Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies (WGSS) is an interdisciplinary field that challenges male-centered knowledge production by centering marginalized experiences and analyzing how systems of oppression work together through intersectionality.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What WGSS challenges: the historical dominance of white male perspectives in knowledge production (androcentrism).
• How the field evolved: from 1970s Women's Studies focused on white, middle-class women to today's broader WGSS incorporating race, class, sexuality, disability, and more.
• Core analytical tool: intersectionality—understanding that systems of oppression (sexism, racism, economic inequality) work together, not separately.
• Common confusion: WGSS is not just a list of topics; it offers a distinct way of seeing the world by making connections across institutions and valuing lived experiences.
• Why it matters: the field advocates for social change by revealing how personal problems connect to larger structural inequalities.

📚 The problem WGSS addresses

📚 Androcentrism in knowledge production

Androcentrism: the privileging of male- and masculine-centered ways of understanding the world.

• Historically, almost all knowledge—in sciences, literature, music—was produced by, about, and for men.
• College students could complete entire courses reading only white male authors.
• The excerpt emphasizes this was true across physical sciences, social sciences, and cultural canons.

🎬 The Bechdel Test example

The excerpt uses the Bechdel Test to demonstrate pervasive androcentrism in film:

Criterion	Requirement
1	Feature two women characters
2	Those two women talk to each other
3	They talk about something other than a man

• Most films fail this simple test, showing how male-centered perspectives dominate the film industry.
• This illustrates how androcentrism shapes cultural production beyond academia.

🔬 The myth of impartial knowledge

• Common assumption: knowledge is produced by rational, impartial (male) scientists.
• Feminist scholars argue: this obscures how scientists create knowledge through gendered, raced, classed, and sexualized cultural perspectives.
• Don't confuse: "objective" knowledge is not neutral—it reflects the social position of knowledge producers.

🌱 How the field developed

🌱 Origins in social movements

• The Women's Liberation Movement and Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century called attention to absences in knowledge.
• Beginning in the 1970s, U.S. universities instituted Women's and Ethnic Studies departments in response to student protests and larger social movements.
• Goal: reclaim buried histories and center knowledge production of marginalized groups.

🌈 Expansion beyond white middle-class women

Early Women's Studies limitations:

• White, middle-class, heterosexual women had greatest access to education and participation.
• Early incarnations stressed their experiences and perspectives.

Subsequent decades brought:

• Studies and contributions of women of color, immigrant women, women from the global south.
• Poor and working-class women, lesbian and queer women became integral.
• More recent additions: disability, sexualities, masculinities, religion, science, gender diversity, incarceration, indigeneity, settler colonialism.

🏷️ Why the name changed

• As the field opened to incorporate wider experiences and objects of analysis, many departments renamed themselves "Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies."
• Reflects recognition of the inextricable connection between gender and sexuality in U.S. society.
• Applies not only to women but also to men and people of all genders.

🔗 Intersectionality as core framework

🔗 What intersectionality means

Intersectionality: seeing systems of oppression working in concert rather than separately.

• Contemporary WGSS scholars strive to see the world through this lens.
• Thanks to critiques from transnational, post-colonial, queer, trans, and feminists of color.
• How sexism is experienced depends not only on gender but also on how a person experiences racism, economic inequality, ageism, and other forms of marginalization.
• Context matters: these experiences vary within particular historical and cultural contexts.

🔗 Why it's challenging

• The excerpt acknowledges intersectionality can be challenging to understand.
• Example given: gender-specific and race-specific anti-discrimination policies that failed to protect Black women.
• People marginalized in multiple ways might be left out of single-axis approaches.

🔗 Don't confuse: separate vs. interconnected systems

• Wrong approach: treating sexism, racism, and class inequality as separate, independent systems.
• Intersectional approach: recognizing these systems work together and shape each other.
• Example: a person's experience of sexism is different depending on their race and economic position.

🎓 What WGSS offers

🎓 Interdisciplinary approach

• Feminist scholars come from diverse disciplines: biology, anthropology, sociology, history, chemistry, engineering, economics, and more.
• Disciplinary diversity facilitates communication across boundaries within the academy.
• Goal: more fully understand the social world.

🎓 A different way of seeing

More than a series of topics, WGSS offers a distinct perspective:

What WGSS scholars do	How this differs
Make connections across institutional contexts	Rather than studying work, family, media, law, state in isolation
Value knowledge from lived experiences	Rather than only "objective" expert knowledge
Attend to marginalized identities and groups	Rather than ignoring or treating them as exceptions

🎓 Sample topics covered

The excerpt lists what students can expect to learn:

• Impact of stringent beauty standards in media and advertising.
• Why childrearing by women may not be as natural as we think.
• History of gendered division of labor and its continuing economic impact.
• Unique health issues addressed by reproductive justice advocates.
• Connections between women working in factories in the global south and women consuming goods in the U.S.
• How sexual double-standards harm everyone.
• Historical context for feminist movements and where they are today.

🎓 Connecting personal to structural

• By recognizing complexity of the social world, WGSS advocates for social change.
• Provides insight into how change can be accomplished.
• Allows people to see how personal problems connect to larger economic, cultural, and social problems.
• Enables organizing with others who feel similar effects from the same structural problems.

🗣️ Language and identity terms

🗣️ Why language matters

• Language is political, hotly contested, always evolving, and deeply personal.
• Important to be attentive to language and honor individuals' self-referential terms.
• Terms reflect more than personal preferences—they reflect individual and collective histories, ongoing scholarly debates, and current politics.

🗣️ "People of color" vs. "Colored people"

Term	Meaning	Context
People of color (POC)	Contemporary term for all non-white individuals in the U.S.	Political, coalitional term encompassing common experiences of racism
Black or African American	Commonly preferred terms for individuals of African descent	Widely used, though sometimes obscure specificity of histories
African diasporic / African descent	Alternative preferred terms	Refers to people who trace lineage to Africa but migrated through Latin America and Caribbean
Colored people	Antiquated term from before civil rights movement	Now taken as a slur; represents pejorative usage in U.S. and U.K.

Don't confuse: "people of color" (contemporary, respectful) with "colored people" (outdated, pejorative)—word order and historical context matter.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Feminist theorizing grounds knowledge in the lived experiences of marginalized groups and uses multiple levels of analysis to connect personal experiences to larger structural forces of power and inequality.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• "The personal is political": personal experiences are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces within historical and institutional contexts.
• Socially-lived theorizing: creating feminist theories from the day-to-day experiences of marginalized groups who have been excluded from academic knowledge production.
• Knowledge from the margins: people with less power experience oppressive systems in ways dominant groups do not, providing more complete knowledge of how power works.
• Multiple levels of analysis: connecting individual experiences (micro) through groups/organizations (meso) to structural forces (macro) and transnational systems (global) reveals how inequalities are patterned, not just individual.
• Common confusion: feminism is not a single school of thought but encompasses diverse theories (socialist, radical, black, queer, transfeminist, intersectional, etc.) with different analyses of inequality and solutions.

🔍 Why theorize from lived experiences

💡 The personal is political

"The personal is political": a phrase popularized by feminists in the 1960s highlighting how personal experiences are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces within the context of history, institutions, and culture.

• Personal struggles are not just individual failures or choices—they are connected to larger systems.
• This phrase reframes "private" problems as public, structural issues.

📚 Socially-lived theorizing

Socially-lived theorizing: creating feminist theories and knowledge from the actual day-to-day experiences of groups of people who have traditionally been excluded from the production of academic knowledge.

• Feminist analysis commits to grounding knowledge in the experiences of marginalized groups:
  • Women, people of color, people in the Global South, immigrants, indigenous people
  • Gay, lesbian, queer, and trans people
  • Poor and working-class people, disabled people
• Traditional academic knowledge has been produced by and for dominant groups; socially-lived theorizing challenges this exclusion.

🔭 Knowledge from the "bottom" of social systems

• People with less power and resources experience the effects of oppressive systems in ways members of dominant groups do not.
• From the "bottom" of a social system, participants have knowledge of:
  • The power holders of that system
  • Their own experiences
• The reverse is rarely true: power holders often lack knowledge of marginalized experiences.
• Result: marginalized perspectives allow for more complete knowledge of how systems of power work.

Example: 19th-century industrial development

• From factory owners' perspective: emphasis on capital accumulation and industrial progress.
• From immigrant workers' perspective: working sixteen-hour days to feed families, fighting for trade union recognition, securing decent wages and the eight-hour work day.
• Different starting points produce very different theories of how industrial capitalism developed and works today.

🌈 Diversity of feminist theories

🧩 Feminism is not a single school

Feminism: not a single school of thought but encompasses diverse theories and analytical perspectives.

• The excerpt lists multiple feminist theories:
  • Socialist feminist theories
  • Radical sex feminist theories
  • Black feminist theories
  • Queer feminist theories
  • Transfeminist theories
  • Feminist disability theories
  • Intersectional feminist theories

📋 Eleven types of feminism (from video reference)

The excerpt references a video defining feminisms generally as a project working for "political, social, and economic equality of the sexes," with different types proposing different sources of inequality and solutions:

• Liberal feminism
• Marxist feminism
• Radical feminism
• Anti-porn feminism
• Sex positive feminism
• Separatist feminism
• Cultural feminism
• Womanism (intersectional feminism)
• Postcolonial feminism
• Ecofeminism
• Girlie feminism

🧵 Common thread across feminist theories

All feminist theories share the belief that knowledge is shaped by the political and social context in which it is made.

• Knowledge is not neutral or objective—it is constructed by individuals in particular social locations.
• Acknowledging this context is central to feminist analysis.

🪞 Reflexivity and multiple identities

🪞 Reflexivity

Reflexivity: understanding how one's social position influences the ways that they understand the world.

• Feminist theorists argue reflexivity is of utmost necessity when creating theory and knowledge.
• Since all knowledge is constructed by individuals inhabiting particular social locations, we must be aware of how our own position shapes what we see and know.

🎭 Multiple identities and intersectionality

Multiple identities: people occupy particular social locations in terms of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, and ability; these identities in combination all at the same time shape their social experiences.

• At certain times, specific dimensions of identity may be more salient than others.
• At no time is anyone without multiple identities.
• Intersectionality: categories of identity are intersectional, influencing both:
  • The experiences individuals have
  • The ways they see and understand the world around them

Don't confuse: intersectionality is not about adding up separate identities; it's about how they combine simultaneously to shape experience.

⚖️ Agency and structural forces

🏃 Agency

Agency: the ability to influence the direction of one's life.

• Feminists believe people have agency—they are not completely determined by structures.
• However, an individual's agency is limited or enhanced by their social position.

🌐 Challenging individualism

• In the United States, people are often taught that everyone is a self-activating, self-actualizing individual.
• The repeated message: everyone is unique and has an equal chance to make something of themselves.
• Feminist counter-argument: while individuals have agency, their agency is shaped by social position.
• Situating experiences within larger structural forces (race, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, ability) allows for a more powerful understanding of how lives are shaped by forces greater than ourselves.

🔬 Multiple levels of analysis

🔬 Four levels of analysis

Levels of analysis: micro (individual), meso (group), macro (structural), and global—different analytical approaches to understanding a social phenomenon.

• Like a microscope that zooms in and out:
  • Start with the most minute parts
  • Pull back to see the whole cell
  • Pull away to see the whole organism
• These levels allow us to situate day-to-day experiences within broader structural processes that shape whole populations.

🧑 Micro level

Micro level: the level of analysis focused on individuals' experiences—what we, as individuals, live everyday.

• Interacting with other people on the street, in the classroom, at a party or social gathering.
• The level of personal, face-to-face experience.

👥 Meso level

Meso level: moves the microscope back, seeing how groups, communities, and organizations structure social life.

• Examples of meso-level analysis:
  • How churches shape gender expectations for women
  • How schools teach students to become girls and boys
  • How workplace policies make gender transition and recognition easier or harder for trans and gender nonconforming workers

🏛️ Macro level

Macro level: consists of government policies, programs, and institutions, as well as ideologies and categories of identity.

• Involves national power structures.
• Includes cultural ideas about different groups of people (according to race, class, gender, sexuality) spread through national institutions:
  • Media
  • Education
  • Policy

🌍 Global level

Global level: includes transnational production, trade, and migration, global capitalism, and transnational trade and law bodies (such as the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization)—larger transnational forces that bear upon our personal lives but that we often ignore or fail to see.

🏭 Example: Maquiladoras and multiple levels

🏭 What are maquiladoras?

Maquiladora: a factory on the border of the US and Mexico, built to take advantage of the difference in the price of labor in these two countries.

🔍 Applying the four levels to a Latina worker in a maquiladora

Level	What we see	Analysis
Micro	Daily struggles to feed herself and her family; exhaustion from working more than eight hours then caring for family; persistent cough or skin problems from chemicals and contaminated water	Individual worker's personal health and survival challenges
Meso	Community transformed by the maquiladora; other women face similar financial, health, environmental problems; women organizing to form a union for higher wages and benefits	Group and community-level patterns; collective organizing
Macro	Mexican government's participation in trade agreements (NAFTA, CAFTA); negative effects on environmental regulations and labor laws	National policies and their consequences
Global	Global capitalist restructuring shifting production from North America and Europe to Central and South America and Asia	Transnational economic forces

🔗 Connecting personal to structural

• What are experienced at the micro level as personal problems are connected to macro economic, cultural, and social problems.
• This connection allows us to:
  • Develop socially-lived theory
  • Organize with other people who feel similar effects from the same problems
  • Challenge and change these problems

Don't confuse: recognizing structural forces does not mean individuals have no agency; it means understanding how inequalities are patterned by race, class, gender, and sexuality—not just by individual decisions.

🎓 Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies as a field

📖 Historical context

• There was a time when it seemed all knowledge was produced by, about, and for men.
• This was true across physical and social sciences, music, and literature canons.
• From the angle of mainstream education: studies, textbooks, and masterpieces were almost all authored by white men.
• It was not uncommon for college students to complete entire courses reading only the work of white men.

🎯 WGSS as a challenge to androcentrism

Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies (WGSS): an interdisciplinary field that challenges the androcentric production of knowledge.

Androcentrism: the privileging of male- and masculine-centered ways of understanding the world.

🎬 The Bechdel Test example

• Created by Alison Bechdel, a lesbian feminist comics artist.
• Demonstrates the androcentric perspective of a majority of feature-length films.
• Films pass the Bechdel Test only if they:
  1. Feature two women characters
  2. Those two women characters talk to each other
  3. They talk to each other about something other than a man
• Result: a majority of films do not pass this test.
• This demonstrates how androcentrism is pervasive in the film industry and results in male-centered films.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Language choices around identity are political, evolving, and deeply personal, reflecting individual and collective histories, scholarly debates, and current politics rather than mere personal preferences.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Why language matters: identity terms are not just preferences—they carry individual and collective histories, ongoing scholarly debates, and current politics.
• Core principle: respect individuals' self-referential terms and honor how people choose to identify themselves.
• Common confusion: some terms sound similar but carry very different meanings (e.g., "people of color" vs. "colored people"; "transgender" vs. "transgendered").
• Person-first vs. identity-first: debates exist over whether to say "person with a disability" or "disabled person," reflecting different philosophies about impairment and identity.
• Reclaimed terms: some words (e.g., "queer," "Indian") were historically derogatory but have been reclaimed by communities, so outsiders must use them carefully.

🗣️ Principles of respectful language

🗣️ Language is political and personal

• Language is described as "political, hotly contested, always evolving, and deeply personal."
• Terms reflect much more than personal preferences: they reflect individual and collective histories, ongoing scholarly debates, and current politics.
• The excerpt emphasizes that there are no strict "correct" or "incorrect" rules, but awareness and respect are essential.

🤝 Honor self-referential terms

• The key principle: be attentive to language and honor and use individuals' self-referential terms.
• Example: use the names and pronouns people choose for themselves.
• Don't confuse: this is not about imposing "correct" language from outside, but about respecting how people identify themselves.

🌈 Race and ethnicity terms

🌈 "People of color" vs. "Colored people"

People of color: a contemporary term used mainly in the United States to refer to all individuals who are non-white; a political, coalitional term encompassing common experiences of racism (abbreviated as POC).

• Black or African American are commonly preferred terms for most individuals of African descent today.
• Other preferred terms include African diasporic or African descent to refer to people who trace lineage to Africa but migrated through Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Colored people is an antiquated term used before the civil rights movement; now taken as a slur because it represents a time when institutional racism during the Jim Crow era was legal.
• Don't confuse: "people of color" is contemporary and respectful; "colored people" is outdated and pejorative.

🌎 "Latino," "Latina," "Latinx," "Chicano," "Hispanic"

Term	Meaning	Notes
Latino	People of Latin American origin/descent in the U.S.; can refer specifically to a man	Gendered masculine
Latina	Woman of Latin American origin/descent	Gendered feminine
Latino/a, Latin@	Include both –o and –a endings to avoid sexist use of "Latino" for all	Attempts gender inclusivity
Latinx	Avoids –a or –o gendered endings to explicitly include individuals of all genders	Gender-neutral
Latin American	People in Latin America (not U.S.-based)	Geographic distinction
Chicano/a, Chican@, Chicanx	People of Mexican origin/descent in the U.S.; may be used interchangeably with Mexican American	Connotation of being politically active in working to end oppression; associated with Chicano literary and civil rights movements of the 1960s–70s
Xicano/a	Shortened form of Mexicano, from the Nahuatl name for the indigenous Mexica Aztec Empire	Emphasizes indigenous ancestry
Hispanic	People and nations with a historical link to Spain; people who speak Spanish	Not all Latin Americans are Hispanic (e.g., Brazilians); Spaniards are Hispanic but not Latino

• Preferred terms vary regionally and politically; these terms came into use in the context of the Anglophone-dominated United States.

🪶 "Indigenous," "First Nations," "Indian," "Native"

Indigenous: descendants of the original inhabitants of an area, in contrast to those that have settled, occupied, or colonized the area.

• Terms vary by specificity:
  • In Australia: Aboriginal
  • In Canada: First Nations (more common for self-definition); Aboriginal is sometimes used in settler-government documents
  • In the United States: Indian, American Indian, Native, or Native American; more commonly, individuals refer to their specific tribes or nations
• "Indian" is a reclaimed term; outsiders should be very careful in using it because of its history.

♿ Disability language

♿ "Disabled people" vs. "People with disabilities"

• Two competing approaches exist:

People-first language (e.g., "a woman with a vision impairment"):

• Linguistically puts the person before their impairment (physical, sensory, or mental difference).
• Encourages nondisabled people to think of those with disabilities as people.
• Acronym: PWD (people with disabilities).
• Critique: aims to create distance from the impairment, which can be understood as devaluing the impairment.

Identity-first language (e.g., "a disabled person"):

• Emphasizes embracing impairment as an integral, important, valued aspect of themselves.

• People do not want to distance themselves from their impairment.

• Points to how society disables individuals.

• Both phrasings are currently in use for disability; this is not the case when it comes to race.

🚫 Ableist terms to avoid

• Many terms in common use have ableist meanings: "lame," "retarded," "crippled," "crazy."
• It is important to avoid using these evaluative expressions.

🏳️‍⚧️ Gender identity terms

🏳️‍⚧️ "Transgender," "Trans," "Trans*," "Cisgender"

Transgender: generally refers to individuals who identify as a gender not assigned to them at birth.

• Used as an adjective (e.g., "a transgender woman," not "a transgender"), though some individuals use it as a noun.
• Transgendered is not preferred because it emphasizes ascription and undermines self-definition.
• Trans is an abbreviated term; individuals appear to use it self-referentially more often than "transgender" these days.
• Transition is both internal and social; some individuals who transition do not experience a change in their gender identity since they have always identified in the way that they do.
• Trans* is an all-inclusive umbrella term which encompasses all nonnormative gender identities.
• Cisgender or cis refers to individuals who identify with the gender assigned to them at birth; some people prefer the term non-trans.

🌈 "Non-binary," "Genderqueer," "Genderfluid," "Agender"

Term	Meaning	Timeline
Non-binary	Gender identities beyond binary identifications of man or woman	Popularized in the 2010s
Genderqueer	Gender identities beyond binary identifications of man or woman	Popularized within queer and trans communities in the 1990s and 2000s
Agender	"Without gender"; can describe people who do not have a gender identity, or who identify as non-binary or gender neutral, have an undefinable identity, or feel indifferent about gender
Genderfluid	People who experience shifts between gender identities

🏥 "Transsexual"

Transsexual: a medicalized term indicating a binary understanding of gender and an individual's identification with the "opposite" gender from the gender assigned to them at birth.

• This term is distinguished from the broader, less medicalized "transgender."

🌈 Sexuality terms

🌈 "Queer," "Bisexual," "Pansexual"

Queer: as an identity term, refers to a non-categorical sexual identity; also used as a catch-all term for all LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) individuals.

• The term was historically used in a derogatory way but was reclaimed as a self-referential term in the 1990s United States.
• Although many individuals identify as queer today, some still feel personally insulted by it and disapprove of its use.

Bisexual: typically defined as a sexual orientation marked by attraction to either men or women.

