an interdisciplinary area of study that incorporates methods and approaches from a wide range of disciplines.
Each field came to regard "gender" as a practice, sometimes referred to as something that is performative. Feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
of psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, articulated mainly by Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...
(the "semiotic" and "abjection") and Bracha Ettinger (the "matrixial trans-subjectivity" and the "primal mother-phantasies"), and informed both by Freud, Lacan and the Object relations theory
Object relations theory
Object relations theory is a psychodynamic theory within psychoanalytic psychology. The theory describes the process of developing a mind as one grows in relation to others in the environment....
, is very influential in gender studies.
Sigmund Freud
Some feminist critics have dismissed the work of Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
as sexist, because of his view that women are 'mutilated and must learn to accept their lack of a penis' (in Freud's terms a "deformity").
On the other hand, feminist theorists such as Juliet Mitchell
Juliet Mitchell
Juliet Mitchell is a British Psychoanalyst and socialist feminist, who was a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge and Professor of Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies at Cambridge University. In 2010, she's appointed to be the Director of the Expanded Doctoral School in Psychoanalytic Studies at...
, Nancy Chodorow
Nancy Chodorow
Nancy Julia Chodorow is a feminist sociologist and psychoanalyst. She has written a number of influential books, including The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender ; Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory ; Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond ;...
, Jessica Benjamin
Jessica Benjamin
Jessica Benjamin is an American psychoanalyst and feminist.She is currently on the faculty of New York University's Postdoctoral Psychology Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy...
, Jane Gallop
Jane Gallop
Jane Anne Gallop is an American professor who since 1992 has served as Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she has taught since 1990.- Education :Gallp earned a B.A...
, Bracha Ettinger, Shoshana Felman
Shoshana Felman
Shoshana Felman is Woodruff Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Emory University. She was on the faculty of Yale University from 1970 to 2004, where she became Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of French and Comparative Literature....
, Griselda Pollock
Griselda Pollock
Griselda Pollock is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst, and a world-renowned scholar of international, post-colonial feminist studies in the visual arts. She is best known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with deeply engaged readings of historical and...
and Jane Flax have argued that psychoanalytic theory is vital to the feminist project and must, like other theoretical traditions, be adapted by women to free it from vestiges of sexism. Shulamith Firestone
Shulamith Firestone
Shulamith Firestone , is a Jewish, Canadian-born feminist. She was a central figure in the early development of radical feminism, having been a founding member of the New York Radical Women, Redstockings, and New York Radical Feminists...
, in "Freudianism: The Misguided Feminism", discusses how Freudianism is almost completely accurate, with the exception of one crucial detail: everywhere that Freud writes "penis", the word should be replaced with "power".
Jacques Lacan
Lacan's theory of sexuation organizes femininity and masculinity according to different unconscious structures. Both male and female subjects participate in the "phallic" organization, and the feminine side of sexuation is "supplementary" and not opposite or complementary. Sexuation (sexual situation) — the development of gender-roles and role-play in childhood — breaks down concepts of gender identity as innate or biologically determined. (clarify-refutes?challenges?)Critics like Elizabeth Grosz
Elizabeth Grosz
Elizabeth A. Grosz is an Australian feminist academic living and working in the USA. She is known for philosophical interpretations of the work of French philosophers Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, as well as her readings of the works of French feminists, Luce...
accuse Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
of maintaining a sexist tradition in psychoanalysis. Others, such as Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
, Bracha Ettinger and Jane Gallop
Jane Gallop
Jane Anne Gallop is an American professor who since 1992 has served as Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she has taught since 1990.- Education :Gallp earned a B.A...
have used Lacanian work, though in a critical way, to develop gender theory.
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva has significantly developed the field of semiotics. In her work on abjectionAbjection
The term abjection literally means "the state of being cast off". In usage it has connotations of degradation, baseness and meanness of spirit.-In critical theory:...
, she structures subjectivity upon the abjection of the mother and argues that the way in which an individual excludes (or abjects) their mother as means of forming an identity is similar to the way in which societies are constructed. She contends that patriarchal cultures, like individuals, have had to exclude the maternal and the feminine so that they can come into being.
