Doo Uap, Doo Uap, Doo Uap

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What is gender?

- questionig the sex/gender distinction and the idea that 'gender is socially constructed'

- if gender is socially constructed, why should we assume that men are constructed from male bodies, women from female bodies, and why are there only two genders?

- sex (sexual difference) is as culturally constructed as gender, and sex is culturally constructed as natural.

Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Heterosexual Matrix

- the concept of 'normal' closes down any suggestion that understandings might once have been different, or might not even have existed, by its evocation of its opposite abnormal or pathological.

- heterosexuality as a political institution.

- the heterosexual matrix: a regulatory fiction which functions to make the convergence of sex/gender/sexuality (desire) seem natural.

- the genders male and female are themselves constructed by reference to socially and historically constituted definitions of heterosexuality - the positively coded sexuality.

- male behaviour eqates with heterosexual, masculine behaviour; female with heterosxual, feminine behaviour.

- gender and heterosexuality can be seen as categories which regulate (and create) individual subjects, according to how they are prepared to perfom their sexuality.

(A. Cranny-Francis et al., Gender Studies: Terms & Debates)