• This has been problematized as a binary approach to sexuality, which excludes individuals who do not identify as men or women.

Pansexual: a sexual identity marked by sexual attraction to people of any gender or sexuality.

💕 "Polyamorous," "Asexual"

Polyamorous (poly, for short) or non-monogamous relationships: open or non-exclusive; individuals may have multiple consensual and individually-negotiated sexual and/or romantic relationships at once.

Asexual: an identity marked by a lack of or rare sexual attraction, or low or absent interest in sexual activity, abbreviated to "ace."

• Asexuals distinguish between sexual and romantic attraction, delineating various sub-identities included under an ace umbrella.

📚 Related terms (not self-referential)

• The excerpt mentions that heteronormativity, homonormativity, and homonationalism are discussed in later sections.
• These terms are not self-referential identity descriptors but are used to describe how sexuality is constructed in society and the politics around such constructions.

🌍 Global and geopolitical terms

🌍 "Global South," "Global North," "Third world"

Global South and Global North: refer to socioeconomic and political divides.

• Global South areas (typically socioeconomically and politically disadvantaged): Africa, Latin America, parts of Asia, and the Middle East.
• Global North areas (typically socioeconomically and politically advantaged): United States, Canada, Western Europe, and parts of East Asia.

Problematic older terms:

• Third world, First world, Developing country, Developed country have been problematized for their hierarchical meanings, where areas with more resources and political power are valued over those with less resources and less power.
• Although Global South and Global North carry the same problematic connotations, these tend to be the preferred terms today.

Reclaimed use of "Third world":

• Some people do not see "Third world" as a negative term and use it self-referentially.
• Historically, "Third world" was used as an oppositional and coalitional term for nations and groups non-aligned with either the capitalist First world and communist Second world, especially during the Cold War.
• Example: participants in the Third World Liberation Strike at San Francisco State University from 1968 to 1969 used the term to express solidarity and to establish Black Studies and the Ethnic Studies College.

🌐 "Transnational," "Diasporic," "Global"

Transnational: has been variously defined.

The term describes multiple concepts:

• Migration and the transcendence of borders.
• Signals the diminishing relevance of the nation-state in the current iteration of globalization.
• Used interchangeably with diasporic (any reference to materials from a region outside its current location).
• Designates a form of neocolonialism (e.g., transnational capital).
• Signals the NGOization of social movements.

In feminist scholarship:

• "Transnational women's movements" or "global women's movements" refer to U.N. conferences on women, global feminism as a policy and activist arena, and human rights initiatives that enact new forms of governmentality.
• Transnational feminist scholarship and social movements critique and mobilize against globalization, capitalism, neoliberalism, neocolonialism, and non-national institutions like the World Trade Organization.
• In this sense, transnational refers to "cross-national solidarity" in feminist organizing.
• Transnational feminist inquiry also examines how these movements have been tied to colonial processes and imperialism, as national and international histories shape transnational social movements.

Why "transnational" over "international":

• "International" has been critiqued because it centers the nation-state.
• Transnational can take seriously the role of the state but does not assume that the state is the most relevant actor in global processes.

Why "transnational" over "global":

• Although all of these are technically global processes, the term "global" is oftentimes seen as abstract.
• It appeals to the notion of "global sisterhood," which is often suspect because of the assumption of commonalities among women that oftentimes do not exist.

🏛️ Conceptualizing structures of power

🏛️ What is a social structure?

Social structure: a set of long-lasting social relationships, practices, and institutions that can be difficult to see at work in our daily lives.

• They are intangible social relations, but work much in the same way as structures we can see: buildings and skeletal systems are two examples.
• Example: the human body is structured by bones; bones provide the structure upon which other organs and vessels can reside.
• Don't confuse: structures are not visible physical objects, but they shape and organize social life in similar ways.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Power in society is structured through institutions and cultural norms that systematically privilege certain identities (white, male, middle-class, non-disabled, heterosexual) over others, creating enduring but changeable patterns of access and disadvantage.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What social structures are: long-lasting social relationships, practices, and institutions (like government, family, law, media) that limit and direct possible actions, similar to how bones structure the body.
• Two dimensions of power: (1) access to and through social institutions, and (2) processes that privilege, normalize, and value certain identities over others along axes of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age, nation, and religion.
• Intersectionality matters: individuals hold multiple identities simultaneously, experiencing both privileges and disadvantages depending on context—a white middle-class woman may be disadvantaged relative to a white middle-class man but advantaged relative to a black middle-class woman.
• Common confusion: the "-isms" (sexism, racism, classism, genderism, ableism) are not just individual prejudice but structural discrimination built into institutions that were historically designed to benefit wealthy white men.
• Structures can change: social movements have altered these structures over time, though change is slow and ongoing, not overnight or complete.

🏗️ Understanding social structures

🏗️ What a social structure is

A social structure is a set of long-lasting social relationships, practices and institutions that can be difficult to see at work in our daily lives.

• Intangible social relations that work like physical structures (buildings, skeletal systems).
• The human body analogy: bones provide the structure upon which organs and vessels reside; bones limit possibility but are not fundamentally unchangeable (they may deteriorate, suffer injury, or be affected by disease, but never spontaneously change location or disappear).
• Social structures similarly limit possibility but do not change spontaneously.

🏛️ Social institutions as structural elements

Social institutions include: the government, work, education, family, law, media, and medicine, among others.

• These institutions direct or structure possible social action.
• Within these spaces there are rules, norms, and procedures that limit what actions are possible.
• Example: the Standard North American Family (SNAF) includes two heterosexually-married parents and one or more biologically-related children, plus a division of labor (husband/father earns larger income, wife/mother takes responsibility for care-taking and childrearing). Although families vary, this is the norm to which they are most often compared. While we may consider pets, friends, and lovers as family, the state, legal system, and media do not affirm these possibilities in the way they affirm the SNAF. When most people think of who is in their family, the normative notion of parents and children structures who they consider.

⚡ Structures of power

⚡ Two meanings of power

Power means: 1) access to and through the various social institutions, and 2) processes of privileging, normalizing, and valuing certain identities over others.

• This definition highlights both the structural/institutional nature of power and the cultural creation and privileging of certain categories of people.
• Power in American society is organized along the axes of: gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age, nation, and religious identities.
• Some identities are more highly valued or more normalized than others—typically because they are contrasted to identities thought to be less valuable or less "normal."

🎭 Identities as collective access, not just individual descriptors

• Identities are not only descriptors of individuals, but grant a certain amount of collective access to the institutions of social life.
• This does not mean all white people are alike and wield the same amount of power over all people of color.
• It does mean that white, middle-class women as a group tend to hold more social power than middle-class women of color.

🔀 Intersectionality: multiple identities, multiple positions

• All individuals have multiple aspects of identity.
• Individuals simultaneously experience some privileges due to their socially valued identity statuses and disadvantages due to their devalued identity statuses.
• Example: a white, heterosexual middle-class woman may be disadvantaged compared to a white middle-class man, but she may experience advantages in different contexts in relation to:
  • a black, heterosexual middle-class woman, or
  • a white, heterosexual working-class man, or
  • a white lesbian upper-class woman.
• At the higher level of social structure, some people have greater access to resources and institutionalized power across the board than do others.

🚫 The "-isms": structural discrimination

🚫 Defining the "-isms"

Term	What it describes
Sexism	Discrimination and blocked access women face
Genderism	Discrimination and blocked access that transgender people face
Racism	Discrimination and blocked access on the basis of race, which is based on socially-constructed meanings rather than biological differences
Classism	Discrimination on the basis of social class, or blocked access to material wealth and social status
Ableism	Discrimination on the basis of physical, mental, or emotional impairment or blocked access to the fulfillment of needs and in particular, full participation in social life

🧠 More than individual prejudice

• These "-isms" reflect dominant cultural notions that women, trans people, people of color, poor people, and disabled people are inferior to men, non-trans people, white people, middle- and upper-class people, and non-disabled people.
• Don't confuse: the "-isms" are greater than individuals' prejudice against these groups.
• Example: in the founding of the United States, the institutions of social life (work, law, education, etc.) were built to benefit wealthy, white men since at the time these were, by law, the only real "citizens" of the country. Although these institutions have significantly changed over time in response to social movements and more progressive cultural shifts, their sexist, genderist, racist, classist, and ableist structures continue to persist in different forms today.

🔄 "-ization" language: highlighting processes

• Similar-sounding to "-isms," the language of "-ization" (such as "racialization") is used to highlight the formation or processes by which these forms of difference have been given meaning and power.

🔧 Structures can change

🔧 Not immutable, but slow to change

• Just like the human body's skeletal structure, social structures are not immutable, or completely resistant to change.
• Social movements mobilized on the basis of identities have fought for increased equality and changed the structures of society, in the US and abroad, over time.
• However, these struggles do not change society overnight; some struggles last decades, centuries, or remain always unfinished.
• The structures and institutions of social life change slowly, but they can and do change based on the concerted efforts of individuals, social movements and social institutions.

🧩 Social constructionism

🧩 What social constructionism is

Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge that holds that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation shaped by cultural and historical contexts.

• Social constructionism highlights the ways in which cultural categories—like "men," "women," "black," "white"—are concepts created, changed, and reproduced through historical processes within institutions and culture.
• Don't confuse: this does not mean bodily variation among individuals does not exist, but that we construct categories based on [excerpt ends here].

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Social constructionism challenges the idea that categories like race, gender, and sexuality are fixed biological facts, showing instead that they are cultural products shaped by historical contexts and power relations, which means existing inequalities are neither inevitable nor unchangeable.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Core claim: Characteristics typically thought to be immutable and biological (gender, race, class, ability, sexuality) are products of human definition and interpretation shaped by culture and history.
• How categories work: We construct categories based on certain bodily features, attach meanings to them, and place people into them—but the boundaries and meanings shift across time and place.
• Common confusion—essentialism vs. constructionism: Essentialism assumes traits are biologically determined and universal; social constructionism shows that even "natural" categories are defined differently in different contexts and are produced within power relations.
• Power and inequality produce difference: Oppression and inequality actually create ideas of essential difference (e.g., racial categories emerged within slavery and white supremacy, not from biology alone).
• Why it matters: Because categories are fluid and historically contingent, existing inequalities are not inevitable and can be challenged and changed.

🔍 What social constructionism means

🔍 Definition and scope

Social constructionism: a theory of knowledge that holds that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation shaped by cultural and historical contexts.

• It does not deny that bodily variation exists among individuals.
• It argues that we construct categories based on certain bodily features, attach meanings to these categories, and then place people into them.
• Categories are not "natural" or fixed; boundaries are always shifting, contested, and redefined in different historical periods and across societies.
• The perspective is concerned with the meaning created through defining and categorizing groups of people, experience, and reality in cultural contexts.

🌍 Example: the one-drop rule vs. Brazil

• United States: By the one-drop rule, individuals with any African ancestor are considered Black, regardless of appearance.
• Brazil: Many individuals with African ancestry are considered white.
• What this shows: Identity categories are not based on strict biological characteristics but on social perceptions and meanings; the same ancestry can be categorized differently depending on the society.

📜 Historical case: the invention of heterosexuality

📜 How "heterosexual" was originally defined

• The word "heterosexual" was coined by Dr. James Kiernan in 1892.
• Original meaning (late 19th century): "Hetero-sexuals" were defined by their "inclinations to both sexes" and engaged in sex for pleasure, not reproduction.
• Kiernan thought of heterosexuals as those who "betrayed inclinations to 'abnormal methods of gratification.'"
• In other words, heterosexuals were those attracted to both sexes and engaged in non-reproductive sex—considered deviant at the time.

📜 How the meaning changed

• This definition lasted in middle-class US culture until the 1920s, then went through radical reformulations.
• Contemporary usage: "Heterosexuality" now typically means "normal" or "good," defined by its supposed opposite, homosexuality.
• In its initial usage, it countered the norm of reproductive sexuality and was therefore deviant.

📜 What this case illustrates (four aspects of social construction)

1. Construction occurs within institutions: A medical doctor created a new category based on existing medical knowledge; "hetero-sexuality" was initially a medical term defining deviant sexuality.
2. Meanings change drastically over time: The same term went from "deviant" to "normal."
3. Cultural and historical contexts shape definitions: The norm of reproductive sexuality (sex for children, not pleasure) defined what was "normal" or "deviant."
4. Categorization shapes human experience and behavior: Being a "heterosexual" in early 1900s middle-class culture was undesirable; the definition of "hetero-sexual" as deviant defined "proper" sexual behavior as reproductive and not pleasure-centered.

🧬 Essentialism and biological determinism (what constructionism challenges)

🧬 Essentialism

Essentialism: the idea that the characteristics of persons or groups are significantly influenced by biological factors, and are therefore largely similar in all human cultures and historical periods.

• A key assumption: "a given truth is a necessary natural part of the individual and object in question."
• Example: An essentialist understanding of sexuality argues that all people have a sexual orientation, and that an individual's sexual orientation does not vary across time or place—it is inherent, biologically determined, and essential to their being.

🧬 Biological determinism

Biological determinism: a general theory which holds that a group's biological or genetic makeup shapes its social, political, and economic destiny.

• Example: "Sex" is typically thought to be a biological "fact," with bodies classified into two categories (male and female) assumed to have distinct chromosomes, reproductive systems, hormones, and sex characteristics.
• However, "sex" has been defined in many different ways depending on context.

🧬 How "sex" has been defined differently

• Late 19th/early 20th century: The medical community decided that the presence or absence of ovaries was the ultimate criterion of sex, because reproductive function was considered essential to being a woman (a heteronormative assumption that women are defined by their ability to have children).
• Contemporary US: Medical practitioners typically assign sex based on the appearance of genitalia.
• What this shows: Even things commonly thought to be "natural" or "essential" are socially constructed; understandings of "nature" change through history and across place according to systems of human knowledge.

⚖️ Power, inequality, and the construction of difference

⚖️ Construction and power cannot be separated

• Sociologist Abby Ferber argues that the social construction of difference occurs within relations of power and privilege, and these two aspects cannot be separated.
• Key insight: Inequality and oppression actually produce ideas of essential difference.
• Example: Racial categories thought to be "natural" or "essential" are created within the context of racialized power relations—for African-Americans, that includes slavery, laws regulating interracial sexual relationships, lynching, and white supremacist discourse.

⚖️ Racialization and the "-ization" language

• The language of "-ization" (e.g., "racialization") highlights the formation or processes by which forms of difference have been given meaning and power.
• Social constructionist analyses seek to better understand the processes through which racialized, gendered, or sexualized differentiations occur, in order to untangle the power relations within them.

♿ Disability as socially constructed

♿ Medical model vs. social model

Model	Definition	Focus
Medical model of disability	Frames body and mind differences and perceived challenges as flaws that need fixing at the individual level	The individual's "flaw"
Social model of disability	Shifts the focus to the disabling aspects of society for individuals with impairments (physical, sensory, or mental differences), where society disables those with impairments	Society's barriers

♿ Disability as oppression

Disability: a form of oppression where individuals understood as having impairments are imagined to be inferior to those without impairments, and impairments are devalued and unwanted.

• This perspective manifests in structural arrangements that limit access for those with impairments.

♿ Critical disability perspective

Critical disability perspective: critiques the idea that nondisability is natural and normal—an ableist sentiment, which frames the person rather than the society as the problem.

• It challenges the assumption that nondisability is the norm and that people with impairments are the problem, rather than the social structures that exclude them.

🌟 Implications and why it matters

🌟 Inequalities are not inevitable

• Because social constructionist analyses examine categories of difference as fluid, dynamic, and changing according to historical and geographical context, existing inequalities are neither inevitable nor immutable.
• This perspective is especially useful for the activist and emancipatory aims of feminist movements and theories.

🌟 Challenges pathologization of minorities

• By centering the processes through which inequality and power relations produce racialized, sexualized, and gendered difference, social constructionist analyses challenge the pathologization of minorities who have been thought to be essentially or inherently inferior to privileged groups.

🌟 Destabilizes hierarchical categories

• Social constructionist analyses destabilize the categories that organize people into hierarchically ordered groups by uncovering the historical, cultural, and/or institutional origins of the groups under study.
• In this way, they challenge the categorical underpinnings of inequalities by revealing their production and reproduction through unequal systems of knowledge and power.

🌟 Don't confuse: "not real" vs. "socially constructed"

• Social constructionism does not mean that categories or experiences are "not real" or "just made up."
• It means that the meanings, boundaries, and power attached to categories are created and maintained through social processes, not fixed by biology or nature.
• Example: The experience of being categorized as Black in the US is very real and has real consequences, but the category itself and its boundaries are socially constructed and vary across societies.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Intersectionality reveals that race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and ability are mutually constitutive—people experience these aspects of identity simultaneously, with each shaping the meaning and experience of the others—rather than as separate, additive categories.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What intersectionality means: multiple aspects of identity (race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability) are experienced simultaneously and shape one another; a person is never received as "just a woman" or "just Black," but always as a racialized-gendered-classed person.
• How it differs from older models: intersectionality rejects both single-determinant models (e.g., "all women share the same interests") and additive models (e.g., "Black man = male privilege + racial disadvantage").
• Common confusion: wage-gap tables that break down earnings by race and gender may look intersectional, but they are actually additive—they don't capture how cultural ideas of gender are racialized and ideas of race are gendered.
• Why it matters: intersectional analysis shows that inequalities are structured by interlocking systems, not by isolated identity traits, and it challenges centering one group's experience (e.g., white women's) as universal.
• Limitations and critiques: in practice, "intersectionality" often centers "women of color" as Other, reproduces U.S.-centric frameworks, and assumes fixed identity categories; the concept of assemblage offers an alternative that treats categories as events and relations rather than stable attributes.

🔍 What intersectionality is (and isn't)

🔍 Mutually constitutive identities

Intersectionality: a mode of analysis in which race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and other aspects of identity are considered mutually constitutive—people experience these multiple aspects simultaneously, and the meanings of different aspects are shaped by one another.

• "Mutually constitutive" means each dimension of identity influences how the others are experienced and interpreted.
• Example: a person is never received as "just a woman"; how that person is racialized (Black, brown, white) impacts how the person is received as a woman. Notions of blackness, brownness, and whiteness always influence gendered experience, and there is no experience of gender outside an experience of race.
• Similarly, gendered experience is shaped by age, sexuality, class, and ability; the experience of race is impacted by gender, age, class, sexuality, and ability.

❌ Single-determinant model

Single-determinant model of identity: presumes that one aspect of identity (e.g., gender) dictates one's access to or disenfranchisement from power.

• Example: the concept of "global sisterhood"—the idea that all women across the globe share basic common political interests, concerns, and needs.
• Why it fails: if analysis stops at gender, it misses how cultural contexts shaped by race, religion, and access to resources place some women's needs at cross-purposes with other women's needs.
• Concrete illustration: mid-20th-century white, middle-class U.S. women fought for freedom to work and legal parity with men, but this was not the major problem for women of color or working-class white women, who had already been participating in the labor market as domestic workers, factory workers, and slave laborers since early U.S. colonial settlement.
• Women in the global south may have more pressing concerns: access to clean water, adequate health care, and safety from the harms of living in tyrannical, war-torn, or economically impoverished nations.

➕ Additive model

Additive model of identity: simply adds together privileged and disadvantaged identities for a slightly more complex picture.

• Example: "A Black man may experience some advantages based on his gender, but has limited access to power based on his race."
• This approach is exemplified in how race and gender wage gaps are portrayed in statistical studies and popular news reports.

Wage-gap table example (2015 data):

Racial/Ethnic Background	Men ($)	Women ($)	Women's Earnings as % of White Male Earnings
All Groups	51,212	40,742	–
White	57,204	43,063	75.3%
Black	41,094	36,212	63.3%
Asian American	61,672	48,313	84.5%
Hispanic or Latino	35,673	31,109	54.4%

• The table breaks down earnings by gender and race, which is more descriptive than a single gender or race wage gap figure.
• Why it's still additive, not intersectional: it does not account for how shared cultural ideas of gender are racialized and ideas of race are gendered, and how these ideas structure access to resources and power—material, political, interpersonal.
• The table may point to structural explanations (education levels, occupations, discrimination), but it is not useful for predicting individual incomes by "plugging in" gender plus race; individual experiences differ vastly, and there are outliers in every group.

🔗 How intersectionality works: race, gender, and sexuality

• Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins developed a strong intersectional framework through historical analysis of representations of Black sexuality in the U.S.
• Hill Collins shows how contemporary white American culture exoticizes Black men and women, pointing to a history of enslavement and treatment as chattel as the origin.
• To justify slavery, African-Americans were thought of and treated as less than human; sexual reproduction was often forced among slaves for plantation owners' financial benefit, but owners reframed this coercion and rape as evidence of the "natural" and uncontrollable sexuality of people from the African continent.
• Gendered and racialized images:
  • Black men were constructed as hypersexual "bucks" with little interest in continued relationships.
  • Black women were framed as hypersexual "Jezebels" that became the "matriarchs" of their families.
• The context—enslaved families were often forcefully dismantled—is often left unacknowledged; contemporary racialized constructions are assumed and framed as individual choices or traits.
• These images are still present in contemporary media, culture, and politics (e.g., discussions of American welfare programs).
• Key insight: race, gender, and sexuality intersect; we cannot simply pull these identities apart because they are interconnected and mutually enforcing.