Mark Blechner
Mark Blechner expanded psychoanalytic views of sex and gender, calling psychoanalysis "the once and future queer science". He has argued that there is a "gender fetish" in western society, in which the gender of sexual partners is given enormously disproportionate attention over other factors involved in sexual attraction, such as age and social class. He proposes that the words "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" be given prefixes, depending on the dimension that is the same or different between partners. "Age heterosexuality" would indicate an attraction between people of different ages, for example. What is conventionally called "heterosexuality" (attraction between a man and a woman) would be called "gender heterosexuality".Cultures can have very different norms of maleness and masculinity
Masculinity
Masculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine...
. Blechner identifies the terror, in Western males, of penetration. Yet in many societies, being gay is defined only by being a male who lets himself be penetrated. Males who penetrate other males are considered masculine and not gay and are not the targets of prejudice. In other cultures, however, receptive fellatio
Fellatio
Fellatio is an act of oral stimulation of a male's penis by a sexual partner. It involves the stimulation of the penis by the use of the mouth, tongue, or throat. The person who performs fellatio can be referred to as the giving partner, and the other person is the receiving partner...
is the norm for early adolescence and seen as a requirement for developing normal manliness.
Literary theory
Psychoanalytically oriented French feminism focused on visual and literary theory all along. Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
's legacy as well as "Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...
's call for women's revisions of literary texts, and history as well, has galvanized a generation of feminist authors to reply with texts of their own". Griselda Pollock
Griselda Pollock
Griselda Pollock is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst, and a world-renowned scholar of international, post-colonial feminist studies in the visual arts. She is best known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with deeply engaged readings of historical and...
and other femininsts have articulated Myth and Poetry and literature, from the point of view of gender.
Post-modern influence
The emergence of post-feminism affected gender studies, causing a movement in theories identityGender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
away from the concept of fixed or essentialist gender identity, to post-modern fluid or multiple identities .
See Donna Haraway
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States...
, The Cyborg Manifesto, as an example of post-identity feminism.
More recently, the relation between post-modernism or post-structuralism and masculinity has been considered. Masculinity can be taken as always in movement and never fixed or stable. See Reeser, Masculinities in Theory (2010) for a comprehensive overview of this approach.
Women's studies
Women's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning women, feminismFeminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
, gender
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
, and politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
. It often includes feminist theory
Feminist theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
, women's history
Women's history
Women's history is the study of the role that women have played in history, together with the methods needed to study women. It includes the study of the history of the growth of woman's rights throughout recorded history, the examination of individual women of historical significance, and the...
(e.g. a history of women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
) and social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
, women's fiction
Women's fiction
Women's fiction is an umbrella term for books that are marketed to female readers, and includes many mainstream novels, romantic fiction, "chick lit,"and other sub genres. It is distinct from Women's writing, which refers to literature written by women...
, women's health
Women's health
Women's health refers to health issues specific to human female anatomy. These often relate to structures such as female genitalia and breasts or to conditions caused by hormones specific to, or most notable in, females. Women's health issues include menstruation, contraception, maternal health,...
, feminist psychoanalysis and the feminist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
and social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
.
Men's studies
Men's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning men, masculismMasculism
Masculism may refer to political, cultural, and economic movements aimed at establishing and defending political, economic, and social rights and participation in society for men and boys. These rights include legal issues, such as those of conscription, child custody, alimony, and equal pay for...
, gender
Gender identity
A gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
, and politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
. It often includes masculist theory, men's history and social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
, men's fiction, men's health
Men's health
Men's health refers to health issues specific to human male anatomy. These often relate to structures such as male genitalia or to conditions caused by hormones specific to, or most notable in, males....
, masculist psychoanalysis and the masculist and gender studies-influenced practice of most of the humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
and social sciences
Social sciences
Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...
. Key theoretical contributions reconciling the relationship between masculist/feminist interpretation of gender studies include Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men by Dr Warren Farrell and James Sterba, and Gendering, Courtship and Pay Equality by Dr Rory Ridley-Duff.
