Gender and Sexuality

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Gender and Sexuality
Sex and Gender Cultures with More Than Two Gende
rs Factors Affecting Gender Roles Kinship
Economic Resources Ideology Perspectives on H
uman Sexual Behavior Sexual Attraction and Behav
ior Sexual Prohibitions Sexual Orientation Et
oro (A Case Study in Homosexuality)
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What is Gender?

• Gender refers to the cultural construction of
  sexual differences.
  
• Males and females are biologically sexes that
  differ in their X and Y chromosomes.
  
• Although there are cross-cultural generalities in
  the gender-based division of labor, culture takes
  biological differences and associates them with
  certain activities, behaviors, and ideas.
• Some cultures recognize more that two genders.

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• Gender roles are the activities a culture assigns
  to each sex.
  
• Gender stratification describes an unequal
  distribution of rights and resources between men
  and women.
  
• Cross-culturally, women and men expend about the
  same time and effort on subsistence activities.
  
• Women do most of the domestic work
• Mens extradomestic productive labor can
  reinforce a contrast between men as public and
  valuable and women as domestics and less valuable.

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• Matrilineal and bilaterial societies tend to have
  less gender stratification than do patrilineal
  societies.
  
• Ethnographic data suggests that sexual
  orientation is not fixed.
  
• Despite individual variation in sexual
  orientation, culture always plays a role in
  molding individual sexual urges toward a
  collective norm.
• Sexual norms vary widely from culture to culture.

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Sex and Gender
Most people are assigned sex at birth based on
the appearance of external genitalia. Phys
iologically, sex is determined my X and Y
chromosomes. XX for Female XY for Male Ho
wever, nature is not always kind and some
individuals are born with an extra chromosome
XXY, XXX, XYY, or a chromosome may be absent X
alone.
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Human Variation and Sexual Dimorphism
Biological anthropologist have and maintain
extensive data on biological variation and sexua
l dimorphism among humans. Sexual dimorphism re
fers to the biological and behavioral
differences between males and females.
Different areas of the population will contain w
ithin it variation with regards to sexual dimorp
hism with obvious overlapping.
Ex. Muscle mass in Native American women.
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Gender Roles
Gender roles refers to the assigned role of an
individual within a society. Gender encompa
sses the behavioral, psychological, and social
cultural aspects of being female or male.
What are some of the gender roles assigned in th
e United States?
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Cultures with More that Two Genders
Third-gender roles are common in many societies
mahu- in Tahiti berdache- Zuni hijras- Indi
a These individuals adopt the dress, speech, an
d silent language of the opposite sex. These
people are not shunned by the society but are
included and have within the society special so
cietal roles.
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Factors Affecting Gender Roles
Kinship- rules of descent and their associated
residence affects gender as it is perceived and
constructed by a society. Economic resources
and division of labor- Nandi- female husbands.
Ideology- a cultures value system is founded
in its belief system, which contributes in major
ways to the enculturation of gender role
expectations. Ex Yanomamö men and women have se
parate origin myths reinforcing the role of m
en and women.
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Perspectives on Human Sexual Behavior
Sexuality refers to erotic desires and sexual
practices as well as sexual orientation. At
titudes with regards to sexual behavior is
usually based on our cultural (ethnocentric) va
lues. Mead in Samoa Malinowski in the Tro
briands
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Sexual Attraction
There is no universal standard for sexual
attractiveness
Sexual Prohibitions
Sexual Prohibitions is an extremely diversified
topic.
Sexual Orientation
Heterosexuality Homosexuality
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Etoro A Case Study in Homosexuality

• One of the most extreme examples of male-female
  sexual antagonism in Papua New Guinea comes from
  the Etoro (Kelly 1976), a group of 400 people who
  subsist by hunting and horticulture in the
  Trans-Fly region.
• The Etoro also illustrate the power of culture in
  molding human sexuality.
  
