Sex, Sexuality and

Gender:
Basic Concepts

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This topics aims to:

Introduce and critique biologically determinist

understandings of sex, gender and sexuality
Introduce Critical Sexuality Studies definitions of sex,
sexuality and gender and examine the history of the
construction of sexuality
Examine the relationships between sex, sexuality and
gender through consideration of heteronormativity and
sexual/gendered inequity
Students will:
 Critique biologically determinist constructions of
sex and sexuality
 Identify key theorists and concepts in the study of
sexual inequality
 Think critically about the relationships between
sex, sexuality and gender
 Reflect on the effects of normative constructions
of sex, sexuality and gender as these are relevant
to their own
sociocultural and research settings
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 Group work

• Divide into two groups

Group 1
– List differences between women and men and consider:
• On what are these perceived differences based? (e.g. biological, social,
cultural or religious beliefs)
Group 2
– List similarities between women and men and consider:
• On what are the perceived similarities based? (e.g. biological, social,
cultural or religious beliefs)

• Feedback
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Discussion

 All participants to consider together:

 What are the effects of highlighting
differences rather than similarities between
men and women?
 To what extent do assumptions about
biologically determined sex differences
between women and men influence popular
culture, sayings or beliefs?

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Biological determinism,
sex and sexuality

• Biologically determinist theories of various kinds reduce

social organisation and social complexity to an
effect of biology or nature
– Biological determinists include sociobiologists, some
geneticists, psychologists and ‘pop psychology’
writers

• Complex, socially embedded behaviours have

all been explained as an effect of evolutionary
reproductive strategies
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 In the biologically determinist school of thought:
 Biological facts of sex are thought to constitute natural
differences between men and women
 Heterosexuality is considered a “natural” outcome of this sex
difference due to the drive to reproduce the species
 Key assumption driving biological determinism:
 The primary function and goal of all human
sexual activity is the reproduction of the species
 Humans have sex because we must reproduce
 Homosexuality becomes explained as an “unnatural”
genetic deviation

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‘The gay gene’
 Geneticists search for a ‘gay gene’ to
prove there is a biological basis for, and
explanation of, male homosexuality
 Small differences found between the
post-mortem brains of heterosexual
and homosexual young men (LeVay, 1991)
 Research on pairs of homosexual
brothers found that some had similar
markers on the X chromosome,
indicating a genetic basis for sexuality
(Hamer et al. 1993)
 LeVay’s work proved difficult to replicate
 Hamer et al.’s work has been refuted
 Challenging determinism
• If reproductive differences between the sexes “naturally”
drive individual behaviour, why do we need social
institutions that police and set moral guidelines for sexual
behaviour?
– The family, religion, government, the military…

• The research evidence for many biologically determinist

claims simply does not hold up
– Sex “difference” research may be popular, but it masks a great
deal of evidence for sex similarities
– Differences are often context-specific
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 Despite continuing interest in a genetic basis for
sexuality, no gay or heterosexual gene yet found
 Most sex is not reproductive
 Human sexuality more complicated than ‘survival of
the species’ or of one’s gene pool
 ‘Biological drive’ arguments are political
 Often used to resist social change and legitimate an
unequal, gendered and sexualised social order
 Institutionalisedpower relations affect
understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality

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Definitions

 Write down your own definitions of the terms sex, sexuality, and
gender (5 mins)
 Compare your definitions with those of the person next to you
(5 mins)
 Each pair to report back to whole group (10 mins)
 Brief group discussion (10 mins)

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 Complexities of SEX & GENDER

• Is there a difference? Yes, on one level

– Sex is biological – male, female, also intersex (reproductive
differences based on genitalia, chromosomes, hormones)
• Also refers to sexual acts, as in ‘having sex’

– Gender is ‘the structure of social relations that centres on the

reproductive arena, and the set of practices that bring
reproductive distinctions into social processes’ (Connell 2002: 10)
• Gender underlies assumptions regarding ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’
behaviour

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 Temptation to make an absolute distinction between
sex and gender:
 ‘Nature vs nurture’ or ‘essentialism vs social
constructionism’
 Understanding of the sexed body as ‘natural’ can
sustain social inequity between men and women
 Butler (1990) argued that gender determines sex
 Sex is not ‘natural’ but a social construction
 Knowledge systems used to describe and reinforce
sex differences already gendered by the language
used to express ideas about the body
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 Cannot neatly separate the sexed body from
the gendered body
 Mutually constituted through sociocultural
processes
 Biological science is a social construction,
expressed through language which is gendered
and value-laden
 In Critical Sexuality Studies, the ‘natural’ body
is political

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‘Bodies cannot be understood as just the objects
of social process…they are active participants in
social process...
They participate through their capacities,
development and needs … through the direction
set by their pleasures and skills.
Bodies must be seen as sharing social agency.’
(Connell 2002: 40)
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Discussion

 Bodies have physical capacities and limitations

 These influence how bodies can be socially
experienced or intervened with
 In Critical Sexuality Studies:
 Sex, sexuality and gender necessarily involve various
dimensions of bodily and social capacities and
phenomena
 These will be expressed differently in different
sociocultural settings
 Discussion
(5 mins) 16
What is ‘SEXUALITY’?