Judith Butler
The concept of gender performativity is at the core of Butler's work, notably in Gender TroubleGender Trouble
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler is a highly influential book in academic feminism and queer theory. It is also the book credited with creating the seminal notion of gender performativity. It is considered to be one of the canonical texts of queer theory and postmodern/poststructural feminism.-...
. In Butler’s terms the performance of gender, sex, and sexuality is about power in society. She locates the construction of the "gendered, sexed, desiring subject" in "regulative discourses".
A part of Butler's argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of "natural" or coherent gender and sexuality. In her account, gender and heterosexuality are constructed as natural because the opposition of the male and female sexes is perceived as natural in the social imaginary.
Responses
Historian and theorist Bryan Palmer argues that gender studies current reliance on poststructuralism — with its reification of discourse and avoidance of the structures of oppression and struggles of resistance — obscures the origins, meanings, and consequences of historical events and processes, and he seeks to counter the current gender studies with an argument for the necessity to analyze lived experience and the structures of subordination and power.Pope Benedict XVI has denounced some of the gender theories, warning that they blur the distinction between male and female and could thus lead to the "self-destruction" of the human race.
Rosi Braidotti
Rosi Braidotti
Rosi Braidotti is a contemporary philosopher and feminist theoretician.-Biography:Braidotti, who holds Italian and Australian citizenship, was born in Italy and grew up in Australia, where she received degrees from the Australian National University in Canberra in 1977 and was awarded the...
has criticized gender studies as: "the take-over of the feminist agenda by studies on masculinity, which results in transferring funding from feminist faculty positions to other kinds of positions. There have been cases...of positions advertised as 'gender studies' being given away to the 'bright boys'. Some of the competitive take-over has to do with gay studies. Of special significance in this discussion is the role of the mainstream publisher Routledge who, in our opinion, is responsible for promoting gender as a way of deradicalizing the feminist agenda, re-marketing masculinity and gay male identity instead." Calvin Thomas countered that, "as Joseph Allen Boone points out, 'many of the men in the academy who are feminism's most supportive 'allies' are gay,'" and that it is "disingenuous" to ignore the ways in which mainstream publishers such as Routledge have promoted feminist theorists.
Other people whose work is associated with gender studies
- Sara AhmedSara AhmedSara Ahmed is an Australian and British academic working at the intersection of feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory and postcolonialism. She was born in Salford, England to a Pakistani father and English mother, and emigrated to Adelaide, Australia with her family in 1973...
- Simone de BeauvoirSimone de BeauvoirSimone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
- Kate BornsteinKate BornsteinKate Bornstein is a Jewish-American author, playwright, performance artist, and gender theorist.-Biography:Born in Neptune City, New Jersey, Bornstein studied Theater Arts with John Emigh and Jim Barnhill at Brown University . Bornstein joined the Church of Scientology but later became...
- Judith ButlerJudith ButlerJudith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
- Micha CárdenasMicha CárdenasMicha Cárdenas is a transgender performance and new media artist. Her work deals with the interplay of technology, gender, sex, immigration and biopolitics. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.- Education :...
- Bracha Ettinger
- Warren FarrellWarren FarrellWarren Farrell is an American author of seven books on men's and women's issues. His books cover twelve fields: history, law, sociology and politics ; couples’ communication ; economic and career issues ; child psychology and child custody ; and...
- Michel FoucaultMichel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
- Charlotte Perkins GilmanCharlotte Perkins GilmanCharlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform...
- Madeleine GrumetMadeleine GrumetMadeleine R. Grumet is an American academic in curriculum theory and feminist theory. Her 1988 work Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching is considered a field-changing exploration of women and teaching...
- Judith HalberstamJudith HalberstamJudith Halberstam, also Jack Halberstam, is Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California. Halberstam was an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC...
- Donna HarawayDonna HarawayDonna J. Haraway is currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States...
- bell hooksBell hooksGloria Jean Watkins , better known by her pen name bell hooks, is an American author, feminist, and social activist....
- Karen HorneyKaren HorneyKaren Horney born Danielsen was a German-American psychoanalyst. Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views, particularly his theory of sexuality, as well as the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis and its genetic psychology...