🚨 Problems and limitations of intersectionality

🚨 Centering "women of color" as Other

• In practice, "intersectionality" is typically used to signify the specific difference of "women of color," which effectively produces women of color (and in particular, Black women) as Other and again centers white women.
• The framework was created in the context of the United States; therefore, its use reproduces the United States as the dominant site of feminist inquiry and women's studies' Euro-American bias.

🚨 Fixed categories vs. assemblage

• Intersectionality premises fixed categories of identity, where descriptors like race, gender, class, and sexuality are assumed to be stable.
• Assemblage offers an alternative:

  Assemblage: considers categories as events, actions, and encounters between bodies, rather than simply attributes; refers to a collage or collection of things, or the act of assembling.

• An assemblage perspective emphasizes how relations, patterns, and connections between concepts give concepts meaning.
• Although assemblage has been framed against intersectionality, identity categories' mutual co-constitution is accounted for in both frameworks.

🚨 Common misuses

• "Gender" is too often used simply and erroneously to mean "white women."
• "Race" too often connotes "Black men."
• Don't confuse: an intersectional perspective examines how identities are related to each other in everyone's experiences and how the social structures of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and ability intersect for everyone—not just for marginalized groups.

🎯 Why intersectionality matters

🎯 More sophisticated understanding

• As opposed to single-determinant and additive models, an intersectional approach develops a more sophisticated understanding of the world.
• It shows how individuals in differently situated social groups experience differential access to both material and symbolic resources.

🎯 Challenging universalizing claims

• Intersectionality reveals that existing inequalities are neither inevitable nor immutable.
• It challenges the pathologization of minorities who have been thought to be essentially or inherently inferior to privileged groups.
• It destabilizes the categories that organize people into hierarchically ordered groups by uncovering the historical, cultural, and/or institutional origins of the groups under study.
• Example: campaigns for women's equal legal rights and access to the labor market at the international level are shaped by the experience and concerns of white American women, while women in different social and geographic locations face different problems.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Binary systems exaggerate differences between social groups into absolute opposites, masking the complicated realities and variety of social identities while erasing individuals who don't fit neatly into assumed categories.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What binaries are: social constructs composed of two parts framed as absolute and unchanging opposites (e.g., masculine/feminine, rich/poor, straight/gay).
• How binary systems work: they integrate oppositional ideas into culture, exaggerating differences until groups seem to have nothing in common.
• What binaries erase: the existence of individuals who identify with neither, both, or multiple categories (e.g., multiracial people, non-binary gender identities).
• Common confusion: binaries define categories against each other ("men are not women"), making us think groups are completely different when they may share much in common.
• The sex/gender/sexuality system: links between biological sex, social gender, and sexual attraction are products of culture, not biological destiny.

🔀 How binary systems operate

🔀 Oppositional framing

Binaries: social constructs composed of two parts that are framed as absolute and unchanging opposites.

Binary systems: reflect the integration of these oppositional ideas into our culture.

• Binary systems take two categories and present them as complete opposites with no middle ground.
• This results in exaggeration of differences between social groups until they seem to have nothing in common.
• Example: The phrase "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" suggests men and women are so different they might as well be from different planets.

🎭 Stereotypical comparisons

Binary thinking invites simplistic comparisons that rely on stereotypes:

• Men are practical; women are emotional
• Men are strong; women are weak
• Men lead; women support

These comparisons ignore reality: we know men have emotions and women have physical strength, but binary perspectives prefigure men and women to have nothing in common.

🔗 Definitions against each other

• In binary systems, categories are defined against each other.
• Men are defined, in part, as "not women" and women as "not men."
• This means our understandings of men are influenced by our understandings of women, and vice versa.
• The relationship is oppositional rather than independent.

🚫 What binaries hide and erase

🚫 Complicated realities

• Binary notions mask the complicated realities and variety in the realm of social identity.
• Identities like race, gender, class, ability, and sexuality are not actually limited to two dichotomous, opposing categories.
• When we conceptualize multiple various identities, we can examine how men and women, Black and white, etc., may not be so completely different after all.

👥 Individuals who don't fit

Binaries erase the existence of individuals such as:

• Multiracial or mixed-race people
• People with non-binary gender identities
• Anyone who may identify with neither of the assumed categories or with multiple categories

Don't confuse: The binary framework assumes everyone fits into one of two boxes, but many people's lived experiences fall outside or across these categories.

🧬 The sex/gender/sexuality system

🧬 What the system describes

Sex/gender system or sex/gender/sexuality system: coined by Gayle Rubin (1984) to describe "the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity."

• Rubin proposed that the links between biological sex, social gender, and sexual attraction are products of culture, not nature.
• Gender is "the social product" that we attach to notions of biological sex.

🌐 Heteronormative assumptions

Heteronormative: a culture where everyone is assumed to be heterosexual (attracted to men if you are a woman; attracted to women if you are a man) until stated otherwise.

People make assumptions about:

• How others should act in social life
• To whom they should be attracted
• Based on their perceptions of outward bodily appearance, which is assumed to represent biological sex characteristics (chromosomes, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, and genitalia)

⚖️ Biological determinism vs. social construction

View	Core claim	Example
Biological determinism	"Biology is destiny"—all people assigned female at birth will identify as women and be attracted to men	Female-assigned people have "natural instincts" for childcare that male-assigned people lack
Social constructionism	Many conventional ways of life reflect historically- and culturally-rooted power relationships, reproduced through socialization	Just because female-assigned people bear children does not necessarily mean they are always the best caretakers

🔍 Questioning biological determinism

Rubin questioned the biological determinist argument that suggested all people assigned female at birth will identify as women and be attracted to men.

The biological determinist view fails to account for:

• Human intervention
• Our impact on the social arrangements of society

Socialization processes: where we learn conventional ways of thinking and behaving from our families and communities.

Social constructionists believe that things we typically leave unquestioned as conventional ways of life actually reflect power relationships between groups of people, not natural or inevitable arrangements.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The sex/gender/sexuality system is a culturally constructed set of arrangements that transforms biological sex into social products, rather than a natural or biologically determined outcome, and these arrangements reflect historically rooted power relationships that produce differences between groups.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What the sex/gender/sexuality system is: the cultural arrangements that link biological sex, social gender, and sexual attraction—not natural or inevitable connections.
• Binary vs. multiple identities: moving beyond dichotomous categories (male/female, Black/white) reveals complexity and variation within groups, showing people are not as completely different as binaries suggest.
• Social construction vs. biological determinism: social constructionists argue that power relationships and socialization create gendered arrangements, not biology; "biology is destiny" fails to account for human intervention and cultural variation.
• Common confusion: distinguishing biological sex assignment from gender identity—cisgender people identify with their birth assignment, but not everyone does; the system assumes everyone is cisgender and heterosexual until stated otherwise.
• Real-world impact: the example of childcare work shows how cultural assumptions ("mothering is natural, not work") economically undervalue female-dominated occupations, while men in those fields benefit from the glass escalator.

🔑 The sex/gender/sexuality system concept

🔑 What Rubin's framework describes

Sex/gender system (or sex/gender/sexuality system): "the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity."

• Coined by Gayle Rubin (1984).
• The core claim: the links between biological sex, social gender, and sexual attraction are products of culture, not nature.
• Gender is "the social product" attached to notions of biological sex.
• This challenges the idea that these connections are automatic or biologically determined.

🌐 Heteronormativity and assumptions

Heteronormative culture: everyone is assumed to be heterosexual (attracted to men if you are a woman; attracted to women if you are a man) until stated otherwise.

• People make assumptions about:
  • How others should act in social life.
  • To whom they should be attracted.
• These assumptions are based on perceptions of outward bodily appearance, which is assumed to represent biological sex characteristics (chromosomes, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, genitalia).
• Example: someone perceived as female is assumed to identify as a woman and be attracted to men.
• Don't confuse: this is a cultural assumption, not a biological fact—many people do not fit this pattern.

🆚 Biological determinism vs. social construction

🧬 The biological determinist view

• Claim: all people assigned female at birth will identify as women and be attracted to men; "biology is destiny."
• This view suggests nature intended these outcomes.
• Problem: it fails to account for human intervention and cultural variation.
• Rubin questioned this argument directly.

🏗️ The social constructionist view

• Claim: many conventional ways of life reflect historically and culturally rooted power relationships between groups, not natural inevitabilities.
• These arrangements are reproduced through socialization processes, where people learn conventional ways of thinking and behaving from families and communities.
• Social systems produce differences between men and women, not the reverse (Abby Ferber, 2009).
• Example: just because female-assigned people bear children does not mean they are always the best caretakers or have "natural instincts" that male-assigned people lack.

💼 Childcare work as a case study

👶 The cultural arrangement of women caring for children

• The arrangement of women caring for children has a historical legacy (not a natural inevitability).
• Not only mothers but other women care for children: daycare workers, nannies, elementary school teachers, babysitters.
• What these jobs share:
  • Very female-dominated occupations.
  • Economically undervalued work—these people do not get paid very well.
• Example: in New York City, parking lot attendants on average make more money than childcare workers (Clawson and Gerstel, 2002).

💸 Why childcare is undervalued

• "Mothering" is not seen as work, but as a woman's "natural" behavior.
• Because it is framed as natural, women are not compensated in a way that reflects how difficult the work is.
• Example: if you have babysat for a full day, multiply that by eighteen years—it is clearly work.
• Men can do this work just as well as women, but there are no similar cultural dictates that say they should.

🪜 The glass escalator phenomenon

Glass escalator: men working in female-dominated occupations actually earn more and gain promotions faster than women.

• This suggests that if paid caretakers were mostly men, they would make much more money.
• Implication: the undervaluation is tied to gender, not the nature of the work itself.
• This example illustrates how social systems produce differences between men and women.

🏳️‍⚧️ Beyond binary gender

🏳️‍⚧️ Binary gender perspective limitations

• A binary gender perspective assumes that only men and women exist.
• This obscures gender diversity and erases the existence of people who do not identify as men or women.
• A common gendered assumption: someone assigned female at birth will identify as a woman, and all women were assigned female at birth.

🏳️‍⚧️ Cisgender vs. other identities

Cisgender (or "cis"): people who identify in accordance with their gender assignment.

• For cisgender individuals, the assumption (assigned female → identifies as woman) is true.
• However: it is not the case for everyone.
• Some people assigned male at birth identify as women; some people assigned female at birth do not identify as women.
• Don't confuse: gender assignment at birth with gender identity—they are not the same for everyone.

🌈 Moving beyond dichotomies

• Rather than seeing aspects of identity (race, gender, class, ability, sexuality) as containing only two dichotomous, opposing categories, conceptualizing multiple various identities allows examination of:
  • How men and women, Black and white, etc., may not be so completely different after all.
  • How varied and complex identities and lives can be.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The existence of transgender and intersex people fundamentally challenges binary assumptions about both gender identity and biological sex, revealing that both categories are socially constructed rather than naturally determined.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Transgender people challenge the assumption that gender identity matches gender assignment at birth; they show that biological sex does not predict gender identity.
• Intersex people challenge binary biological sex categories by having sex characteristics (chromosomes, genitals, hormones) that do not fit typical "male" or "female" definitions.
• Common confusion: transgender refers to social gender identity (transgender), while intersex refers to biological sex variation (intersex)—these are distinct concepts.
• Medical intervention: many intersex infants undergo nonconsensual genital surgeries to fit binary sex categories, a practice activists are working to stop.
• Social construction: both sex and gender are revealed to be socially constructed categories, not natural or fixed biological facts.

🏳️‍⚧️ Transgender identities and the gender binary

🏳️‍⚧️ What transgender means

Transgender people: individuals who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

• A binary gender perspective assumes only men and women exist, erasing people who do not fit these categories.
• The excerpt distinguishes two key concepts:
  • Gender assignment: what doctors place on infants based on the appearance of genitalia.
  • Gender identity: what one discerns about oneself.
• These do not always match.

👤 Cisgender vs transgender

• Cisgender (or "cis") individuals: people who identify in accordance with their gender assignment.
• Example: Trans women are women whose bodies were assigned male at birth but who identify as women—this shows not all women are born with female-assigned bodies.
• Transgender people may or may not have surgeries or hormone therapies, but many experience a change in their social gender identities.

🌈 Non-binary and gender-fluid identities

• Some people identify as neither men nor women.
• Terms include non-binary, gender fluid, or genderqueer.
• Some use gender-neutral pronouns (ze/hir or they/them) rather than gendered pronouns (she/her or he/his).
• Trans communities have created procedures for communicating gender pronouns: verbally asking and stating one's pronouns.
• Don't confuse: pronouns and gender identities are not visible on the body.

🧬 Intersex variations and biological sex

🧬 What intersex means

Intersex: variation in sex characteristics, such as chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals.

• Bodies of intersex individuals do not fit typical definitions of what is culturally considered "male" or "female."
• "Intersex," like "female" and "male," is a socially constructed category created to label bodies viewed as different.
• The term marks existing biological variation; bodies are not essentially intersex—we just call them intersex.

⚠️ Common misconceptions

• The term is slightly misleading because it may suggest people have complete sets of both "male" and "female" reproductive systems, but those kinds of human bodies do not actually exist.
• "Intersex" really just refers to biological variation.
• The term "hermaphrodite" is inappropriate and derogatory.

🧪 Examples of sex variations

Variation	Description
Klinefelter Syndrome	Having one Y and more than one X chromosome (XXY)
Ambiguous genitalia	Genitalia that others consider not clearly "male" or "female"

• Example: Does the presence of more than one X mean that the XXY person is female? Does the presence of a Y mean that the XXY person is male? These individuals are neither clearly chromosomally male or female; they are chromosomally intersexed.
• The Intersex Society of North America estimated that some 1.5% of people have sex variations—that is 2,000 births a year.

🏥 Medical intervention and intersex activism

🏥 Nonconsensual genital surgeries

• Many individuals born with genitalia not easily classified as "male" or "female" are subject to genital surgeries during infancy, childhood, and/or adulthood.
• Surgeons reduce the size of genitals to make them look more typically "female" or "male."
• Example: In infants with genital appendages smaller than 2.5 centimeters, surgeons reduce the size and assign them female.
• Surgeons literally construct and reconstruct individuals' bodies to fit into the dominant, binary sex/gender system.

😔 Harms of these surgeries

• While parents and doctors justify this practice as in "the best interest of the child," many people experience these surgeries and their social treatment as traumatic.
• Surgeries are typically performed without patients' knowledge of their sex variation or consent.
• Individuals often discover their chromosomal makeup, surgical records, and/or intersex status in their medical records as adults, after years of physicians hiding this information.
• Physical harms: scar tissue, disfigurement, medical problems, chronic infection.
• Psychological harms: distress, shame, secrecy, and betrayal.
• Many surgeries involve sterilization, which can be understood as part of eugenics projects aiming to eliminate intersex people.

✊ Intersex activism

• Intersex activists began organizing in North America in the 1990s to stop nonconsensual surgical practices and fight for patient-centered intersex health care.
• Broader international efforts emerged next; Europe has seen more success.

Year	Milestone
2008	Christiane Völling of Germany was the first person in the world to successfully sue the surgeon who removed her internal reproductive organs without her knowledge or consent
2015	Malta became the first country to implement a law to make these kinds of surgeries illegal and protect people with sex variations as well as gender variations

• In the U.S., Accord Alliance is the most prominent intersex-focused organization; they offer information and recommendations to physicians and families, but focus primarily on improving standards of care rather than advocating for legal change.
• Due to activist efforts, the practice of performing surgeries on children is becoming less common in favor of waiting and allowing children to make their own decisions about their bodies.
• However, there is little research on how regularly nonconsensual surgeries are still performed in the U.S., and Accord Alliance's standards of care have yet to be fully implemented by a single institution.

🔍 Distinguishing transgender and intersex

🔍 Key differences

The concepts of "transgender" and "intersex" are easy to confuse, but these terms refer to very different identities.

Concept	What it refers to	What it challenges
Transgender	Social process of gender change; social gender identity	Binary (man/woman) ideas of gender
Intersex	Biological characteristics that do not fit dominant sex/gender system; biological sex variation	Binary (male/female) ideas of biological sex

• One term refers to social gender (transgender).
• One term refers to biological sex (intersex).
• Don't confuse: these are distinct concepts addressing different aspects of identity and biology.

🧩 Social construction of sex and gender

• Transgender people challenge the biological determinist argument that biological sex predicts gender identity.
• Gender theorists, such as Judith Butler and Gayle Rubin, have challenged the very notion that there is an underlying "sex" to a person, arguing that sex, too, is socially constructed.
• This is revealed in different definitions of "sex" throughout history in law and medicine—is sex composed of genitalia? Is it genetic?
• The excerpt emphasizes that both sex and gender are socially constructed categories, not natural or fixed biological facts.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Heterosexuality is socially constructed and enforced as compulsory through cultural norms and institutions, while actual human sexuality is neither binary nor fixed and encompasses diverse identities and experiences that shift over time.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Heterosexuality as constructed norm: heterosexuality is no more "natural" than other sexualities; it is defined by power structures that label what is "normal" vs. "deviant."
• Compulsory heterosexuality: society assumes everyone is heterosexual and uses formal/informal enforcement to encourage heterosexuality and penalize sexual variation.
• Heteronormativity in everyday life: taken-for-granted practices (e.g., parents assuming children are heterosexual from age 3–5) normalize heterosexuality and compulsory monogamy.
• Common confusion—transgender vs. sexual orientation: not all transgender people are sexually queer; trans identity (gender) is separate from sexual attraction (sexuality).
• Sexuality is diverse and fluid: people can be straight, gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, etc., and sexual attraction/identity can shift over a lifetime.

🏗️ Social construction of heterosexuality

🏗️ Heterosexuality is not inherently natural

The excerpt states: "heterosexuality is no more and no less natural than gay sexuality or bisexuality."

• Sexologists and medical doctors historically defined heterosexuality and its boundaries.
• This definition is an expression of power that constructs which sexualities are "normal" and which are "deviant."
• Cultural norms determine what is considered "natural," not biology.

⚖️ Gendered double standards within heterosexuality

• Even within heterosexual relations, gendered cultural norms dictate what is "normal" or "deviant."
• Example: Words for women with many sexual partners differ sharply from words for men with many sexual partners—revealing gendered power dynamics.
• Power operates along lines of gender, sexual orientation, race, class, age, and ability.

🔒 Compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity

🔒 What compulsory heterosexuality means

Compulsory heterosexuality (Adrienne Rich, 1980): in our culture all people are assumed to be heterosexual, and society is full of formal and informal enforcements that encourage heterosexuality and penalize sexual variation.

• This assumption reproduces inequality in the lives of sexual minorities.
• It is not just a preference but a system of enforcement.

📜 Formal enforcement mechanisms

Mechanism	Example from excerpt
Laws	In some states (e.g., Indiana), joint adoptions are illegal for gay men and lesbians
Custody battles	Gay men and lesbians have lost custody of children due to homophobia
Religious exclusion	Many religious groups openly exclude and discriminate against gay men and lesbians

Homophobia: the fear, hatred, or prejudice against gay people.

🌐 Informal enforcement: heteronormativity

Heteronormativity: the everyday, taken-for-granted ways in which heterosexuality is privileged and normalized.

• Sociologist Karen Martin studied parents' conversations with children about sexuality and reproduction.
• Findings:
  • Parents routinely assumed children as young as 3–5 years old were heterosexual.
  • Parents told children they would get (heterosexually) married.
  • Parents interpreted cross-gender interactions between children as "signs" of heterosexuality.
• Example: A parent sees a 4-year-old playing with a child of another gender and jokes about future marriage—this teaches the child that heterosexuality is the only option.

💍 Compulsory monogamy

Compulsory monogamy: exclusive romantic and sexual relationships and marriage are expected and valued over other kinds of relationships.

• Heteronormativity includes the expectation that people will desire and partner with one person of the opposite gender, whom they will marry.
• This teaches children from a young age that there are only two genders and only one acceptable relationship structure.

📺 Media and sports

• Media depictions of gay men and lesbians are few and often negatively stereotyped.
• Few "out" gay athletes exist in top men's professional sports (basketball, baseball, football), despite statistical likelihood that many are gay.

🌈 Diversity and fluidity of sexuality

🌈 Sexuality is not binary

• The excerpt emphasizes: "sexuality is neither binary nor fixed."
• Sexual identities include:
  • Straight
  • Gay
  • Bisexual
  • Pansexual
  • Omnisexual
  • Queer
  • Heteroflexible
  • And more
• There are more than two genders, so there are more than two kinds of people to be attracted to.
• Individuals can be attracted to and relate sexually to multiple people of different genders at once.

🔄 Sexuality shifts over time

• Sexual attraction, sexual relations and relationships, and sexual identity can shift over a person's lifetime.
• The culturally dominant binary model fails to accurately encapsulate the wide variety of sexual and gender lived experiences.