 Quite a new term

 Came into English, French and German usage at the
end of the 18th century
 Usually meant reproduction through sexual
activity among plants and animals
 Used in relation to love and sex matters in European
discourse in the 1830s
 What does it mean according to the dictionary?
 Depends on which dictionary you read
 Mirriam Webster (2013): The quality or state of
being sexual 17
• Four intertwining strands of sexuality:
– Sexual desire or attraction
• To whom (or in some cases what) someone is attracted (physically and
emotionally)
– Sexual activity or behaviour
• What a person does or likes to do sexually (intercourse, masturbation, oral
sex, sexual fetishes)
– Sexual identity
• How someone describes their sense of self as a sexual being (e.g.
heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, homosexual)
– Sexual experience
• Observations of others’ sexualities; education or training related to
sexuality; experiences that may not have been consensual

• No clear boundaries!
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The sexuality matrix

Desire

Behavior Identity

Experience

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General theoretical definition
Sexuality … [is] an historical construction which brings
together a host of different biological and mental
possibilities, and cultural forms — gender identity,
bodily differences, reproductive capacities, needs,
desires, fantasies, erotic practices, institutions and
values — which need not be linked together, and in
other societies have not been.
Weeks, J (2003: 7) Sexuality: Second Edition,
Routledge
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• Are these images of sex, sexuality or gender?
• What would we need to know in order to make sense of this
question? (5 mins + 5 mins feedback)
• Images by Rodell Warner from the “Photobooth” series (2009-2011)
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• Are these images of sex, sexuality or gender?
• What would we need to know in order to make sense of this
question? (5 mins + 10 mins feedback)
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 Adrienne Rich
• ‘Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian
existence’ (1980)
– Women’s Liberation era theorist and poet whose work was
influential in the development of lesbian and gay studies

• Heterosexuality is not a natural outcome of sex difference

– It is a social institution maintained by a series of inducements and
punishments for women
– Key question: ‘What social forces stop women from expressing
their sexual and emotional attraction to other women?’

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Inducements & punishments
Inducements Material
 The marriage contract (legalised sexual subordination of women)
 Financial and material support (husband)
 Sphere of influence (the domestic)
 Stay-at home child allowance for women
 Reduced earning capacity for women compared with their male partners
Symbolic or ideological
 Romance and love – made complete with a man (heterocoupling)
 Female beauty as an ideal of female worth
 Motherhood within marriage as female self-fulfilment
 Women valued only insofar as they are valuable to men
Punishments • Social ostracism for unmarried mothers, women who leave their husbands and
financially independent women
 Women who are sexually independent labelled as ‘loose,’ ‘skettels,’ sluts’
 Criminalisation, pathologisation and abuse of lesbians and women who are not
exclusively heterosexual
 A system of gendered sexual violence that keeps women (and their sexuality) in its
proper place

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 Gayle Rubin
• Thinking Sex (1984)
– Hierarchies of sexual value
• People and practices high in the hierarchy rewarded with a range of
benefits, those low in the hierarchy punished and vilified
• Heterosexual couples who are married, monogamous and of the same
generation accrue more benefits than those who are not married and/or
who engage in more marginalised sexual practices

– What is more important:

• The sexual categories people fit into and the kinds of sex they have, or
• Democratic sexual morality: how people treat each other, their level of
mutual consideration and the presence or absence of harm and coercion?
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Conclusion

 In Critical Sexuality Studies, human sexuality is

understood as:
 Diverse

 Dynamic and
 Deeply inventive
 The field challenges fixed notions of sex, gender and
sexuality
 It grounds the interrelationship between these concepts
in specific social, historical, cultural contexts

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 Critical Sexuality Studies challenges the notion
that sex and sexuality are biologically
determined, but:
 This does not mean the body or biological
limitations/capacities are irrelevant
 Sex, sexuality and gender are invariably linked
to power relations—institutional and
interpersonal—and to systems of regulation and
reward

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