- Luce IrigarayLuce IrigarayLuce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One .-Biography:...
- Evelyn Fox KellerEvelyn Fox KellerEvelyn Fox Keller is an American physicist, author and feminist. She is currently a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Keller has also taught at the State University of New York at Purchase, New York University and in the department of...
- Alfred KinseyAlfred KinseyAlfred Charles Kinsey was an American biologist and professor of entomology and zoology, who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, as well as producing the Kinsey Reports and the Kinsey...
- Julia KristevaJulia KristevaJulia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...
- Audre LordeAudre LordeAudre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...
- Laura MulveyLaura MulveyLaura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London...
- Griselda PollockGriselda PollockGriselda Pollock is a prominent art historian and cultural analyst, and a world-renowned scholar of international, post-colonial feminist studies in the visual arts. She is best known for her theoretical and methodological innovation, combined with deeply engaged readings of historical and...
- Gayle RubinGayle RubinGayle S. Rubin is a cultural anthropologist best known as an activist and influential theorist of sex and gender politics. She has written on a range of subjects including feminism, sadomasochism, prostitution, pedophilia, pornography and lesbian literature, as well as anthropological studies and...
- Sarojini SahooSarojini SahooSarojini Sahoo is an Orissa Sahitya Academy Award winner Indian feminist writer, a columnist in The New Indian Express and associate editor of Chennai based English magazine Indian AGE, who has been enlisted among 25 Exceptional Women of India by ‘Kindle’ English magazine of Kolkata.Born in the...
- Eve Kosofsky SedgwickEve Kosofsky SedgwickEve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory , and critical theory. Her critical writings helped create the field of queer studies...
- Kaja SilvermanKaja SilvermanKaja Silverman is an American film theorist and art historian. She received her Ph.D. in English from Brown University. She taught at Yale University, Trinity College, Simon Fraser University, Brown University, the University of Rochester and the University of California, Berkeley, before joining...
- Gayatri Chakravorty SpivakGayatri Chakravorty SpivakGayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian literary critic, theorist and a University Professor at Columbia University. She is best known for the essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?", considered a founding text of postcolonialism, and for her translation of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology. She...
- Sylvia WalbySylvia WalbySylvia Walby OBE, is one of the world's leading authorities on gender. She is a British sociologist, currently Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University...
- Otto WeiningerOtto WeiningerOtto Weininger was an Austrian philosopher. In 1903, he published the book Geschlecht und Charakter , which gained popularity after his suicide at the age of 23...
- Monique WittigMonique WittigMonique Wittig was a French author and feminist theorist who wrote about overcoming socially enforced gender roles and who coined the phrase "heterosexual contract". She published her first novel, L'Opoponax, in 1964...
- Mary WollstonecraftMary WollstonecraftMary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
See also
- Feminine psychologyFeminine psychologyFeminine psychology is a term used to describe issues concerning the gender of psychology of female human identity, and the issues that women face throughout their lives. Karen Horney “began work on her version of feminine psychology in 1922, when she became the first woman to present a paper on...
and Masculine psychologyMasculine psychologyMasculine psychology is a term sometimes used to describe and categorize issues concerning the gender-related psychology of male human identity, as well as the issues that men confront during their lives... - FemininityFemininityFemininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...
and MasculinityMasculinityMasculinity is possessing qualities or characteristics considered typical of or appropriate to a man. The term can be used to describe any human, animal or object that has the quality of being masculine... - FeminismFeminismFeminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
and MasculismMasculismMasculism may refer to political, cultural, and economic movements aimed at establishing and defending political, economic, and social rights and participation in society for men and boys. These rights include legal issues, such as those of conscription, child custody, alimony, and equal pay for... - Feminist theoryFeminist theoryFeminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality...
- French feminism
- GenderGenderGender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
- Gender differencesGender differencesA sex difference is a distinction of biological and/or physiological characteristics associated with either males or females of a species. These can be of several types, including direct and indirect. Direct being the direct result of differences prescribed by the Y-chromosome, and indirect being...
- Gender historyGender historyGender history is a sub-field of History and Gender studies, which looks at the past from the perspective of gender. It is in many ways, an outgrowth of women's history.-Impact:...