🚫 Common confusion: transgender identity vs. sexual orientation

🚫 Not all transgender people are sexually queer

• This misconception may stem from the "LGBT" acronym, which lists transgender people alongside lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals.
• Transgender refers to gender identity (social gender), not sexual orientation.
• Don't confuse: gender identity (who you are) with sexual orientation (who you're attracted to).

🔀 Examples of trans people's varied sexual orientations

Scenario	Gender identity	Sexual orientation
Trans man who previously identified as lesbian, still attracted to women	Trans man	May identify as straight or queer
Trans man attracted to other men	Trans man	May identify as gay or queer

• A trans person's sexual orientation is independent of their gender identity.
• The multiplicity of combinations shows that the binary model is inadequate.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Masculinity is not a single, fixed trait tied to male bodies but instead varies by race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender, and can be performed by people of any gender assignment.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Multiple masculinities: What counts as "masculine" differs depending on race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender—there is no single masculinity.
• Masculinity is intersectional: The same behavior (e.g., computer knowledge) can boost masculinity for one man but not another, depending on his other identities.
• Female masculinity: Female-assigned people can accomplish masculinity through performance, butch identity, or trans identity, showing masculinity is not naturally tied to male bodies.
• Common confusion: Masculinity ≠ maleness; masculinity is performative and accomplished in interactions, not determined by biology.

🔀 Multiple masculinities

🔀 What multiple masculinities means

Multiple masculinities: The idea that there is more than one kind of masculinity, and what is considered "masculine" differs by race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender (Connell, 2005).

• Masculinity is not a single standard that applies to all men equally.
• Different social contexts and identities shape what behaviors, traits, or accomplishments are read as masculine.
• The excerpt emphasizes that masculinity is context-dependent and variable.

🧩 How intersectionality shapes masculinity

• The same trait or behavior can carry different masculine meanings depending on who performs it.
• Example from the excerpt: Computer knowledge and a high-paying job may increase masculinity for an Asian-American, middle-class man because wealth is coded as masculine. However, the same white-collar desk job might be seen as a weakness to masculinity for a working-class white man, whose peers may value physical labor or blue-collar work.
• Age also matters: What it means to be a man at 19 is very different from what it means to be a man at 70.
• Don't confuse: Masculinity is not a universal checklist; it intersects with other identities, and expectations change accordingly.

👤 Female masculinity

👤 What female masculinity is

Female masculinity: The ways female-assigned people may accomplish masculinity (Halberstam, 2005).

• Halberstam defines masculinity as the connection between maleness and power.
• Female-assigned people can access masculinity through:
  • Drag-king performances (theatrical performances of masculinity)
  • Butch identity (appearing and acting masculine; may or may not identify as women)
  • Trans identity (identifying as a man or non-binary masculine person)

🎭 Why female masculinity matters

• Separating masculinity from male-assigned bodies shows that masculinity is performative.
• Masculinity is accomplished in interactions, not ordained by nature or biology.
• Don't confuse: Masculinity is not the same as being male; it is a set of behaviors and presentations that anyone can perform.
• This concept challenges the gender binary by showing that gender traits (like masculinity) are not naturally tied to specific bodies.

🌈 Sexuality and gender are not the same

🌈 Transgender people and sexual orientation

• A common misconception is that all transgender people are sexually queer.
• This confusion may come from the "LGBT" acronym, which lists transgender people alongside lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals.
• Example from the excerpt:
  • A trans man who previously identified as a lesbian may still be attracted to women and may now identify as straight.
  • Another trans man may be attracted to other men and identify as gay or queer.
• Key point: Gender identity (trans, cis, non-binary) is separate from sexual orientation (straight, gay, bisexual, etc.).

🔄 Sexuality is not binary or fixed

• There are more than two sexual identities: straight, gay, bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, queer, heteroflexible, and more.
• Sexual attraction, sexual relations, and sexual identity can shift over a person's lifetime.
• Because there are more than two genders, there are more than two kinds of people to be attracted to.
• Individuals can be attracted to and relate sexually to multiple people of different genders at once.

🚫 Heteronormativity and compulsory monogamy

🚫 What heteronormativity is

Heteronormativity: The everyday, taken-for-granted ways in which heterosexuality is privileged and normalized.

• Heteronormativity structures daily life so that heterosexuality is assumed to be the default.
• Example from the excerpt: Sociologist Karen Martin found that parents routinely assume their children (as young as three to five years old) are heterosexual, tell them they will get (heterosexually) married, and interpret cross-gender interactions as "signs" of heterosexuality (Martin 2009).
• This socialization teaches children from a very young age that there are only two genders and that they should desire and partner with one person of the opposite gender, whom they will marry.

💍 Compulsory monogamy

Compulsory monogamy: The idea that exclusive romantic and sexual relationships and marriage are expected and valued over other kinds of relationships (Willey 2016).

• Heteronormativity includes the expectation that people will form exclusive, monogamous partnerships and marry.
• Other relationship structures (e.g., polyamory, non-monogamy, chosen family) are devalued or ignored.

🏀 Discrimination and exclusion

• Gay men and lesbians face discrimination in many areas:
  • Few "out" gay athletes in top men's professional sports (basketball, baseball, football), despite statistical likelihood that many exist (Zirin, 2010).
  • Many religious groups openly exclude and discriminate against gay men and lesbians.
• Heteronormativity and compulsory monogamy reinforce these exclusions by treating heterosexuality and monogamous marriage as the only legitimate options.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Race is not a biological reality but a socially constructed system of inequality that produces and justifies oppression through false claims of essential differences.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Race as a product of racism: Concepts of race did not exist before racism; inequality and oppression produced the idea of essential racial differences, not the other way around.
• The Black/white binary: In the United States, race is primarily understood through oppositional poles of Black and white, with whiteness defined by purity and Blackness by the one-drop rule.
• Scientific racism: White scientists used biased studies (e.g., skull measurements) to falsely "prove" racial inferiority, justifying oppression through claims about biology, intelligence, and sexuality.
• Common confusion: Race appears biological (skin color, physical traits) but actually determines nothing inherent—ideas about intelligence, sexuality, and "culture" are socially constructed, not natural.
• Whiteness as constructed: Groups like Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants were initially considered non-white but "became white" over time by distancing themselves from Black Americans, showing race is fluid and socially made.

🏗️ How race is constructed, not natural

🏗️ Race as a product of oppression

"Concepts of race did not exist prior to racism. Instead, it is inequality and oppression that have produced the idea of essential racial differences."

• Race is not a pre-existing category that led to different treatment; rather, the need to justify inequality created racial categories.
• The excerpt emphasizes that race is more than descriptive of physical appearance—it falsely claims to determine intelligence, sexuality, strength, motivation, and "culture."
• These constructed ideas are embedded in American social institutions, not just held by self-proclaimed racists.

⚖️ The Black/white binary and the one-drop rule

• In the United States, race operates primarily through two "oppositional poles": Black and white.
• This does not mean only two races are recognized, but that these two anchor the system.

The one-drop rule:

If you had even one drop of African "blood," you would have been considered Black (prior to the 20th Century and continuing today).

• Whiteness was defined by purity—no equivalent "one-drop" rule applied to white ancestry.
• Example: A person with one Black parent and one white parent (e.g., President Barack Obama) is considered Black; someone with one Asian parent and one white parent is usually considered Asian, not white.
• This asymmetry shows race is about power and social boundaries, not biology.

🔬 Scientific racism and false justifications

🔬 What scientific racism is

Scientific racism: the practice of using science in an attempt to support ideas of racial superiority and inferiority.

• White scientists in the early 19th Century tried to "prove" Black racial inferiority by studying biological differences.
• Most notable: studies claiming African American skulls had smaller cranial capacity, smaller brains, and thus less intelligence.
• Later studies revealed:
  • Scientists used biased methodological practices.
  • Brain size does not actually predict intelligence.

🖼️ Controlling images and slavery ideology

• Stereotypes from the era of chattel slavery justified treating Black Americans as less than human.
• Patricia Hill Collins (2004) analyzed "controlling images":
  • "Jezebel" image of Black women: hypersexual and "unrapable."
  • "Buck" image of Black men: hypersexual, uninterested in monogamy and family.

Why these images were created:

• Slave owners were financially invested in reproducing slave children (children born of enslaved mothers became property).
• Institutionalized rape of enslaved women was not seen as rape because slaves were property.
• To justify this, Black people had to be framed as "naturally" more sexual and fundamentally different.
• Example: Black men were depicted as disinterested in family to justify splitting up slave families and using them to impregnate Black women.

📄 The Moynihan Report and lingering stereotypes

• The Moynihan Report (1965) claimed that non-nuclear family structures among poor and working-class African Americans (absent fathers, matriarchal mothers) would hinder the race's progress.
• Politicians used this to argue for an essentialist "culture of poverty" rooted in natural racial difference.
• What this ignores: Structural causes of racialized economic inequality—slavery, decades of unequal laws, blocked employment opportunities (Feagin 2006).
• Don't confuse: Alternative family forms are not "dysfunctional" but adaptations that enabled survival in intolerable conditions; the report disparages them instead of recognizing systemic racism.

🔄 How groups "become white"

🔄 Irish immigrants and the process of whitening

• When Irish immigrants first arrived in the 19th Century, they were "blackened" in popular imagination.
• Cartoon depictions gave them dark skin, exaggerated facial features (big lips, pronounced brows).
• They were depicted as lazy, ignorant, alcoholic, and non-white "others."

How they became white:

• Over time, Irish immigrants and their descendants assimilated into the category of "white" by:
  • Strategically distancing themselves from Black Americans and other non-whites in labor disputes.
  • Participating in white supremacist racial practices and ideologies.
• Example: The excerpt includes an 1899 illustration claiming "Irish Iberian" features were similar to "Negro" features and inferior to "Anglo-Teutonic" features, showing how Irish were initially racialized as non-white.

🔄 Italian and Jewish Americans

• Similar processes occurred for Italian-Americans and Jewish American immigrants from multiple European countries after World War II.
• Both groups were initially seen as non-white but later became white.
• This demonstrates how socially constructed and fluid race is.

🔄 The "model minority" question

• The excerpt asks: Are Asian-Americans, considered the "model minority," the next group to be integrated into the white category, or will they continue to be regarded as foreign threats?
• This question shows that racial categorization is an ongoing, socially determined process, not a fixed biological reality.

📊 Summary table: Race as social construction

Concept	What it shows	Example from excerpt
One-drop rule	Whiteness defined by purity; Blackness by any African ancestry	Person with one Black parent is considered Black, not white
Scientific racism	Science misused to justify false claims of inferiority	Skull studies claiming smaller brains = less intelligence (later debunked)
Controlling images	Stereotypes justify oppression and exploitation	"Jezebel" and "Buck" images justified rape and family separation during slavery
Becoming white	Race is fluid and socially constructed, not biological	Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants initially non-white, later assimilated into whiteness
Black/white binary	Race operates through oppositional poles, not neutral description	Even when other races are recognized, Black and white anchor the system

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Socio-economic class in the United States is constructed as a binary between the "middle-class" and the "poor," hiding real wealth differences and embedding racial and gendered stereotypes that shape policy and public perception.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• The American Dream ideology obscures class: the belief in meritocracy hides structural inequalities by claiming anyone who works hard will succeed, ignoring those who work hard but fail or succeed without effort.
• "Middle-class" is a political label, not just economic: most Americans identify as middle-class regardless of wealth, using the term to signal moral worth and distance themselves from the stigmatized poor.
• Class carries racial and gendered meanings: stereotypes like the "welfare queen" associate poverty with Black women, despite white women being the largest welfare recipients.
• Cultural capital vs. economic capital: class is not only about money but also tastes, knowledge, and manners—someone can gain wealth but still reveal lower-class origins through cultural markers.
• Common confusion: class is often reduced to income alone, but it includes assets (inheritance, property), cultural knowledge, and intersects with race and gender identities.

💭 The American Dream and meritocracy myth

💭 How meritocracy hides class differences

Meritocracy: the belief that anyone who works hard enough will succeed, and those who do not succeed must not have worked hard enough.

• This ideology obscures socio-economic class differences in the US.
• Logical errors it cannot explain:
  • People who do not work hard but still succeed.
  • People who work exceptionally hard but never succeed.
• The myth defines success narrowly: a great job, high income, owning a car, house, and gadgets—markers of material/economic wealth.

💰 Wealth vs. income

• Wealth includes not only personal income but also assets: house, car, stocks, inheritances.
• Not all wealth is earned through hard work—it can come from inheritance, marriage, or luck.
• This distinction is often ignored when discussing class.

🏛️ The political construction of "middle-class"

🏛️ Why most Americans call themselves middle-class

• Despite varying levels of wealth, most people in the US consider themselves "middle-class" (Pew Research Center, 2010).
• The label reflects a political ideology, not just bank account balance.

🗣️ Middle-class as a rhetorical tool

• Politicians use "middle-class" to represent "average," "tax-paying," "morally upstanding" constituents.
• The binary is not rich vs. poor, but middle-class vs. poor:
  • The super-rich are not criticized ("you can never be too rich or too thin").
  • The poor are implicitly framed as "deviant," "tax-swindling," "immoral."
• Example: Replace "the poor" with "welfare recipients" in political rhetoric—welfare recipients are portrayed as undeserving, cheating the system, addicted to drugs/alcohol, and to blame for their own poverty (Mantsios, 2007).

🎭 The "welfare queen" stereotype

• Stereotypes conjure images of poor, Black, sexually-promiscuous women.
• Reality: white women as a group are the largest recipients of welfare.
• These stereotypes are embedded in policy, not just rhetoric.

📜 Policy and the stigmatization of poverty

📜 The 1996 welfare reform (PRWORA)

• President Bill Clinton passed the Personal Responsibility/Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA).
• Key restrictions:
  • Lifetime welfare receipt limited to 60 months (5 years).
  • Able-bodied recipients must work or job-train for low-skill jobs while receiving checks.
  • Recent immigrants cannot receive welfare for their first five years of legal residence.
  • Undocumented immigrants can never receive welfare benefits.
• These rules assume welfare recipients are cheating taxpayers and seeking a "free ride."

🚫 Media dehumanization of the poor

• Media does not humanize the experience of poverty.
• Tough choices the poor face:
  • Working more hours or getting a slightly better-paying job can cause one to fail the "means test" (income level above which people are ineligible for welfare benefits) for food stamps or Medicaid.
  • Forced to choose between paying for rent versus food and other bills.
  • Cost of living has risen dramatically while working-class wages have not risen comparably.
• Don't confuse: the stereotype of "lifetime free money" with the reality of strict time limits and difficult trade-offs.

🎨 Cultural capital: class beyond money

🎨 What cultural capital means

Cultural capital: non-monetary class differences such as tastes in food and music or knowledge of high culture (Pierre Bourdieu, 1984).

• Even when a formerly poor individual gains economic mobility and becomes middle-class, markers of former status remain in how they carry themselves and what they know.
• Key insight: someone can have high cultural capital without wealth, or low cultural capital while being a millionaire.

🍷 Examples of cultural capital in action

• Using the wrong utensils at a dinner party.
• Calling something by the wrong name.
• Not distinguishing between wines (e.g., Chardonnay vs. Merlot).
• Spending money in a showy way.
• Example from the excerpt: In the film Showgirls, the character Nomi Malone buys an expensive Versace dress but mispronounces the brand ("Verse-ACE" instead of "Vers-a-Chee"), revealing her lack of cultural capital and former poverty, leading to humiliation.

🧩 Class cultures

• Social class is not just about wealth and income—social classes develop distinct class cultures.
• Cultural capital highlights these non-economic dimensions of class difference.

🔗 Intersectionality and the limits of binaries

🔗 Why binary thinking fails

• Binary systems assume only two categories (e.g., middle-class vs. poor) that are complete opposites.
• Dominant groups are associated with valued traits; subordinate groups (defined as opposites) are associated with less-valued traits.
• Example: middle-class people are defined as "not poor," just as men are "not women," white people are "not Black."

🌐 The reality of intersecting identities

• All identities are experienced simultaneously and are mutually constitutive.
• Our experience of gender is shaped by race, class, and other identities.
• Our experience of race is particular to our gender, class, and other identities.
• Intersectional approach: gives a more complex understanding of social reality.
• Blanket statements like "all men are ___" or "all Latinas are ___" ignore this complexity.

Binary thinking	Intersectional thinking
Two opposite categories	Multiple, overlapping identities
Dominant vs. subordinate	Complex, mutually constitutive
Simplifies human difference	Embraces complexity

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Binary thinking about identity categories is insufficient because human identities are complex, multi-faceted, and shaped by the intersection of multiple social locations rather than simple opposites.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What binary thinking is: assuming only two opposite categories exist for gender, race, class, and other identities, where dominant groups are valued and subordinate groups (defined as "not dominant") are devalued.
• Why binaries are insufficient: identities are experienced as matrices of difference, not simple opposites, and all people have multiple aspects of identity that interact simultaneously.
• Intersectionality: each person's social location is shaped by the intersection of several facets of identity (gender, race, class, etc.), making blanket statements about any group inaccurate.
• Common confusion: binary poles define each other (masculinity only has meaning as opposite of femininity), but this mutual definition obscures the complexity of real lived experiences.
• Cultural capital example: class is not just about income—cultural markers like tastes, knowledge, and behavior reveal former status even after economic mobility, showing identity complexity beyond simple categories.

🔍 How binary systems work

🔍 The structure of binary thinking

Binary ways of thinking: assuming there are only two categories of identity that are complete opposites.

• Each category is defined negatively as "not" the other:
  • Men defined as "not women"
  • Straight people as "not gay"
  • White people as "not Black"
  • Middle-class people as "not poor"
• The poles only make sense in the presence of their opposites.
• Example: masculinity only has meaning as the opposite of femininity.

⚖️ Strategic inequality in binaries

Oppositional binary thinking works strategically to maintain hierarchy:

Aspect	How it functions
Dominant groups	Associated with more valued traits
Subordinate groups	Defined as opposites, always associated with less valued traits
Mutual definition	The poles define each other and depend on each other for meaning

• This structure ensures that subordinate groups are systematically devalued simply by being positioned as "not dominant."

🧩 Why binaries fail to capture reality

🧩 Identity as matrices of difference

The excerpt emphasizes that identities and lives are complex and multi-faceted:

• All categories of identity are more richly expressed and understood as matrices of difference, not simple either/or categories.
• Real human experience cannot be reduced to two opposite poles.
• Binary systems oversimplify the social world by forcing complex realities into narrow categories.

🔗 Multiple simultaneous identities

Every person experiences multiple aspects of identity at the same time:

• We have multiple aspects of identity that we experience simultaneously.
• These aspects are mutually constitutive—they shape each other.
• Our experience of gender is always shaped by our race, class, and other identities.
• Our experience of race is particular to our gender, class, and other identities as well.

Don't confuse: This is not about having separate identities that add up; rather, each identity dimension is experienced through the others, creating unique combinations.

🌐 Intersectional understanding

🌐 What intersectionality reveals

Intersectional approach: understanding identity by acknowledging how several facets of identity intersect to impact each person's social location.

• Each social location is impacted by the intersection of several facets of identity.
• This intersection creates unique experiences that cannot be predicted by looking at any single identity category alone.
• Taking an intersectional approach gives us a more complex understanding of social reality.

⚠️ Problems with blanket statements

The complexity revealed by intersectionality should make us pause when encountering statements like:

• "All men are ______"
• "All Latinas are _____"
• "All lesbians are ____"

These blanket statements ignore the ways different identity dimensions interact to create diverse experiences within any single category.

💼 Cultural capital as non-binary class difference

💼 What cultural capital means

Cultural capital: non-monetary class differences such as tastes in food and music or knowledge of high culture (term coined by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu).

• Class issues are not only about income differences.
• Cultural capital addresses markers of class that persist even when economic status changes.
• Someone can have high cultural capital and not be wealthy, or have low cultural capital and be a millionaire.

🎭 How cultural capital reveals complexity

Even when a formerly poor individual experiences economic mobility and becomes middle-class:

• There are still markers of her former status in the way she carries herself and the things she knows.
• These markers include:
  • Using the wrong utensils at a dinner party
  • Calling something by the wrong name
  • Not being able to tell the difference between wines
  • Spending money in a showy way

Example: In the film Showgirls, the main character Nomi Malone goes from homeless to well-paid showgirl. She buys an expensive Versace dress and brags about it, but reveals her lack of cultural capital by mispronouncing the brand name ("Verse-ACE" instead of "Vers-a-Chee"), leading to humiliation. Her economic status changed, but her cultural markers remained.

🏛️ Class cultures

The concept of cultural capital highlights that:

• Social class is not just about wealth and income.
• Social classes develop class cultures—distinct ways of being, knowing, and acting.
• These cultural dimensions cannot be captured by a simple binary of "poor vs. not poor."

🌍 Embracing complexity

🌍 The call to acknowledge reality

The excerpt concludes with a direct statement about how to approach human difference:

• The social world is complex.
• Rather than reducing human difference to simple binaries, we must embrace the world as it is.
• We must acknowledge the complexity instead of forcing reality into oversimplified categories.

