Women, Gender, Sexuality Notes

WEEK 1
-Shit girls say ep. 1
1) Sex, Difference, and Western Society
a) Everything but the eye was sexualized
2) Author, article, main idea, quote
WEEK 2
1. The Biological Connection
a. Science is founded on many sexist assumptions.. (41)
i. What were some of the Fausto-Sterling identified in
objective science?
1. Weve had an image for so long
2. Easier to go off of/expand what you know
instead of creating a new concept
3. Look at different variables
-Only looked at the male body for examining the human body at first
ii. Are Scientists bad at their jobs?
b. Womens brains
i. Anthropomentry?(whole body)/Craniometry?
(skull/cranium) (43) The relationship between size
and intelligence
ii. Paul Broca (1824-80) Professor at Faculty of Medicine
in Paris Whoose research concluded that women had
smaller brains than men, therefore they were not
equal in intelligence.
iii. Argument based on two sets of data: the larger
brains of men in larger societies and a supposed
increase in male and superiority through time
iv. Female brain: Where everythings located, men made
it
2. Race Sex and Empire
a. The social construction of race
i. Uses of race
1. Lopez: Biological argumentsPolitical
institutions (52)
ii. Questions
1. What do we learn about US history and culture
from the legal systems desire to define race
and yet its inability to fully do so?
2. How does his argument demonstrate how skin
color and blood are both used and refused in
legal definitions of race in the United States?

iii. What does the authors say about Mexicans?

3. The Social Construction of Race
a. Uses of Race
i. What do we learn about US history and culture from
the legal systems desire to define race and yet its
inability to fully do so?
ii. How does his argument demonstrate how skin color
and blood are both used and refused in legal
definitions of race in the United States?
4. Imperialism and Motherhood
a. 19th Century
i. Malthusianism- The ideas proposed by Thomas
Malthus in the late 18th century England in which the
central belief was that population
b. 20th century
i. If the british didnt grow fast enough, others would.
ii. Threats from US, Germany
iii. Population= power
iv. High infant mortality
v. Infant and childcare and health were huge concerns
c. A shift in the role of british women
i. Marriage in the 1860s
1. To find a man to support, protect, help, guide,
and direct
ii. Marriage in the 1910s
1. To reproduce the race
2. To maintain social purity
3. To achieve the mutual comfort and assistance
of each married couple
4. Motherhood was looked at as an honor
iii. Discussion
1. Who was blamed for the infant mortality and
low birth rates? Mother, majority of doctors
were male
2. What steps did the British government take to
mitigate the crisis? pg. 52,56,54?
3. What were the implications of these changes?
domesticity
4. Do we see similar practices today with the
government controlling population and
families?
d. Race Culture: Recent perspectives on the history of
eugenics (66)
i. Eugenics
e. Exorcising the midwives
i. Part of community, culture

ii. Spoke the mother language

iii. Familiar with prayers herbs to help birth
iv. Familiar with rituals for afterbirth, greeting the
newborn laying to rest the dead
v. Prepared to live with the family from the onset of
labor
f. The doctors, the midwives, the poor
i. Medical schools used poor people giving birth for
student training
ii. Public campaign against midwives
1. Midwives seen as dirty ignorant and
incompetent
2. Not eliminated completely, because they had
to help the poor
3. Unlikechild (79)
4. 1912replacing (79)
g. Women and medicine
i. Discuss the challenge that colonial administrators
saw the zenana and their strategies for bringing
womens quarters under colonial regulation
ii. Discuss how this article emphasizes the importance
of considering context when examining, among all
other things, issues of women, gender, and sexuality.
iii. Discuss personal reflections on the article
WEEK 3
1. Third world countries- global south
2. First world countries- global north
3. Boston womens health book collective
a. who were they?
b. Studying womens body; at the time they knew nothing of
their own bodies
WEEK 4
1. Invisibility and Hypervisibility
a. Hiding in the closet and coming out
2. Power and the State
WEEK 5
Binary thought in Art midterm
How and why did the guerilla girls alter the art world in nyc?
Why do they wear the masks?
So people focus on them as a group and a message instead of as
individuals
KNOW GURILLA GIRLS ARTCLE FOR MIDTERM
Migrant mother discussion board post
Drag king (286) know first intro part

Many films set in all female schools