- Gender identityGender identityA gender identity is the way in which an individual self-identifies with a gender category, for example, as being either a man or a woman, or in some cases being neither, which can be distinct from biological sex. Basic gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to...
- Gender roleGender roleGender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
- GenderqueerGenderqueerGenderqueer is a catch-all term for gender identities other than man and woman, thus outside of the gender binary and heteronormativity...
- Gender sensitizationGender sensitizationGender sensitization refers to the modification of behavior by raising awareness of gender equality concerns .Gender sensitizing "is about changing behavior and instilling empathy into the views that we hold about our own and the other sex." It helps people in "examining their personal attitudes...
- Girlfag and guydyke
- GynocentrismGynocentrismGynocentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing female human beings or the feminine point of view at the center of one's world view...
and AndrocentrismAndrocentrismAndrocentrism is the practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing male human beings or the masculine point of view at the center of one's view of the world and its culture and history... - HomophobiaHomophobiaHomophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
, HeterophobiaHeterophobiaHeterophobia describes reverse discrimination based on sexual orientation and implies an irrational fear of, aversion toward, or discrimination againist heterosexual people and institutions...
, and BiphobiaBiphobiaBiphobia is a term used to describe aversion felt toward bisexuality and bisexuals as a social group or as individuals. People of any sexual orientation can experience such feelings of aversion...
- Intersexuality
- List of transgender-related topics
- Male Studies in the CaribbeanMale Studies in the CaribbeanMen's Studies in the Caribbean is an emerging interdisciplinary field that has its roots in family studies programs of the 1950s and 60s, and in feminine studies programs of the 1970s and 80s...
- Men and feminismMen and feminismThe relationship between men and feminism has been complex and intricate. Men have taken part in significant cultural and political responses to feminism in each 'wave' of the movement. Such responses have been varied, with some more sympathetic or critical than others, depending on the individual...
- MisogynyMisogynyMisogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
and MisandryMisandryMisandry is the hatred or dislike of men or boys.Misandry comes from Greek misos and anēr, andros . Misandry is the antonym of philandry, the fondness towards men, love, or admiration of them...
(SexismSexismSexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
) - PostfeminismPostfeminismPost-feminism is a reaction against some perceived contradictions and absences of second-wave feminism. The term post-feminism is ill-defined and is used in inconsistent ways...
- PostgenderismPostgenderismPostgenderism is a diverse social, political and cultural movement whose adherents affirm the voluntary elimination of gender in the human species through the application of advanced biotechnology and assistive reproductive technologies....
- Queer theoryQueer theoryQueer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
- Sex and gender distinction
- Sexual orientation hypothesisSexual orientation hypothesisThe sexual orientation hypothesis is an hypothesis proposed by Donald McCreary in 1994 that describes male and female sexual orientation and their societal acceptance....
- Stereotyping
- TransgenderTransgenderTransgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
- Women's liberation and Men's liberationMen's liberationThe consciousness and philosophy of men's liberation is split into two factions. One is critical of the restraints which a patriarchal society imposes on men. This faction is informed by feminism. The other, critical of the restraints matriarchal society imposes on men, is informed by masculinism...
- Women's movement and Men's movementMen's movementThe men's movement is a social movement that includes a number of philosophies and organizations that seek to support men, change the male gender role and improve men's rights in regard to marriage, child access and victims of domestic violence...
- Women's rightsWomen's rightsWomen's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies.In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed...
and Men's rightsMen's rightsMen's rights is an umbrella term, encompassing the political rights, entitlements, and freedoms given or denied to males within a nation or culture.... - Women's studiesWomen's studiesWomen's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective...
and Men's studiesMen's studiesMen's studies, sometimes called masculinity studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning men, masculinity, gender, and politics...
External links
- xy: men, masculinities and gender politics
- WikEd – Gender Inequities in the Classroom
- Children’s Gender Beliefs
- Gender Museum , The museum of woman history and history about woman and gender movement
- Gender Stereotypes - Changes in People's Thoughts , A report based on a survey on roles of men and women.