This represents a fundamental shift from binary thinking to a more nuanced, intersectional understanding of identity and social location.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Institutions are enduring social structures that reproduce inequalities by differentiating access and rewards based on gender, class, race, ability, and sexuality, yet people retain agency to resist and transform these structures through collective action.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What institutions are: enduring social orders that structure behavior through rules, norms, and resource distribution, operating as primary agents of socialization.
• How institutions reproduce inequality: they differentiate access (e.g., schools, hospitals, marriage) and differentially reward people based on socially constructed categories.
• Culture and dominant ideology: culture is a system of symbols and values shaped by the dominant culture (a small group with disproportionate power), which institutions privilege and reward.
• Common confusion: structures vs. agency—structures are not unchangeable monoliths; people actively resist and transform institutions despite structural constraints.
• Social structures defined: composed of socially constructed categories + institutions distributing resources unequally + shaping experience and identity relationally.

🏛️ Understanding institutions

🏛️ What institutions are

Institution: "a social order or pattern that has attained a certain state or property…and [owes] [its] survival to relatively self-activating social processes."

• Institutions are enduring, historical facets of social life that shape behavior.
• Examples: family, marriage, media, medicine, law, education, the state, work.
• They prescribe rules for interaction, inclusion/exclusion, norms for behavior, and distribute resources between groups.
• Often rely on formal regulations (laws, policies, contracts).

🧒 Institutions as socialization agents

• Primary agents of socialization include: family, schools, religious institutions, media, peer groups.
• "Primary" means we are born into them, shaped by their expectations and norms.
• As we grow older, we operate within these institutions and teach the same norms to younger generations.
• We operate within multiple institutions simultaneously in day-to-day life, often without noticing their influence.

⚖️ How institutions reproduce inequality

🏫 Unequal access example: schools

The excerpt provides a detailed school funding example:

• Schools in different neighborhoods have different class and race compositions.
• School funding is based on the tax base of the district.
• Middle-class, predominantly white neighborhoods: well-funded schools with more resources (books, computers, better teacher pay).
• Working-class neighborhoods of color: lower-funded schools with fewer resources.
• Private schools: require high tuition, serve already economically privileged students.

Consequences:

• Middle-class students benefit from well-funded public schools.
• Working-class students are disadvantaged by lower funding.
• Private school students benefit from college preparatory curricula and peer networks with similar class backgrounds.
• Public school students are less likely to be enrolled in college prep classes, limiting college access.
• Result: race and class privileges get reproduced through the institution of education.

🔄 The reproduction cycle

• Not everyone has access to the same institutions (same schools, hospitals, marriage rights, etc.).
• Institutions differentiate between and differentially reward people based on gender, class, race, ability, and sexuality.
• Privileges and disadvantages are passed down through institutional mechanisms.
• Example: privileged students get greater chances to enter college and maintain privileged status.

🎭 Culture, ideology, and dominant groups

🎭 What culture is

Culture: a system of symbols, values, practices, and interests of a group of people.

• Culture is infused with ideology: the ideas, attitudes, and values of the dominant culture.

👑 Dominant culture explained

Dominant culture: describes a relatively small social group that has a disproportionate amount of power.

• Don't confuse: "dominant" does not mean the most numerous group.
• Example from excerpt: white minority in South Africa during apartheid (numerically small but powerful).
• Contemporary example: the "1%" critiqued by the Occupy Movement.

💎 Cultural capital and institutional privilege

• Pierre Bourdieu's concept: institutions value certain types of culture and reward people who possess them.
• Cultural capital: assets that are not necessarily economic but promote social mobility.
• Example: middle-class or private school students have access to more language courses, arts courses, extracurricular activities—skills and experiences that colleges value in admissions.
• Schools in less economically privileged districts have fewer of these options.
• Key point: culture is not an even playing field; not everyone has equal access to defining what institutions value.
• Groups with greater access to mainstream institutions (wealthy, white, men, able-bodied, heterosexual) have greater ability to define valued culture and possess the cultural capital institutions reward.

🏗️ Social structures: definition and dynamics

🏗️ Three components of social structures

Social structures are composed of:

1. Socially constructed ideas, principles, and categories
2. Institutions that distribute material resources to stratified groups based on those socially constructed categories
3. Shaping effects: they structure experience, identity, and practice

🔗 Relational and stratifying nature

• Social structures are relational: they stratify groups based on underlying categories.
• They allocate both symbolic and material benefits and resources unequally.

Symbolic resources example:

• Employers often assume fathers are more responsible, mature, and hardworking.
• Fathers receive symbolic rewards (respect, assumptions of competence) and material rewards (higher pay, advancement opportunities).
• Unmarried men without children and married women with children do not receive the same rewards.
• This reproduces the symbolic privileging of heterosexual masculinity and unequal material resource allocation.

🔓 Structures are not unchangeable

Important clarification from the excerpt:

• There may be a tendency to think of structures as unchangeable and monolithic—but this is incorrect.
• Social structures rely on socially constructed categories that change through time and place.
• People are not passive; they fight back against oppressive institutions and dominant cultural ideas.
• History of resistance: labor struggles, self-determination movements in former colonies, civil rights movement, feminist movements.

⚡ Structure and agency interaction

• Groups systemically denied access to mainstream institutions can and have exerted their will to change those institutions.
• Don't view as opposites: structure and agency are not diametrically opposed forces.
• They are two constantly interacting forces that shape each other.

Example of reclaiming identity:

• Phrases like "Black power" and "gay power" were created by liberationists in the late 1960s.
• These movements claimed and re-framed identities that had been disparaged by dominant culture.
• This shows agency within overarching structures of power.

📺 Media as institution (brief introduction)

📺 Media exposure and influence

• The excerpt begins introducing media as another key institution.
• Average American aged 18-34 spent over 4 hours daily using TV in Q4 2015 (live TV plus TV-connected devices).
• Media is pervasive, often saturated with advertisements, and produced by corporations.

🎬 Media's role in socialization

• Michael Kimmel argues media are a primary institution of socialization.
• Media not only reflects but creates culture.
• Media representation is a key domain for identity formation and the creation of gendered and sexualized difference.
• Example mentioned: Disney movies feature dominant young men (princes) in typical plot structures that shape childhood socialization.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The dominant "Standard North American Family" (SNAF) ideology in the United States is neither natural nor universal but rather a historically specific, white middle-class formation that excludes the diverse realities of most families and is reinforced by law and social policy.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Defining "family" is slippery: blood ties, nuclear households, economic cooperation, and chosen families all compete as definitions, yet none captures the full diversity of family forms.
• The SNAF ideology: a legally married heterosexual couple with a male breadwinner and female homemaker originated in 19th-century industrial capitalism and privileges white middle-class norms.
• Historical roots of gendered division of labor: the separation of work and home under industrial capitalism allowed only middle-class white families to adopt the breadwinner/homemaker model; working-class families and families of color required all members to work.
• Common confusion: the SNAF is often assumed to be natural or universal, but it is a recent, class- and race-specific formation that most U.S. families do not fit.
• Law and policy reinforce SNAF: marriage promotion programs, adoption laws, and coverture historically have embedded SNAF assumptions, marginalizing non-conforming families and blaming structural poverty on family structure.

🏛️ The multiplicity of family forms

🏛️ Why "family" is hard to define

The excerpt emphasizes that "family" is a "slippery" concept with no single definition:

• Blood ties? Excludes stepparents, adopted children, and fictive kin (non-blood-related people considered family).
• Nuclear family? (Legally married parents and their children.) Excludes extended kin (uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins), single parents, unmarried couples, and childless couples.
• Common household with economic cooperation? Excludes families separated by migration (e.g., parents working abroad and sending wages home) or incarceration.
• Chosen families? Kath Weston (1991) documented how queers, gay men, and lesbians ostracized by families of origin form kinship ties with close friends.

Fictive kin: non-blood-related people that one considers to be part of one's family.

Nuclear family: composed of legally-married parents and their children.

Extended kin: family members such as uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, nephews, and nieces.

Chosen families: kinship ties formed by queers, gay men, and lesbians with close friends, especially when ostracized from families of origin.

Don't confuse: "family" with a single, universal structure—the diversity of family formations across time and place shows that any universal definition "hides historical change" and "obscures the diversity and reality of family experience."

📊 Incarceration and family separation

The excerpt cites data showing that at midyear 2007, an estimated 809,800 prisoners (52% of state inmates and 63% of federal inmates) were parents of children under 18, accounting for 1,706,600 minor children (2.3% of the U.S. resident population under 18).

• This illustrates how definitions based on "common household" exclude families separated by incarceration.

🏠 The Standard North American Family (SNAF)

🏠 What the SNAF is

Standard North American Family (SNAF): a conception of the family as a legally married couple sharing a household, where the adult male is in paid employment and his earnings provide the economic basis, and the adult female may earn income but her primary responsibility is care of husband, household, and children; both may be parents of children resident in the household.

• The SNAF is the dominant ideology of what constitutes a "family" in the United States.
• It recognizes a very class- and race-specific type of gendered family formation.
• Important: the majority of families in the United States do not fit this ideological formation.
• Judith Stacey (1998) calls the multiple and numerous differences in how people structure their families post-modern families.

🕰️ Historical origins of the SNAF

The SNAF is neither natural nor outside of politics and processes of race, class, and gender inequality. Historians Nancy Cott (2000) and Stephanie Coontz (2005) trace its origins:

Period	Economic structure	Family and work
Pre-19th century	Agricultural economy	Family was primarily an agricultural work unit; no separation between work and home
19th century onward	Industrial capitalism	Rise of urban factories created separation between work and family

Working-class families and families of color:

• Had been denied access to union jobs or were still enslaved, maintaining poverty or working-class status.
• The majority of family members—including children and women—worked in factories.

Middle-class white families:

• Had inherited property and wealth.
• Did not need all family members to work.
• Could pay for homes, hire house servants and maids (primarily African American working-class women), hire tutors, and send children to private schools with the breadwinning father's salary.

Key mechanism: the gendered division of labor (women perform unpaid care-work at home; men are salaried or wage-earning breadwinners) originated from these relatively recent economic changes that privileged middle-class white families.

Gendered division of labor: women perform unpaid care-work within the home and men are salaried or wage-earning breadwinners.

Don't confuse: the gendered division of labor as "natural" or timeless—it is a product of 19th-century industrial capitalism and was only accessible to families with inherited wealth.

🎭 Ideologies of separate spheres and domesticity

🎭 Separate spheres

Separate spheres: an ideology holding that women and men were distinctly different creatures, with different natures and therefore suited for different activities; masculinity was equated with breadwinning, femininity with homemaking.

• This ideology produced a false split between the publicly-oriented working father and the privately-oriented domestic mother.

🌸 Cult of domesticity

Cult of domesticity: an ideology about white womanhood holding that white women were asexual, pure, moral beings properly located in the private sphere of the household.

How it worked:

• This ideology was applied to all women as a measure of womanhood.
• It systematically denied working-class white women and women of color access to the category of "women," because these women had to work and earn wages to support their families.

Example: A working-class woman or woman of color who worked in a factory was not considered a "true woman" under this ideology, even though she was performing essential labor.

⚖️ Coverture laws

Coverture: laws defining white women who were married to be legally the property of their husband; upon marriage, women's legal personhood was dissolved into that of the husband.

What coverture meant:

• Married white women could not own property.
• They could not sign or make legal documents.
• Any wages they made had to be turned over to their husbands.

Paradox for white middle-class women:

• They had a degree of material wealth and symbolic status as pure, moral beings.
• But this came at the cost of submission to their husbands and lack of legal personhood.

Comparison:

Group	Access to public sphere	Legal/symbolic status	Material conditions
White middle-class women	Denied (confined to private sphere)	Symbolic status as "pure, moral"; no legal personhood under coverture	Material wealth; did not have to work in factories
White working-class women & women of color	Had access (worked in factories/fields)	Denied status as "true women"	Poorly paid jobs; had to work to support families

Don't confuse: the cult of domesticity as applying equally to all women—it was a measure that excluded working-class women and women of color from "true womanhood."

📜 Law and policy reinforce the SNAF

📜 Adoption and reproductive technology barriers

When gay men and lesbians have children, they often rely on:

• Adoption
• Assisted reproductive technologies (in vitro fertilization, surrogacy—where a woman is contracted to carry a child to term for someone else)

Legal barrier: laws in most states assume that blood-ties between mother and child supersede non-biological family relations.

• This creates barriers for gay men and lesbians seeking to have children and families.
• The conventional assumptions of the SNAF are embodied in law and do not match the realities of people who depart from the SNAF ideology.

💍 Marriage promotion as poverty policy

Social policies often assume the SNAF is not only superior but that its promotion is a substitute for policies that would reduce poverty.

Example: The Healthy Marriages Initiative of 2004 (President George W. Bush):

• Pledged $1.5 billion to programs aimed at "Marriage education, marriage skills training, public advertising campaigns, high school education on the value of marriage and marriage mentoring programs…activities promoting fatherhood, such as counseling, mentoring, marriage education, enhancing relationship skills, parenting, and activities to foster economic stability."
• These programs have targeted poor families of color in particular.

Critique: such policies ignore the historical, structural sources of racialized poverty and blame the victims of systemic classism and racism.

• As the history of the SNAF shows, the normative family model is based on a white middle-class model.
• A majority of families in the U.S. do not fit or necessarily want to fit this model.

Don't confuse: promoting the SNAF with addressing poverty—the excerpt argues that this approach substitutes ideology for structural economic policy and blames individuals for systemic inequality.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Media are a primary institution of socialization that both reflect and actively create culture by constructing gendered, sexualized, racialized, and classed identities and power differences, though consumers can interact with, critique, and modify media meanings rather than passively accepting them.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Media as institution: Media do not just mirror society—they actively create culture and shape identity formation, especially around gender, sexuality, race, class, ability, and other social categories.
• How media reproduce inequality: Through hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity, beauty ideals, objectification, the male gaze, and symbolic annihilation, media reinforce dominant ideologies and power hierarchies.
• Symbolic annihilation: Groups lacking power are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized in media, which reinforces the privilege of dominant groups (e.g., trans women portrayed as "deceivers" to justify violence).
• Common confusion: Media consumers are not passive—they interact with, critique, and sometimes reject intended messages; consumers can also become producers through cultural production.
• Why it matters: Media shape how people understand themselves and others, legitimize inequalities, but also offer sites for resistance and meaning-making by consumers.

📺 Media as a socializing institution

📺 What media do beyond reflection

Media are a primary institution of socialization that not only reflects, but creates culture.

• The excerpt emphasizes that media are not neutral mirrors; they actively construct cultural norms and identities.
• Media representation is described as "a key domain for identity formation and the creation of gendered and sexualized difference."
• The average American aged 18–34 spent over four hours daily using a TV set in late 2015, showing the scale of exposure.
• Because media are pervasive and encountered from a young age, they shape people's gendered and sexualized selves in ways that may not be consciously realized.

🏰 Disney movies and socialization

• The excerpt uses Disney movies as an example: plots typically feature a dominant young man (prince, captain, soldier) and a young woman who resists his advances but eventually falls in love and marries him—both assumed heterosexual.
• These narratives teach children to value hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity.

Hegemonic masculinity: a specific type of culturally-valued masculinity tied to marriage, heterosexuality, and patriarchal authority in family and workplace; maintains privilege by subordinating other less dominant masculinities (e.g., lower socioeconomic classes or gay men).

Emphasized femininity: compliance with the normative ideal of femininity, oriented to serving the interests of men.

• Example: The phrase "fairy tale wedding" in popular culture shows how media reproduce dominant ideologies about gender and sexuality—ideas, attitudes, and values of the dominant culture.
• Why fictional media matter: Because they are fictional and do not have to be verified by reality, and because they are so pervasive and shown at a young age, they shape identities in unrecognized ways.

🪞 Beauty ideals and objectification

🪞 How media construct beauty standards

Beauty ideals: racialized and gendered normative standards reproduced by media for both women and men.

• Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly series illustrates how advertising, film, and magazines rely on the objectification of women.
• Objectification involves cutting apart women's bodies with the camera frame and digitally manipulating them to create feminized bodies with characteristics largely unattainable by most people.
• Media often value body types and features of white women (petite figures, European facial features) while exoticizing women of color by placing them in "nature" scenes and animal-print clothing to recall a pre-civilizational past.
• This casts women of color as animalistic, savage creatures—a practice historically used in political cartoons to legitimate their subjugation as less than human.

👁️ The male gaze

Male gaze: media depict the world from a masculine point of view, representing women as sex objects.

• Laura Mulvey coined this term to describe how framing encourages men viewers to see women as objects and encourages women to see themselves as objects of men's desire.
• The male gaze is specifically a heterosexual male gaze.
• Example: Camera angles and editing choices position the viewer in a masculine subject position, treating women as visual objects for male pleasure.
• Don't confuse: The male gaze is not just "men looking at women"—it is a structural feature of how media are produced and framed, shaping how all viewers (regardless of gender) are positioned to see women.

🚫 Symbolic annihilation

🚫 What symbolic annihilation means

Symbolic annihilation: how social groups that lack power in society are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized through mass media representations that simultaneously reinforce dominant ideologies and the privilege of dominant groups.

• Groups with less power are either invisible in media or, when present, stereotyped and misrepresented.
• Example: Gay, lesbian, transgender, and disabled characters are often few in number; when they appear, they are typically stereotyped.

🏳️‍⚧️ Trans women in media

• Trans women characters portrayed through the cisgender heterosexual male gaze are often used as plot twists or objects of ridicule for comedic effect.
• They are often represented as "actually men" who deceive men to "trap" them into having sex.
• These representations function to justify and normalize portrayals of disgust and violence against trans women.
• Real-world consequence: Portrayals of trans women as "evil deceivers" and "pretenders" have been used in court cases to pardon perpetrators who murdered trans women.
• Why this matters: Media representations are not "just entertainment"—they shape real-world attitudes and have been used to excuse violence.

🔄 Consumers are not passive

🔄 How consumers interact with media

• Jean Kilbourne's model constructs media consumers as passively accepting everything they see, but the excerpt critiques this view.
• Michael Kimmel argues: "The question is never whether or not the media do such and such, but rather how the media and its consumers interact to create the varying meanings that derive from our interactions with those media."
• No media product has an inherent, intended meaning that passes directly from producer to consumer.
• Consumers interact with, critique, and sometimes reject the intended messages of media.
• Meanings develop through the interaction between the media product and the consumers engaging with it.

🎨 Cultural production

Cultural production: media consumers can blur the distinction between producer and consumer by creating their own media (videos, music, pamphlets, 'zines, and other forms).

• While media often reproduce dominant ideologies and normative standards, consumers from different standpoints can and do modify and reject intended meanings.
• Example: A viewer might watch a Disney movie and critique its gender norms, or create a parody video that subverts the original message.
• Don't confuse: Saying consumers are active does not mean media have no power—it means power is negotiated in the interaction, not simply imposed top-down.

📊 Summary table: Media mechanisms

Mechanism	What it does	Example from excerpt
Hegemonic masculinity & emphasized femininity	Teach children to value dominant gender norms	Disney movies with prince/princess plots
Beauty ideals & objectification	Create unattainable standards; exoticize and dehumanize women of color	Advertising cuts apart women's bodies; animal-print clothing for women of color
Male gaze	Frame women as objects of heterosexual male desire	Camera angles position viewers to see women as visual objects
Symbolic annihilation	Render marginalized groups absent, condemned, or trivialized	Trans women portrayed as "deceivers"; used to justify violence
Consumer interaction	Consumers critique, modify, or reject intended meanings	Viewers create their own media; meanings emerge through interaction

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Media institutions both reflect and actively construct cultural differences and power inequalities by shaping how gender, sexuality, race, ability, and other identities are represented, socialized, and understood.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Media as a socializing institution: Media do not just mirror society—they actively create culture and shape identity formation from childhood onward.
• Hegemonic masculinity vs emphasized femininity: Media teach culturally-valued forms of masculinity (tied to heterosexuality, marriage, and patriarchal authority) and femininity (oriented to serving men's interests).
• Beauty ideals and objectification: Advertising and film fragment and digitally manipulate women's bodies, privileging white European features while exoticizing women of color as "savage" or "animalistic."
• Symbolic annihilation: Groups lacking power are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized in media, reinforcing dominant ideologies and justifying violence (e.g., trans women portrayed as "deceivers").
• Common confusion: Media representations feel "just fictional," but their pervasiveness and early exposure (e.g., Disney movies) shape real-world attitudes and behaviors in ways people may not realize.

📺 Media as a primary socializing force

📺 What media do beyond reflection

Media expert and sociologist Michael Kimmel argues that media are a primary institution of socialization that not only reflects, but creates culture.

• Media are not passive mirrors; they actively construct norms and values.
• The average American aged 18–34 spends over four hours daily using a TV set (live TV plus connected devices), according to a Nielsen Company report.
• This pervasiveness raises questions: What are the effects of constant exposure to advertisement-saturated media? How do media construct or perpetuate inequalities?