• The following account applies only to Etoro males
  and their beliefs.
  
• Etoro cultural norms prevented the male
  anthropologist who studied them from gathering
  comparable information about female attitudes.

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• Etoro opinions about sexuality are linked to
  their beliefs about the cycle of birth, physical
  growth, maturity, old age, and death.
  
• Etoro men believe that semen is necessary to give
  life force to a fetus, which is said to be placed
  within a woman by an ancestral spirit.
  
• Because men are believed to have a limited supply
  of semen, sexuality saps male vitality.
  
• The birth of children, nurtured by semen,
  symbolizes a necessary (and unpleasant) sacrifice
  that will lead to the husband's eventual death.

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• Heterosexual inter-course, which is required only
  for reproduction, is discouraged.
  
• Women who want too much sex are viewed as
  witches, hazardous to their husbands health.
  Etoro culture permits heterosexual intercourse
  only about 100 days a year.
• The rest of the time it is tabooed.
• Seasonal birth clustering shows that the taboo is
  respected.
  

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• So objectionable is heterosexuality that it is
  removed from community life.
  
• Copulation can happen only in the woods, where it
  is risky because poisonous snakes, the Etoro say,
  are attracted by the sounds and smells of sex.
  
• Although coitus is discouraged, homosexual acts
  are viewed as essential.
  
• Etoro believe that boys cannot produce semen on
  their own.
  
• To grow into men and eventually give life force
  to their children, boys must acquire semen orally
  from older men.
  
• From the age of 10 until adulthood, boys are
  inseminated by older men.
  
• No taboos are attached to this.

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• Homosexual activity can go on in the sleep-ing
  area or garden.
  
• Every three years, a group of boys around the age
  of 20 are formally initiated into manhood.
  
• They go to a secluded mountain lodge, where they
  are visited and inseminated by several older
  men.
  
• Etoro homosexuality is governed by a code of
  propriety.
  
• Although homosexual relations between older and
  younger males are considered culturally
  essential, those between boys of the same age are
  discouraged.
• A boy who gets semen from other youths is
  believed to be sapping their life force and
  stunting their growth.

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• When a boy develops very rapidly, this suggests
  that he is ingesting semen from other boys.
  
• Like a sex-hungry wife, he is shunned as a
  witch.
  
• Etoro homosexuality rests not on hormones or
  genes but on cultural traditions.
  
• The Etoro represent one extreme of a male-female
  avoidance pattern that is widespread in Papua New
  Guinea and in patrilineal-patrilocal societies.

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Sexualities and Gender

• The Etoro share a pattern, which Gilbert Herdt
  (1984) has characterized as ritualized
  homosexuality, with about 50 other tribes in
  Papua New Guinea, especially in that countrys
  Trans-Fly region.
• These tribes demonstrate the extent to which
  culture can influence basic biological forces,
  such as sexual urges. Etoro culture regards
  male-female sex as unpleasant, although necessary
  for reproduction.

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• The taboos that apply to hetero- sexual coitus do
  not apply to male-male sex, which also is seen as
  necessary for reproduction, but which is viewed
  much more positively.
• For cultural reasons, Etoro men are freer to
  enjoy the sex they have with other men than they
  are to enjoy the sex they have with their wives.
  

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Understanding Ourselves

• Do the taboos that have surrounded homosexuality
  in our own society remind you of Etoro taboos?
  
• Homosexual activity has been stigmatized in
  Western industrial societies.
  
• Indeed, sodomy laws continue to make it illegal
  in many U.S. states.

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• Among the Etoro, male-female sex is banned from
  the social center and moved to the fringes or
  margins of society (the woods, filled with
  dangerous snakes).
• In our own society, homosexual activity has
  traditionally been hidden, furtive, and
  secretive-also moved to the margins of society
  rather than its valued center.
• Imagine what our own sex lives would be like if
  we had been raised with Etoro beliefs and taboos.
  ,