🎬 Disney movies and early socialization

• Disney films typically feature a dominant young man (prince, soldier, captain) and a young woman who resists but eventually marries him—both assumed heterosexual.
• These plots teach children to value hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity.
• Example: A child watches a Disney movie where the princess "falls in love" after initial resistance—this narrative normalizes heterosexual romance and gender roles.
• Why it matters: Because these stories are fictional and do not need to match reality, and because they are shown at a young age, they shape gendered and sexualized identities in ways people may not consciously recognize.
• Real-world impact: People say they want a "fairy tale wedding," showing how media reproduce dominant ideologies about gender and sexuality.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Hegemonic masculinity

Hegemonic masculinity: a specific type of culturally-valued masculinity tied to marriage and heterosexuality and patriarchal authority in the family and workplace, maintaining its privileged position through subordinating other less dominant forms of masculinity (e.g., dominance over men of lower socioeconomic classes or gay men).

• It is not just "any masculinity," but a form that holds power by subordinating other masculinities.
• Example: A dominant male character in media who is heterosexual, married, and holds authority at work reinforces this ideal while marginalizing gay men or working-class men.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Emphasized femininity

Emphasized femininity: compliance with the normative ideal of femininity, as it is oriented to serving the interests of men.

• This form of femininity is defined by its relationship to men's needs and desires.
• Example: A female character whose main goal is to win the prince's approval embodies emphasized femininity.

🖼️ Beauty ideals and the male gaze

🖼️ Objectification and digital manipulation

• Jean Kilbourne's video series Killing Us Softly illustrates how representations of women in advertising, film, and magazines rely on objectification.
• Objectification involves:
  • Cutting apart women's bodies with the camera frame.
  • Re-crafting bodies through digital manipulation to create feminized bodies with largely unattainable characteristics.
• Beauty ideals privilege white women's body types and European facial features.
• Women of color are often exoticized: placed in "nature" scenes and animal-print clothing to recall a pre-civilizational past, casting them as "animalistic" or "savage."
• Historical context: This practice has been used in political cartoons to legitimate subjugation by depicting people of color as less than human.

👁️ The male gaze

The male gaze (Laura Mulvey): media depict the world from a masculine point of view, representing women as sex objects.

• This framing is a heterosexual male gaze.
• Effects:
  • Encourages male viewers to see women as objects.
  • Encourages women to see themselves as objects of men's desire.
• Example: A film camera lingers on a woman's body parts rather than her face or actions, positioning her as an object for male consumption.

🚫 Symbolic annihilation and violence

🚫 What symbolic annihilation means

Symbolic annihilation: how social groups that lack power in society are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized through mass media representations that simultaneously reinforce dominant ideologies and the privilege of dominant groups.

• It is not just "lack of representation," but active erasure, condemnation, or trivialization.
• Example: Gay, lesbian, transgender, and disabled characters are often few in media; when present, they are typically stereotyped and misrepresented.

🏳️‍⚧️ Trans women and media violence

• Trans women characters portrayed through the cisgender heterosexual male gaze are often used as plot twists or objects of ridicule for comedic effect.
• They are often represented as "actually men" who deceive men to "trap" them into sex.
• Functions of these portrayals:
  • Justify and normalize disgust in response to trans women.
  • Justify violence against them.
• Real-world consequences: Portrayals of trans women as "evil deceivers" and "pretenders" have been used in court cases to pardon perpetrators who murdered trans women.
• Don't confuse: This is not "just fiction"—these representations have been cited in legal defenses for violence, showing how media construct real-world harms.

🔄 Structure and agency in media consumption

🔄 Consumers are not passive

• The excerpt earlier mentions that "structure and agency should not be viewed as two diametrically opposed forces, but as two constantly interacting forces that shape each other."
• While media are produced by corporations and saturated with advertisements, the relationship between media and consumers is interactive.
• People have agency to resist and change institutions, even as structures limit opportunities and reproduce inequalities.
• Example: Groups systemically denied access to mainstream institutions have exerted their will to change those institutions (e.g., civil rights movements).

🔄 Questions for consumers

• What is the relationship between media and consumers?
• How do consumers interact with media?
• The excerpt raises these questions but emphasizes that media's pervasiveness and early exposure make their influence subtle and powerful.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Media simultaneously reflect and construct power differences between social groups by reproducing dominant ideologies about gender, sexuality, and race through representations that normalize hegemonic masculinity, emphasized femininity, beauty ideals, and symbolic annihilation, though consumers can also interact with, critique, and reject these intended meanings.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• How media teach gender norms: Disney movies and other media normalize hegemonic masculinity (culturally-valued masculinity tied to marriage, heterosexuality, and patriarchal authority) and emphasized femininity (compliance with femininity oriented to serving men's interests).
• Beauty ideals and objectification: Media reproduce racialized and gendered standards by objectifying women's bodies, valuing white European features, and exoticizing women of color as animalistic through the male gaze.
• Symbolic annihilation: Social groups lacking power are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized in media, reinforcing dominant ideologies—trans women are often misrepresented as "deceivers," justifying violence against them.
• Common confusion: Media consumers are not purely passive—they interact with, critique, and sometimes reject intended messages, and can blur producer/consumer distinctions through their own cultural production.
• Why it matters: Media shape gendered and sexualized identities from a young age and legitimize power hierarchies, but understanding consumer agency reveals possibilities for resistance.

🎬 How media reproduce dominant gender and sexuality norms

🏰 Disney movies and hegemonic ideals

• Disney movies typically feature a young man (prince, captain, soldier) romantically interested in a young woman who resists then falls in love and marries him—both assumed heterosexual.
• These narratives teach children to value specific gender ideals:

Hegemonic masculinity: a specific type of culturally-valued masculinity tied to marriage and heterosexuality and patriarchal authority in the family and workplace, maintaining its privileged position through subordinating other less dominant forms of masculinity (dominance over men of lower socioeconomic classes or gay men).

Emphasized femininity: compliance with the normative ideal of femininity, as it is oriented to serving the interests of men.

🧚 Why fictional media matter

• Because they are fictional and do not have to be verified by reality, and are so pervasive and shown at a young age, they may shape gendered and sexualized selves in ways people do not realize.
• Example: people wanting a "fairy tale wedding" or media calling celebrity weddings "fairy tale weddings" shows how media reproduce dominant ideologies—the ideas, attitudes, and values of the dominant culture—about gender and sexuality.
• Don't confuse: the power of media is not in their realism but in their pervasiveness and early exposure.

🪞 Beauty ideals and the male gaze

💄 Objectification of women

• Media reproduce racialized and gendered normative standards in the form of beauty ideals for both women and men.
• Jean Kilbourne's Killing Us Softly series illustrates how representations of women in advertising, film, and magazines rely on:

Objectification of women: cutting apart their bodies with the camera frame and re-crafting their bodies through digital manipulation to create feminized bodies with characteristics largely unattainable by the majority of the population.

• Advertising often values body types and features of white women—petite figures and European facial features.

🌴 Exoticization and racialized standards

• Women of color are often exoticized by putting them in "nature" scenes and animal-print clothing intended to recall a pre-civilizational past.
• Effect: casts women of color as animalistic, savage creatures—a practice historically used in political cartoons and depictions of people of color to legitimate their subjugation as less than human.

👁️ The male gaze

• Media depict the world from a masculine point of view, representing women as sex objects.

Male gaze (Laura Mulvey): a kind of framing that encourages men viewers to see women as objects and encourages women to see themselves as objects of men's desire; the male gaze is thus a heterosexual male gaze.

• This is an example of how media simultaneously reflect and construct differences in power between social groups through representing those groups.

🚫 Symbolic annihilation and marginalized groups

👻 What symbolic annihilation means

Symbolic annihilation: how social groups that lack power in society are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized through mass media representations that simultaneously reinforce dominant ideologies and the privilege of dominant groups.

• Gay, lesbian, transgender, and disabled characters in mass media are often few, and when present they are typically stereotyped and misrepresented.

🎭 Trans women in media

• Trans women characters portrayed through the cisgender heterosexual male gaze are often used as plot twists or objects of ridicule for comedic effect.
• They are often represented as "actually men" who deceive men to "trap" them into having sex.
• Function: these representations justify and normalize portrayals of disgust in response to them and violence against them.
• Real-world consequences: portrayals of trans women as "evil deceivers" and "pretenders" have been used in court cases to pardon perpetrators who have murdered trans women.
• Don't confuse: these are not neutral entertainment choices—they have material consequences in legal systems and violence.

🔄 Media consumers are not passive

🤝 Interaction between media and consumers

• Jean Kilbourne's model constructs media consumers as passively accepting everything they see, but this is incomplete.
• Michael Kimmel argues: "The question is never whether or not the media do such and such, but rather how the media and its consumers interact to create the varying meanings that derive from our interactions with those media."
• No advertisement, movie, or media form has an inherent, intended meaning that passes directly from producer to consumer.

🎨 Consumer agency and cultural production

• Consumers interact with, critique, and sometimes reject the intended messages of media.
• Meanings of media develop through the interaction between the media product and the consumers interacting with it.
• Media consumers can blur the distinction between producer and consumer through creating their own media:

Cultural production: videos, music, pamphlets, 'zines, and other forms created by consumers themselves.

View	What it emphasizes	Limitation
Passive consumer model	Media reproduce dominant ideologies and normative standards	Ignores how consumers modify and reject intended meanings
Interactive model	Consumers from different standpoints can and do modify and reject meanings	Does not deny media often reproduce dominant ideologies

• Conclusion from the excerpt: while media certainly often reproduce dominant ideologies and normative standards, media consumers from different standpoints can and do modify and reject the intended meanings of media.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Media simultaneously reflect and construct power differences between social groups by representing marginalized groups—especially women, people of color, and trans individuals—through dehumanizing imagery, symbolic annihilation, and the male gaze, which in turn justifies and normalizes violence against them.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Media as both mirror and constructor: media do not just reflect existing power differences; they actively produce and reinforce them through representation choices.
• The male gaze: media depict the world from a masculine, heterosexual viewpoint, framing women as sex objects for male viewers and encouraging women to see themselves that way.
• Symbolic annihilation: marginalized groups (LGBTQ+, disabled, people of color) are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized in media, reinforcing dominant ideologies and privilege.
• Trans women and violence: portrayals of trans women as "deceivers" and "pretenders" have been used in court to justify violence and murder against them.
• Common confusion: media consumers are not passive—they interact with, critique, modify, and reject intended messages, and can produce their own counter-media.

📺 How media construct power through representation

🎭 Depicting women of color as animalistic

• Media place women of color in "nature" scenes and animal-print clothing meant to evoke a "pre-civilizational past."
• Effect: casts women of color as animalistic, savage creatures—less than human.
• Historical context: this practice has been used in political cartoons and depictions of people of color to legitimate their subjugation.
• Example: A magazine spread showing a woman of color in jungle settings with animal prints reinforces the idea that she is closer to "nature" and less civilized than white women.

👁️ The male gaze

Male gaze: the practice of depicting the world from a masculine point of view, representing women as sex objects.

• Who it serves: encourages men viewers to see women as objects; encourages women to see themselves as objects of men's desire.
• Specifically: it is a heterosexual male gaze.
• Mechanism: media framing positions the viewer in a masculine subject position and the woman as the object to be looked at.
• Don't confuse: the male gaze is not just "men looking at women"; it is a structural feature of how media are constructed and how viewers are positioned.

🚫 Symbolic annihilation and marginalized groups

🗑️ What symbolic annihilation means

Symbolic annihilation: how social groups that lack power in society are rendered absent, condemned, or trivialized through mass media representations that simultaneously reinforce dominant ideologies and the privilege of dominant groups.

• Three forms: absence (not shown), condemnation (shown negatively), or trivialization (shown as unimportant or ridiculous).
• Effect: reinforces the idea that these groups do not matter or do not exist in "normal" society.

🏳️‍⚧️ Trans women: dehumanization and violence

• Gay, lesbian, transgender, and disabled characters are often few in number; when present, they are typically stereotyped and misrepresented.
• Trans women through the cisgender heterosexual male gaze:
  • Often used as plot twists or objects of ridicule for comedic effect.
  • Represented as "actually men" who deceive men to "trap" them into sex.
• Consequences:
  • These portrayals justify and normalize disgust and violence against trans women.
  • Portrayals of trans women as "evil deceivers" and "pretenders" have been used in court cases to pardon perpetrators who murdered trans women.
• Example: A movie reveals a character is a trans woman as a shocking twist, framing her as a deceiver; this narrative has been cited in legal defenses for violence.

🔄 Media consumers are not passive

🧩 Interaction, not absorption

• Jean Kilbourne's model (beauty ideals harm women) assumes consumers passively accept everything they see.
• Critique (Kimmel 2003): "The question is never whether or not the media do such and such, but rather how the media and its consumers interact to create the varying meanings that derive from our interactions with those media."
• Key insight: no media product has an inherent, fixed meaning that passes directly from producer to consumer.

🎨 Consumers as producers

• Interaction: consumers interact with, critique, and sometimes reject the intended messages of media.
• Cultural production: media consumers can blur the distinction between producer and consumer by creating their own media—videos, music, pamphlets, 'zines, etc.
• Implication: while media often reproduce dominant ideologies, consumers from different standpoints can and do modify and reject those meanings.
• Don't confuse: acknowledging consumer agency does not mean media have no power—it means power operates through interaction, not one-way transmission.

💼 Gender, work, and global inequalities (brief context)

🌍 Work as a gendered arena

• Work is where gendered processes intersect with multiple social inequalities to shape:
  • What jobs people have.
  • How they experience those jobs.
  • Whether jobs provide secure, fulfilling, upwardly mobile careers or relegate people to insecure, dead-end, dangerous, or degrading labor.

👶 Unpaid and underpaid care work

• Childcare is hard work, often underpaid or unpaid, and most often done by women.
• Even when women do not perform most care work themselves, they are placed in lower-paying, less prestigious "mommy tracks."
• Global scale: when middle-class North American mothers hire nannies, those nannies are typically immigrant women from Eastern Europe and the Global South.
• Example: An organization hires a woman into a "flexible" role with fewer advancement opportunities because she is assumed to prioritize family, whether or not she has children.

📊 Women's labor force participation in the US

• More women than ever participate in the labor force in full-time, year-round positions.
• Historical shift: dual-earner homes are now much more common than the 1950s breadwinner-homemaker model (men in paid work, women doing unpaid labor at home).
• Why the shift: decline of men's wages, increase in single mothers, education and job opportunities, and feminist movement politics from the 1960s–1970s.
• Reality check: the breadwinner-homemaker model was only ever a reality for some white, middle-class people and is now out of reach for most households.

💵 The wage gap

• On average, women workers make 77% of what men make.
• This gap persists even when controlling for:
  • Educational differences.
  • Full-time vs. part-time work.
  • Year-round vs. seasonal work.
• Implication: women with similar educational backgrounds who work the same number of hours per year as male counterparts make 23% less.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Work is an arena where gendered processes intersect with multiple social inequalities to shape job access, job experience, and career trajectories—from secure and fulfilling to insecure and degrading—while the US wage gap persists even when controlling for education and hours worked.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Work as a gendered arena: gendered processes intersect with multiple social inequalities to determine what jobs people have, how they experience them, and whether careers are upwardly mobile or dead-end.
• Paid vs unpaid labor: hard work is valued differently depending on whether it is paid or unpaid, minimum wage or six-figure salary; childcare is hard work often underpaid or unpaid, most often done by women.
• Global labor inequalities: when middle-class North American mothers hire nannies (typically immigrant women from Eastern Europe and the Global South), institutionalized labor inequalities operate at a global scale.
• Common confusion: the 1950s breadwinner-homemaker model was only ever a reality for some white, middle-class people and is now out of reach for most households; dual-earner homes are now much more common.
• Persistent wage gap: women workers make 77% of what men make on average, and this gap persists even when controlling for education, full-time vs part-time work, and year-round vs seasonal status.

🎬 Media consumers and meaning-making

🎬 Rejecting passive consumption

• Jean Kilbourne's model of how consumers relate to media constructs media consumers as passively accepting everything they see in advertising and electronic and print media.
• Michael Kimmel (2003) argues the question is never whether or not the media do such and such, but rather how the media and its consumers interact to create varying meanings.
• No advertisement, movie, or any form of media has an inherent, intended meaning that passes directly from producer to consumer.
• Consumers interact with, critique, and sometimes reject the intended messages of media.
• Meanings of media develop through the interaction between the media product and the consumers who are interacting with it.

🎨 Cultural production

Cultural production: media consumers creating their own media in the form of videos, music, pamphlets, 'zines, and other forms.

• Media consumers can blur the distinction between producer and consumer through creating their own media.
• While media certainly often reproduce dominant ideologies and normative standards, media consumers from different standpoints can and do modify and reject the intended meanings of media.
• Don't confuse: media influence is not one-way; consumers are not passive recipients but active interpreters and creators.

💼 Work, gender, and inequality

💼 Work as a gendered arena

• Work is an arena in which gendered processes intersect with multiple social inequalities to influence:
  • What jobs people have
  • How they experience those jobs
  • Whether those jobs provide secure, fulfilling, upwardly mobile careers or relegate them to insecure, dead-end, dangerous, or even degrading labor

💰 Paid vs unpaid labor

• In the US, hard work is supposed to lead to a whole host of social and material rewards (i.e., respect, power, a house, a car, a yacht).
• The context surrounding hard work—whether that work is paid or unpaid, compensated at a minimum wage or six-figure salary—is gendered in deep and complex ways.
• Example: Childcare is hard work that is often underpaid or not paid at all and is most often done by women.
• Even if women do not perform most of this work themselves, certain career trajectories are forced on them, and they are placed in lower paying and less prestigious "mommy tracks" whether or not they choose this themselves.

🌍 Global labor inequalities

• Institutionalized labor inequalities operate at the global scale.
• Example: When middle-class North American mothers take on full-time jobs and hire nannies to care for their children, these nannies are typically immigrant women from Eastern Europe and the Global South.
• This illustrates how care work is redistributed globally along lines of class, nationality, and gender.

📈 Women's labor force participation in the US

📈 Historical changes

• Now, more than ever, women in the US are participating in the labor force in full-time, year-round positions.
• This was not always the case.
• Changes that fueled the increase in women's labor force participation:
  • Changes in the economy (namely, the decline of men's wages)
  • An increase in single-mothers
  • Education and job opportunities
  • Cultural shifts created by feminist movement politics from the 1960s and 1970s

🏠 The breadwinner-homemaker myth

Unpaid labor: laundry, cooking, childcare, cleaning.

• Dual-earner homes are much more common than the breadwinner-homemaker model popularized in the 1950s.
• In the breadwinner-homemaker model, women stayed home and did unpaid labor while men participated in the paid labor force in jobs that would earn them enough money to support a spouse and children.
• Common confusion: This popular American fantasy, often spoken of in political "family values" rhetoric, was only ever a reality for some white, middle-class people, and, for most contemporary households, is now completely out of reach.

💸 The persistent wage gap

💸 The 77% figure

• Though men and women are participating in the labor force, higher education, and paid work in near-equal numbers, a wage gap between men and women workers remains.
• On average, women workers make 77% of what men make.
• This gap persists even when controlling for:
  • Educational differences
  • Full-time work versus part-time work
  • Year-round versus seasonal occupational statuses

💸 What the gap means

• Women with similar educational backgrounds who work the same number of hours per year as their male counterparts are making 23% less.
• The wage gap is not explained by differences in education, hours worked, or full-time vs part-time status.
• Don't confuse: the gap is not due to women working less or having less education; it persists even when these factors are controlled for.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Women's increased labor force participation in the US has not eliminated the persistent 23% wage gap, which researchers attribute to discrimination, occupational segregation, devalued "women's work," and work-family conflicts that disproportionately affect women.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Historical shift: Women now participate in full-time, year-round work at unprecedented rates, driven by economic changes, single-motherhood, education opportunities, and feminist movements since the 1960s–1970s.
• The wage gap persists: Women earn 77% of what men earn on average, and this 23% gap remains even when controlling for education, hours worked, and full-time status.
• Four explanations: The gap is explained by (1) discrimination, (2) occupational segregation into "pink-collar" jobs, (3) undervaluation of feminized work, and (4) work-family conflicts.
• Common confusion: Legal protections (like the 1964 Civil Rights Act) do not mean discrimination has ended—it persists in hiring, promotion, and pay practices that are difficult to prove in court.
• Intersectional differences: Benefits like the "glass escalator" (men advancing faster in female-dominated fields) apply primarily to white men, not men of color.

📈 The rise of women's labor force participation

📈 What changed

• Women in the US now participate in the labor force in full-time, year-round positions more than ever before.
• This was not always the case: the 1950s "breadwinner-homemaker" model (men in paid work, women doing unpaid domestic labor) was only ever a reality for some white, middle-class families.
• Why the shift happened:
  • Economic changes, especially the decline of men's wages.
  • Increase in single-mother households.
  • Expansion of education and job opportunities.
  • Cultural shifts from feminist movements in the 1960s and 1970s.

🏠 The old model vs. today

• The breadwinner-homemaker model is now "completely out of reach" for most contemporary households.
• Dual-earner homes are much more common today.
• Don't confuse: The 1950s model was a political and cultural fantasy, not a universal historical norm—it excluded many families, especially non-white and working-class households.

💰 The persistent wage gap

💰 The numbers

• On average, women workers make 77% of what men make.
• This means women earn 23% less than men.
• The gap persists even when controlling for:
  • Educational differences.
  • Full-time vs. part-time work.
  • Year-round vs. seasonal work.
• Example: A woman with the same education, working the same number of hours per year as a man, still earns 23% less.

🔍 Why it matters

• The gap cannot be explained away by differences in qualifications or effort.
• Researchers have identified four possible explanations (detailed in the next sections).

🚫 Explanation 1: Discrimination

🚫 Legal protections don't eliminate discrimination

The 1964 Civil Rights Act made it illegal to discriminate in hiring based on race or gender.

• However, companies can no longer say "men only" in ads, but they can:
  • Circulate job ads in men's social networks.
  • Choose men to interview from applicant pools.
  • Have non-accommodating family-leave policies that discourage women (assumed to be primary caregivers) from applying.

⚖️ Why discrimination is hard to prosecute

• No government agency monitors general trends and practices.
• Individuals must complain about and prove specific instances in specific job settings.
• Hiring discrimination is "extremely difficult to prove in a courtroom" and thus "persists largely unchecked."

🧱 The glass ceiling

Glass ceiling: difficulties women face in being promoted to higher-level positions in male-dominated fields.

• Even when hired, women in male-dominated fields struggle to advance.
• Example: The Wal-Mart class action lawsuit (2001–2011):
  • Female managerial staff sued Wal-Mart for informal policies of promoting men faster and paying them at a different wage scale.
  • Over 1.5 million women would have been affected.
  • The US Supreme Court sided with Wal-Mart in 2011, ruling that discrimination against individuals was present but could not be proven against women "as a class."
  • Wal-Mart's neglect in curbing male managers who consistently hired and promoted men over women was "not enough to convict" of class-action discrimination.
• Key takeaway: Gender discrimination is illegal but can still happen in "patterned and widespread ways," and legal barriers make it hard to prosecute.

👔 Explanation 2: Occupational segregation

👔 What occupational segregation means

Occupational segregation: a split labor market in which one group is far more likely to do certain types of work than other groups.

• Gendered occupational sex segregation: women are more likely to do certain jobs, men others.
• Women are concentrated in "pink-collar" jobs: mostly low-wage, female-dominated positions involving services and emotional labor.

🎀 Pink-collar jobs vs. white-collar and blue-collar

Term	Description
White collar	Well-paying managerial work
Blue collar	Manual labor predominantly done by men, with a full range of income levels depending on skill
Pink collar	Mostly low-wage, female-dominated positions involving services and emotional labor

• The top three pink-collar occupations: secretaries, teachers, and nurses—all involve exceptional amounts of emotional labor.

😊 Emotional labor

Emotional labor (developed by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, 1983): work in which employees must control and manage their emotions as part of their job.

• Example: A waitress must control her anger when confronting rude and harassing customers, or risk being fired; she must also help quell the emotions of angry customers to keep her job.
• Any service-based work involving customer interaction (from psychiatrists to food service cashiers) involves emotional labor.

💔 Explanation 3: Devalued work

💔 Feminized work is undervalued

Feminized work: work thought to be "women's work," which is not only underpaid but also socially undervalued, or taken to be worth less than "men's work."

• Care work is a prime example:
  • Caretakers of children and the elderly are predominantly women.
  • Care work is feminized, involves intense emotional labor, and is consistently undervalued.

🍼 Why care work is undervalued

• Women have traditionally done care work in the home (raising children, caring for sick and dying relatives) for free.
• Women are stereotyped as having "natural caring instincts."
• If these instincts come naturally, there is "no reason to pay well (or pay at all) for this work."
• Reality: Care work requires learned skills like any other type of work.
• Some feel it is wrong to ever pay for these services and that they should be done altruistically even by non-family members.

🚹 The glass escalator

Glass escalator (Williams, 1992): when men participate in pink-collar jobs, they tend to be paid better and advance to higher-level positions faster than comparable women.

• This is the opposite of the glass ceiling.
• Intersectional caveat: Adia Harvey Wingfield (2009) found that men of color do not benefit from the glass escalator to the extent that white men do.

👶 Explanation 4: Work-family conflicts

👶 Women negotiate work-family conflicts more than men

• Women are much more likely to interrupt their career trajectories to take time off to care for children.
• This is not an inherent consequence of childbearing—many countries offer paid leave and job protection.

🇺🇸 US policy: Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

• The strongest US legal policy is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1996.
• FMLA allows most employers to let workers take up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave for:
  • Caring for the sick or elderly.
  • Personal time for pregnancy and childcare.
• Problems with FMLA:
  • The leave is unpaid, so few people can afford to be away from their jobs for so long without a paycheck—the policy remains underutilized.
  • Only about half of the US workforce is eligible because FMLA only applies to workers employed by companies with more than 50 employees.
  • Many employers are unaware of the act or do not inform their workers.

📉 Career consequences

• Women are more likely to quit full-time jobs and take on part-time jobs while their children are young.
• Quitting and rejoining the labor force typically means starting at the bottom in terms of pay and status at a new company.
• This negatively impacts women's overall earnings even when they return to full-time work.
• Don't confuse: The problem is not childbearing itself, but the lack of supportive policies (like paid leave and job protection) that other countries provide.

🏛️ Gender and the US welfare state

🏛️ What the excerpt covers

• The excerpt introduces the topic of how national policies are gendered, focusing on the US welfare state.
• Welfare includes:
  • Monthly income assistance (the most-recognized form).
  • Subsidized health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid).
  • Subsidized childcare.
  • Social security.
  • Food subsidies like food stamps.
  • Corporate subsidies (mentioned but not detailed).
• The excerpt states it will "clarify debates and provide examples" but does not provide substantive content in the portion given.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

U.S. welfare policies are deeply gendered, disproportionately affecting women—especially poor single mothers and women of color—by devaluing unpaid care work, imposing punitive restrictions, and reinforcing stereotypes that stigmatize welfare recipients while ignoring that most recipients are white.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What welfare includes: not just monthly income assistance, but also subsidized health insurance (Medicare/Medicaid), childcare, social security, food stamps, and corporate subsidies.
• Who receives welfare and how it's gendered: women, especially mothers, are much more likely to receive assistance because they earn less and take time away from work; single-parent households on one woman's income face greater difficulty.
• PRWORA's punitive measures: the 1996 welfare reform limited lifetime receipt to 60 months and included clauses like the "family cap provision" that deny additional support for new children born to mothers already on welfare.
• Common confusion: although most welfare recipients are white, welfare is racialized in public discourse so that images focus almost exclusively on single mothers of color, obscuring reality and reinforcing controlling stereotypes.
• Why it matters: welfare policies devalue traditionally gendered care work, target poor women of color for regulation, reinforce heteronormative breadwinner-homemaker roles, and sustain the feminization of poverty globally.

🏛️ What the U.S. welfare state includes

💰 Forms of welfare beyond cash assistance

Welfare: includes monthly income assistance, subsidized health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid), childcare subsidies, social security, and food subsidies like food stamps.

• The excerpt emphasizes that welfare is not limited to the most-recognized form (monthly checks).
• Corporate welfare also exists: the U.S. government pays subsidies to corporations.
• Key contrast: individuals receiving welfare are stigmatized and seen as undeserving, while corporations receiving subsidies are seen as entitled.

👩‍👧 Why welfare distribution is gendered

• Women, especially mothers, are much more likely to receive assistance than men.
• Reasons:
  • At the national level, women earn less money than men.
  • Women often take time away from the labor force (e.g., for childcare).
  • Maintaining a single-parent household on one woman's income is more difficult than on one man's income.
• This difficulty is even greater for working-class or poor women whose work may not pay enough to stay well fed and cared for without additional support from family, friends, or the state.

📜 The 1996 welfare reform and its punitive clauses

⏳ PRWORA's lifetime limits

• The Personal Responsibility/Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 effectively dismantled U.S. welfare policy.
• Key restriction: limits lifetime receipt of welfare to a maximum of 60 months.
• This time cap forces recipients off assistance regardless of ongoing need.

👶 The "family cap provision"

Family cap provision: an optional state-level clause that bars mothers already on welfare from getting additional money to support any new children.

• This clause effectively punishes children for being born.
• It plays into the demeaning and erroneous stereotype that women on welfare have children in order to get more money from the state.
• Example: A mother receiving welfare who has another child would not receive increased support, making it harder to care for the new child.

🎯 Targeting poor single mothers

Feminist political scientist Gwendolyn Mink argues that welfare reform targets poor single mothers and families of color and contributes to the devaluing of unpaid caregiving work.

According to Mink, through welfare reform, poor single mothers became:

• A separate caste, subject to a separate system of law.
• The only people in America forced by law to work outside the home.
• The only people whose decision to bear children is punished by the government.
• The only mothers compelled by law to make room for biological fathers in their families.

Why this matters:

• State policies devalue the traditionally gendered care work that women disproportionately perform.
• They target poor women of color as subjects to be regulated.
• They reinforce heteronormative breadwinner-homemaker gender roles.

💍 Welfare, marriage policy, and heteronormative assumptions

💒 The Healthy Marriages Initiative

• The Bush Administration's Healthy Marriages Initiative promoted marriage by providing government funding.
• Assumption: marriage reduces poverty because two incomes are often better than one.

🚫 Problems with this assumption

• Not all mothers are heterosexual, or want to be married to the father of their children, or even married at all.
• Marriage is no guarantee of financial security, especially for people living in impoverished communities where they would likely marry other impoverished people.
• Most people marry within their current economic class.
• Many women are victims of intimate partner violence, yet the initiative hoped women would marry the fathers of their children without recognizing this reality.
• Most marriages end in divorce.

Conclusion from the excerpt: This initiative was more about promoting a political ideology than actually attempting to remedy the social problem of poverty.

🖼️ Racialized and sexualized stereotypes of welfare recipients

🎭 The controlling image of the "welfare mother"

Discourses about welfare mothers invoke images that are gendered, classed, racialized, and sexualized.

• Stereotypes: women on welfare breed children uncontrollably, never marry, and do not know who fathered their children.
• These are contemporary incarnations of the Jezebel controlling image of Black women as sexually promiscuous that originated during American slavery.
• This image obscures the fact that during slavery and after emancipation, white men systematically raped Black women.

🔍 Reality vs. perception

Reality	Public perception
Most people receiving welfare supports are white	Welfare is racialized so that the only images we see are single mothers of color
Most single mothers receiving welfare are also white	Stereotypes focus exclusively on women of color

• "The poor" are often framed as amoral, unfamiliar, and un-American.
• If welfare receipt was not stigmatized but recognized as something that families, friends, and neighbors received in various phases of their lives, these stereotypes would lose traction.

🧩 Example of contradiction

• The mother of one of the authors receives social security disability checks, yet is staunchly anti-welfare.
• This contradiction is sustained by the idea that members of the white middle class do not receive welfare even when they do receive various forms of government support.
• Don't confuse: receiving government support (like social security disability) is still a form of welfare, but it is not stigmatized in the same way as assistance to poor single mothers.

🌍 Feminization of poverty and global context

📉 What feminization of poverty means

Feminization of poverty: the trend in the U.S. and across the globe in which more and more women live in impoverished conditions, despite the fact that many are working.

• Women disproportionately number among those in poverty around the world.
• Women's unequal access to resources and the disproportionate responsibility for unpaid work placed on them set up a situation in which women can either be supported by a breadwinner or struggle to make ends meet.

🌐 Global economic factors

• The global economic crisis and long-standing unequal economic relationships between the Global North (the world's wealthier countries) and the Global South (the world's poorer countries) have made sustainable breadwinning wages hard to attain, even among men.
• This exacerbates the feminization of poverty because the traditional breadwinner model becomes less viable.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Globalization creates interconnected trade and production systems that benefit some while imposing costs on others—especially women of color in the Global South—through mechanisms like outsourcing, free trade agreements, and neoliberal policies that prioritize corporate profit over worker welfare.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• What globalization means: both the benefits and costs of living in a globally connected world, including cross-border flows of people, information, products, and capital.
• How multinational corporations increase profits: by outsourcing production to countries with weaker labor protections and lower wages, creating sweatshops that predominantly employ young, unmarried women.
• Global commodity chains vs. national production: corporations extract resources from one country, produce in another, sell in yet others, and deposit waste elsewhere, with profits returning to the corporation rather than participating nations' economies.
• Common confusion—liberalism vs. neoliberalism: "liberalism" in political theory means restrictions on state power to protect individual rights; "economic liberalism" means unregulated markets; "neoliberalism" applies profit motives to social policies and assumes marginalized groups achieve equality through market access and mainstream institutions.
• Who bears the costs: women of color in the Global South are disproportionately impacted, working in low-wage factories, domestic work, and sex work, often sacrificing care of their own children.

🌐 Understanding globalization

🌐 What globalization describes

Globalization describes both the benefits and costs of living in a globally connected world.

• The excerpt warns that "globalization" is shorthand that risks lumping together complex economic, political, and cultural phenomena.
• It is not uniformly good or bad; costs and benefits are experienced differently depending on one's social location.

📡 Communication and activism

• The Internet enables news from multiple global perspectives and cross-border activist coordination.
• Example: Egyptian activists used Facebook and Twitter to report events and coordinate demonstrations during the Arab Spring uprisings in early 2011; the government shut down the Internet for several days in response.
• Social movements and state/development/conservation agencies in globalized contexts can influence each other.

⚖️ Trade-offs in global connections

Benefit	Cost
Massachusetts residents have fresh fruit in winter	Lowers wages of agricultural workers in tropical countries
Products cross borders	Supports repressive government policies in producing countries
Information flows freely	Increases carbon footprint of food production and distribution

• Don't confuse: globalization is not a single force; it creates winners and losers simultaneously.

🏭 How multinational corporations operate

🏭 Why corporations outsource production

Multinational corporations—corporations that exist across several political borders—made concerted efforts to increase their profits.

• The profit mechanism: pay workers less in wages and benefits.
• In the US, labor laws and union contracts protect workers (extensive hours limits, safe environments, minimum wage), making American workers "expensive to corporations."
• Solution: outsource production to nations of the Global South where workers' rights are less protected and workers earn less.

🏚️ Sweatshops and maquiladoras

Sweatshops (known as maquiladoras when based in Mexico in particular) in which workers work long hours for little pay and are restricted from eating or using the restroom while at work.

• Workers seldom purchase the goods they produce—often cannot afford them—because goods are shipped to wealthier countries of the Global North.
• Factories predominantly employ young, unmarried women in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean because corporations consider them "the most docile and obedient groups of workers"—less likely to make demands or unionize.

🏃 Race to the bottom

• Companies like Nike, Adidas, and Reebok were initially attracted by military regimes in South Korea in the 1980s that quashed labor unions.
• Once workers in South Korea organized successfully, factories moved to Indonesia.
• Race to the bottom logic: moving to remaining areas of cheap labor before workers organize.
• Don't confuse: this is not about finding the "best" location for production; it is about continuously seeking the lowest wages and weakest worker protections.

🔗 Global commodity chains

🔗 How global commodity chains work

Rather than a nation's workers producing goods, selling those goods back to its people, and keeping profits within the nation's borders, multinational corporations participate in global commodity chains.

• The traditional model (not used): workers produce → sell to own people → profits stay within nation.
• The global commodity chain model: a corporation based in Country A extracts resources from Country B, produces goods in Country C, sells in Countries D/E/F, deposits waste in Country G.
• Result: profits return largely to the corporation; little goes into the economies of participating nations.

👟 Example from the excerpt

• The excerpt cites Cynthia Enloe's article "The Globetrotting Sneaker" to illustrate how globalization makes this dispersed production and profit extraction possible.

🏛️ International institutions and free trade

🏛️ World Bank and IMF

• World Bank: provides monetary support for large, capital-intensive projects (roads, dams).
• International Monetary Fund (IMF): provides loans and facilitates international trade, particularly through structural adjustment programs (SAPs).

💸 How structural adjustment programs work

• A country of the Global North lends money to a country of the Global South in exchange for resources.
• Example: the US lends money to Chile to assist with grape growing and wine production; in exchange, the US acquires grapes and wine at a discounted rate and controls how Chile spends the money; Chile repays the loan.
• The circular debt problem: in many cases, the lending process is circular so the borrowing country remains constantly indebted.
  • Example: a nation produces most of its crop for export, cannot feed its own people, and requires additional loans.
• Consequences of SAPs: devalued currency, privatized industries, cut social programs and government subsidies, increasing taxes to fund infrastructure development.

🆓 Free trade institutions and agreements

Free trade describes a set of institutions, policies, and ideologies in which governmental restrictions and regulations are minimal, allowing corporate bodies to engage in cross-border enterprises to maximize profit.

• World Trade Organization (WTO): an international unelected body that challenges restraints on free trade; considers any limits on production (e.g., pollution levels) as barriers to free trade.
• Theory: unfettered, free market capitalism is the best way to generate profits.
• What is not factored in: human costs to health, safety, and happiness—costs that cannot be put into dollars and cents.

🇺🇸🇲🇽🇨🇦 NAFTA and FTAA

Agreement	Year	Parties	Result
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)	1994	Canada, US, Mexico	Mass relocation of factories from US to Mexico as maquiladoras; loss of around 500,000 union jobs in North America
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)	2002	Entire Western hemisphere except Cuba	Expands NAFTA; impact hotly contested at time of writing

• Contested impacts: some argue it resulted in unionized, higher-paying jobs; others argue that even with many negative impacts, overall access to jobs, products, and resources has yielded improvements.
• Fair trade movements: in response to free trade, movements supporting safe working conditions and sustainable wages have emerged, especially in coffee and chocolate industries.

💼 Neoliberalism and its ideology

💼 Defining liberalism, economic liberalism, and neoliberalism

In terms of political theory, the term liberalism refers to restrictions on state power to prevent government infringement on individual rights, which transcend party affiliations.

• Don't confuse: in the contemporary US context, "liberal" is identified with the Democratic Party, but the political theory meaning is different.

Economic liberalism: the belief that markets work best without any governmental regulation or interference.

• Describes the free trade economic policies discussed above.
• Should not be confused with the liberalism associated with the Democratic Party.

Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy, where capitalism's profit motive is applied to social policies and programs (like welfare and taxation), cutting them to increase profits.

🔪 What neoliberalism does

• Crucial project: downsizing the public sphere and social welfare programs that unions and racial justice activists fought for since the early 20th century.
• Beyond privatization: feminist historian Lisa Duggan argues neoliberalism is an ideology that holds once marginalized groups (LGBTQ people, people of color, the working class) have reached equality with privileged peers (straight people, white people, middle- and upper-classes) once they have access to mainstream institutions (like marriage and military service) and consumption in the free market.
• Assumption: society has reached a post-civil rights period where social movements seeking to fundamentally alter mainstream institutions and build up social welfare programs are obsolete.
• Reality check: as the textbook has shown, mainstream institutions and structures of power often reproduce inequalities.

🌍 Racialized and gendered impacts

🌍 Neocolonialism and postcolonial theory

Neocolonialism, or modern day colonization characterized by exploitation of a nation's resources and people.

• Predatory trade relationships between countries roughly reproduce the political situation of colonization in many nations of the Global South.
• Colonialism and neocolonialism: concepts that draw attention to racialized global inequalities between white, affluent people of the Global North (historical colonizers) and people of color of the Global South (the historically colonized).

Postcolonial theory emerged out of critiques of colonialism, empire, enslavement, and neocolonial racist-economic oppression more generally, advanced by scholars in the Asian and Middle Eastern diasporas.

• Postcolonial scholars unpack and critique colonial discourses, depictions of colonized Others, and European scholars' biased representations of those they colonized, which they figure as knowledge.

Decoloniality theoretical approaches, emerging chiefly in Latin America, illuminated how colonization invented the concepts of "the colonized," "modernity," and "coloniality," and disrupted the social arrangements, lives, gender relations, and understandings it invaded, imposing on the colonized European racialized conceptualizations of male and female.

👩 Women of color in the Global South

• Disproportionate impact: women of color of the Global South are disproportionately impacted by global economic policies.
• Factory work: women in Asian and Latin American countries are much more likely to work in low-wage factory jobs than men.
• Labor-based mobility: women are much more mobile in terms of immigration, with more opportunities for low-income factory work in other countries as well as in domestic and sex work markets.
• Sacrifice: when women immigrate to other nations, they often sacrifice care of and contact with their own children in order to earn money caring for wealthier people's children.

🔄 Feminization of poverty (from earlier in excerpt)

Feminization of poverty describes the trend in the US and across the globe in which more and more women live in impoverished conditions, despite the fact that many are working.

• Women's unequal access to resources and disproportionate responsibility for unpaid work set up a situation where women can either be supported by a breadwinner or struggle to make ends meet.
• The global economic crisis and long-standing unequal economic relationships between Global North and Global South have made sustainable breadwinning wages hard to attain, even among men.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The global economy disproportionately exploits women of color in the Global South through neocolonial trade relationships that structure labor markets by race, gender, and sexuality, forcing immigrant women into low-wage factory work, domestic labor, sex work, and service jobs that involve exhausting physical and emotional labor.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Neocolonialism reproduces colonial exploitation: predatory trade relationships between Global North and South mirror historical colonization, exploiting resources and people of color.
• Women of color face disproportionate impact: women in the Global South are more likely to work in low-wage factories and have higher labor-based mobility for immigration into domestic and sex work.
• Transnational motherhood: immigrant women sacrifice contact with their own children to earn money caring for wealthier people's children in other countries.
• Body labor in service work: immigrant women in beauty services perform both emotional and physical labor while exposed to toxic chemicals, creating exhausting and health-damaging conditions.
• Common confusion: theoretical approaches—postcolonial theory critiques colonial discourses and representations, while decoloniality theory examines how colonization invented concepts and disrupted existing social arrangements.

🌍 Neocolonialism and theoretical frameworks

🌍 Neocolonialism as modern exploitation

Neocolonialism: modern day colonization characterized by exploitation of a nation's resources and people.

• Predatory trade relationships between countries reproduce the political situation of colonization in many Global South nations.
• Neoliberal economic policies function as a form of neocolonialism.
• These concepts draw attention to racialized global inequalities between white, affluent people of the Global North (historical colonizers) and people of color of the Global South (the historically colonized).

📚 Postcolonial theory

Postcolonial theory: emerged from critiques of colonialism, empire, enslavement, and neocolonial racist-economic oppression, advanced by scholars in Asian and Middle Eastern diasporas.

• Primarily unpacks and critiques colonial discourses.
• Examines depictions of colonized Others.
• Critiques European scholars' biased representations of colonized people, which they presented as knowledge.

📚 Decoloniality theory

Decoloniality: theoretical approaches emerging chiefly in Latin America that illuminate how colonization invented concepts and disrupted existing social arrangements.

• Shows how colonization invented the concepts of "the colonized," "modernity," and "coloniality."
• Examines how colonization disrupted social arrangements, lives, gender relations, and understandings.
• Reveals how colonization imposed European racialized conceptualizations of male and female on colonized peoples.
• Don't confuse: postcolonial theory focuses on critiquing colonial discourses and representations, while decoloniality examines how colonization invented concepts and imposed new social structures.

👩 Women's labor migration and transnational motherhood

👩 Gendered patterns of migration

• Women of color of the Global South are disproportionately impacted by global economic policies.
• Women in Asian and Latin American countries are much more likely to work in low-wage factory jobs than men.
• Women have much more labor-based mobility in terms of immigration than men.
• Women's mobility includes low-income factory work in other countries as well as domestic and sex work markets.

👶 Transnational motherhood

Transnational motherhood: the situation in which women sacrifice care of and contact with their own children in order to earn money caring for wealthier people's children as domestic workers.

• Women immigrate to other nations and become domestic workers.
• They care for wealthier people's children while separated from their own.
• This creates a profound personal sacrifice driven by economic necessity.
• Example: A woman from the Global South moves to the Global North to work as a nanny, leaving her own children behind to earn money for their support.

💼 Informal economies and undocumented work

• Immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, have few earning options.
• Economic circumstances allow undocumented immigrants to make more money in illegal and unregulated markets in Global North nations than in regulated formal economy markets.
• Women immigrants commonly participate in informal economies such as domestic work or sex work.
• Employers and clients do not report this work in their taxes.

💅 Service work and body labor

💅 Beauty service work

• Immigrant women participate in beauty service work, particularly nail salons.
• This work does not require high amounts of skill or experience.
• It can support women for whom English is a second language or those who may be undocumented.

💪 Body labor concept

Body labor: labor involving both emotional and physical labor.

• Like any service job, nail salon work involves emotional labor.
• Clients may see the technician as their confidant, but the relationship is primarily an unequal labor relationship.
• Workers are paid not only for the service they perform but also for their friendly personalities and listening skills.
• Engaging in both emotional and physical labor at work is exhausting.
• Don't confuse: body labor is not just physical work or just emotional work—it is the combination of both types of labor performed simultaneously.

☠️ Health hazards

• Workers in nail and hair salons work with harsh chemicals.
• These chemicals are toxic to their health.
• Exposure makes workers more susceptible to cancer than the general population.
• Example: A nail salon technician performs manicures while maintaining a friendly demeanor with clients, all while breathing toxic fumes that increase cancer risk.

🔄 Systemic patterns and resistance

🔄 Intersecting inequalities

• Gendered, racialized, and sexualized differences exist in the US domestic labor market, leading to differences in work and pay.
• These same differences characterize the globalized labor market.
• Trade relationships between countries and neoliberal ideology have profound effects on quality of life worldwide.
• Women bear the brunt of changes to the global marketplace as factory workers in some countries and domestic, sex, and beauty service workers in others.

✊ Movements for change

The excerpt notes that several movements are fighting to change these conditions:

• Fair trade movements
• Anti-sweatshop movements
• Indigenous movements
• Decolonial movements
• Feminist movements
• Labor movements

These movements face opposition from well-funded and powerful multinational corporations and global trade organizations.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Feminist movements must be understood relationally—as interconnected conversations across time and identities rather than isolated waves—because they inform each other and demonstrate how privilege, oppression, and resistance are historically linked.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Relational understanding required: Social movements and identities are not separate; feminist movements overlap with and sometimes conflict with other justice movements (e.g., civil rights, workers' activism).
• "Wave" language is problematic but used: Terms like "first wave," "second wave," and "third wave" obscure diverse organizing efforts and falsely suggest distinct, separate periods with distinct issues.
• Movements and theory are linked through praxis: Feminist movements use critical reflection to change the world, generating feminist theories and making feminist academic knowledge possible.
• Common confusion: The "waves" are not mutually exclusive—contemporary feminism is shaped by earlier activism, and how we understand past feminism is shaped by contemporary activism.
• History is selective: Focusing on prominent leaders and events advances one particular lens while obscuring everyday resistance and community organizing by many people.

🔄 Understanding feminist movements relationally

🔄 What relational understanding means

A relational understanding of social movements and identities: recognizing the ways in which privilege and oppression are linked and how the stories of people of color and feminists fighting for justice have been historically linked through overlapping and sometimes conflicting social movements.

• Feminist historian Elsa Barkley Brown argues that movements and identities do not occur in isolation.
• The metaphor: "History is also everybody talking at once, multiple rhythms being played simultaneously."
• The challenge for historians: isolate one conversation to explore it, then show its dialogue with many others—"how to make this one lyric stand alone and at the same time be in connection with all the other lyrics being sung."
• Example: Feminist movements have been historically linked with civil rights activism and workers' activism; their stories overlap and sometimes conflict.

🌐 Why separation is misleading

• Contemporary society often imagines social movements and identities as separate from each other.
• This separation obscures the interconnections between different justice struggles.
• A relational lens reveals how feminist resistance connects to broader struggles against oppression.

🌊 The problem with "wave" language

🌊 What the "waves" framework suggests

• The terms "first wave," "second wave," and "third wave" characterize feminist resistance in distinct time periods.
• Each "wave" is often figured as prioritizing distinct issues in each time period.

⚠️ Why "waves" are problematic

• Obscures diverse histories: The "waves" narrative obscures histories of feminist organizing in locations and around issues not discussed in the dominant narratives.
• Falsely suggests separation: The "waves" are not mutually exclusive or totally separate from each other.
• Hides mutual influence: Contemporary feminist work has been made possible by earlier feminist activism, and contemporary feminist activism informs the way we think of past feminist activism and feminisms.
• Don't confuse: Despite these problems, the "wave" language has historical meaning and is used throughout the section.

🔗 How movements inform each other

🔗 Bidirectional influence

• Earlier feminist activism made contemporary feminist work possible (forward influence).
• Contemporary feminist activism informs the way we think of past feminist activism and feminisms (backward influence).
• The "waves" inform each other rather than existing as isolated periods.

🎯 The selective lens of history

• Focusing on prominent leaders and events can obscure many people and actions involved in everyday resistance and community organizing.
• The section acknowledges it focuses on the most well-known figures, political events, and social movements.
• This approach advances one particular lens of history, not the complete picture.

💡 Praxis: linking movements and theory

💡 What praxis means

Praxis: using critical reflection about the world to change it.

• Feminist movements are examples of praxis.
• They use critical reflection to generate action and change.

📚 How movements create academic knowledge

• Feminist movements have generated, made possible, and nurtured feminist theories and feminist academic knowledge.
• Various social movements throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries made "feminist history" a viable field of study today:
  • Feminist activism
  • Workers' activism
  • Civil rights activism

🔍 Feminist history as a larger project

• Feminist history is part of a larger historical project.
• It draws on the experiences of traditionally ignored and disempowered groups to re-think and challenge traditional histories.

Traditional history sources	Feminist history sources
Colonizers, representatives of the state, the wealthy	Factory workers, immigrants, people of color, lesbians
Experiences and points of view of the powerful	Experiences of traditionally ignored and disempowered groups
Typically learned in high school textbooks	Challenges and re-thinks traditional narratives

• Example: Instead of only learning history from the perspective of colonizers, feminist history includes the perspectives of immigrants and people of color.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The 19th-century feminist movement, while achieving radical demands like suffrage and challenging coverture, was shaped and limited by its white middle-class leadership, which often excluded the concerns and participation of working-class women and women of color who faced intersecting oppressions.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• "Wave" language is problematic: the "first wave" framework obscures diverse organizing histories and creates artificial separations between time periods that actually inform each other.
• White middle-class priorities dominated: leaders like Stanton and Anthony focused on suffrage, coverture, education, and employment—goals that confronted the "cult of true womanhood" but reflected their own standpoint.
• Exclusion of Black and working-class women: the movement's leadership often barred participation of women of color and failed to address race and class inequalities that voting alone could not solve.
• Common confusion—marriage vs. slavery analogy: white abolitionists conflated coverture with slavery, problematically equating the unique racialized oppression of enslaved Black women with white women's legal subordination in marriage.
• Formal rights ≠ actual equality: the 19th Amendment granted voting rights in law, but Jim Crow laws, violence, and systemic discrimination prevented real access and equality for Black women and men.

🌊 Understanding the "wave" framework

🌊 Why "waves" are used but problematic

• The excerpt uses "first wave," "second wave," and "third wave" terminology because it has historical meaning.
• However, this framework is problematic:
  • It suggests distinct time periods prioritize distinct issues, obscuring organizing that happened outside the dominant narratives.
  • Waves are not mutually exclusive or totally separate; they inform each other bidirectionally.
  • Contemporary activism shapes how we understand past activism, not just the reverse.

📚 Praxis and feminist history

Praxis: using critical reflection about the world to change it.

• Feminist movements generated and nurtured feminist theories and academic knowledge.
• Feminist history draws on experiences of traditionally ignored groups (factory workers, immigrants, people of color, lesbians) to challenge histories written from the viewpoint of the powerful (colonizers, the state, the wealthy).
• This field became viable because of 19th–21st century social movements (feminist, workers', civil rights activism).

⚠️ Limitations of this historical lens

• Focusing on prominent leaders and events obscures everyday resistance and community organizing.
• The excerpt acknowledges it advances "one particular lens of history" by highlighting well-known figures, political events, and social movements.

🗳️ Core goals and ideology of the first wave

🗳️ Timeline and main demands

• Period: mid-19th century to 1920 (passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote).
• Key leaders: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony (white middle-class suffragists).
• Primary goals:
  • Women's suffrage (the right to vote).
  • Striking down coverture laws.
  • Gaining access to education and employment.
• These demands are enshrined in the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments (1848), the first women's rights convention in the U.S.

🏠 The cult of true womanhood

Cult of true womanhood: an ideology with four key tenets—piety, purity, submission, and domesticity—that held white women were rightfully and naturally located in the private sphere of the household and not fit for public, political participation or labor in the waged economy.

• First wave demands were radical because they confronted this ideology.
• However, this ideology was specific to white womanhood:
  • It systematically denied Black and working-class women access to the category of "women."
  • Black and working-class women, by necessity, had to labor outside the home.
• The movement's emphasis on confronting the cult of true womanhood reflected the white middle-class standpoint of its leaders.

🚫 Exclusion and prioritization of white women's rights

🚫 The National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA)

• Stanton and Anthony formed the NWSA to break from other suffragists who supported the 15th Amendment (which would give African American men the right to vote before women).
• They privileged white women's rights instead of creating solidarities across race and class.
• They saw women's suffrage as the central goal, believing the ballot would secure equal place, equal wages, access to schools, colleges, professions, and moral power.

🚪 Barring Black women's participation

• The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)—a descendant of NWSA and the largest suffrage organization—barred the participation of Black women suffragists.
• Working-class women and women of color knew that mere access to voting did not overturn class and race inequalities.
• As Angela Davis writes, working-class women "were seldom moved by the suffragists' promise that the vote would permit them to become equal to their men—their exploited, suffering men."

🔗 Overlap with abolitionist and racial justice movements

🔗 Self-ownership and bodily control

• Historian Nancy Cott argues both the first wave feminist movement and the abolitionist movement were largely about self-ownership and control over one's body.
• For enslaved people: freedom from lifelong, unpaid, forced labor and sexual assault that many enslaved Black women suffered.
• For married white women: recognition as people in the face of the law and the ability to refuse husbands' sexual advances.

⚠️ The problematic marriage-slavery analogy

• White middle-class abolitionists often made analogies between slavery and marriage.
• Example: Antoinette Brown (1853) wrote, "The wife owes service and labor to her husband as much and as absolutely as the slave does to his master."
• Why this is problematic:
  • It conflated the unique experience of racialized oppression of slavery that African American women faced with a very different type of oppression that white women faced under coverture.
  • White women abolitionists and feminists made important contributions to anti-slavery campaigns but often failed to understand the uniqueness and severity of slave women's lives and the complex system of chattel slavery (Angela Davis, 1983).

🗣️ Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech

• Attributed to the Akron Women's Convention in 1851.
• Critiqued the exclusion of Black women from the women's movement while condemning slavery:
  • "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages...Nobody ever helps me into carriages...And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted...I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery...And ain't I a woman?"
• Important caveat: Feminist historian Nell Painter (1996) questioned the validity of this representation, arguing white suffragists dramatically changed its content and title—illustrating how powerful actors can construct and possibly misrepresent stories of those with less power.

💪 Black women's leadership despite marginalization

💪 Ida B. Wells

• Participated in the women's suffrage movement.
• Founding member of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
• Journalist and author of numerous pamphlets and articles exposing the violent lynching of thousands of African Americans in the Reconstruction period (following the Civil War).
• Argued that lynching in the Reconstruction Period was a systematic attempt to maintain racial inequality, despite the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 (which held African Americans were citizens and could not be discriminated against based on race).

🏛️ National Association of Colored Women's Clubs

• Thousands of African American women were members.
• Pro-suffrage organization.
• Did not receive recognition from the predominantly middle-class, white NAWSA.

📜 The 19th Amendment and the gap between law and reality

📜 The test of suffrage

• The 19th Amendment (1920) provided a test for the argument that granting women the right to vote would give them unfettered access to denied institutions and equality with men.
• This argument was proven wrong.

🚧 Continued barriers after the 19th Amendment

• Similar to the backlash after the 18th Amendment (likely referring to the 14th Amendment based on context).
• Barriers that prevented Black women and men from voting, education, employment, and public facilities:
  • Formal legal endorsement of "separate but equal" with Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
  • Complex of Jim Crow laws in states across the country.
  • Unchecked violence of the Ku Klux Klan.

⚖️ Abstract law vs. on-the-ground reality

Realm	Status
Abstract law (18th and 19th Amendments)	Equal rights existed
On-the-ground reality	Continued racial and gender inequality

• Don't confuse formal legal rights with actual access and equality—systemic discrimination and violence maintained inequality despite constitutional amendments.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

The feminist movement evolved from post-suffrage institutionalized lobbying in the 1920s through the civil-rights-inspired second wave of the 1960s–70s to the coalitional, intersectional third wave that recognizes multiple overlapping systems of oppression.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Post-suffrage shift (1920s): After winning the vote, feminists channeled energy into legal and political institutions to fight workplace discrimination, but organizations disagreed on strategy (e.g., ERA debate).
• Civil rights movement as catalyst: The Black Freedom Movement of the 1950s–60s provided tactics (nonviolent direct action, sit-ins, marches), legal precedents (Civil Rights Act Title VII), and organizing models (NAACP) that shaped second wave feminism.
• Second wave limitations and Black feminist critique: Second wave feminism (late 1960s–70s) fought patriarchy and sex discrimination but often ignored racism and class oppression; Black feminists argued that sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia are inseparable and must be fought together.
• Common confusion—identity vs. coalitional politics: Third wave feminism shifts from organizing around a single identity (e.g., "women") to coalitional politics that unite groups based on shared experiences of oppression across race, class, gender, and sexuality.
• Gap between law and reality: Legal victories (19th Amendment, Civil Rights Act, Roe v. Wade) did not automatically produce equality; ongoing discrimination in wages, policing, and access to institutions shows the need for continued activism.

🗳️ Post-suffrage institutionalization (1920s–1940s)

🗳️ Shift to legal and political channels

• After the 19th Amendment granted women's suffrage in 1920, feminist activists moved from mass mobilization to working within institutionalized legal and political channels.
• The Women's Bureau (a federal agency) was created in 1920 to craft policy for women workers.
• Organizations like the YWCA, AAUW, and BPW lobbied government officials to pass anti-discrimination legislation.

⚖️ Internal disagreement: the ERA debate

• Organizations did not agree on what equality meant or how to achieve it.
• BPW supported the ERA, arguing it would end employment discrimination against women.
• Women's Bureau and YWCA opposed the ERA, fearing it would damage gains made by organized labor.
• The disagreement revealed competing agendas:
  • Define working women first as women (who are also workers), or
  • Define working women first as workers (who are also women).
• Don't confuse: This was not about whether to support women, but about which identity and which legal strategy should take priority.
• Nearly a century later, the ERA has still not been passed, and debate continues even within feminism.

🏭 World War II and post-war backlash

• Labor shortages during WWII allowed millions of women to move into higher-paying factory jobs previously held by men.
• African American men fought in segregated units, often on the most dangerous missions; Japanese Americans in interned families also fought in high-casualty segregated units.
• After the war, women and African American veterans were expected to return to subordinate positions in a still-segregated society.
• Example: Women who had worked in factories and Black men who had fought returned to a conservative 1950s climate that denied them the gains they had made.

✊ Civil rights movement and its influence (1950s–1960s)

✊ Grassroots organizing and legal victories

• Despite the conservative 1950s, civil rights organizers challenged both de jure (legal) segregation (Jim Crow laws) and de facto (everyday) segregation.
• Brown v. Board of Education (1954) made "separate but equal" educational facilities illegal, providing a legal basis for activism.
• The Black Freedom Movement (also called the civil rights movement) fundamentally changed US society and inspired the second wave feminist movement and New Left radical movements (gay liberation, Black nationalism, environmentalism, etc.) in the late 1960s.

🚌 Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Popular narrative: Rosa Parks was an isolated, frustrated woman who spontaneously refused to give up her seat in December 1955.
• Reality: Parks had been active in the local NAACP for 15 years; her action was part of a lifelong commitment to racial justice and a planned test case to challenge bus segregation in court.
• The 381-day boycott was an organized political action involving working-class Black and white women activists.
• Working-class Black women who relied on buses to reach domestic-service jobs walked to work or used carpools organized by women activists.
• The Women's Political Caucus of Montgomery distributed fliers and provided planning before the boycott began.
• Don't confuse: Individual heroism with collective organizing—Parks' action was embedded in a network of activists and long-term strategy.

🪑 Sit-ins and student activism

• The sit-in movement began in February 1960 when four African American students in Greensboro, NC, sat at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter and refused to leave.
• The tactic spread as student networks shared successes; sit-ins received national media attention and occurred in cities and towns across the country.
• Ella Baker initiated the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) shortly after the Greensboro sit-ins.
• SNCC participated in:
  • Freedom Rides (1961): African American and white activists challenged unconstitutional Jim Crow laws; faced brutal mob violence and jailing in Birmingham, but CORE and SNCC kept sending riders.
  • Freedom Summer (1964): Mostly white northern students supported Black southern activists' voting-rights campaigns; faced mob violence but brought national attention to southern states' resistance.

👩‍💼 Women in the civil rights movement

• SNCC's non-hierarchical structure gave women more opportunities to participate than in other organizations.
• However, sexism persisted: men occupied most formal leadership roles in SCLC, NAACP, and CORE; women were often expected to do "women's work" (housework, secretarial tasks).
• Black women activists like Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash became noted leaders within SNCC in the early 1960s.
• White SNCC activists Casey Hayden and Mary King circulated a 1965 memo, "Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo," critiquing sexism within the movement and calling for dialogue.
• This memo became influential for the birth of the second wave feminist movement.

🌊 Second wave feminism (late 1960s–1970s)

🌊 Influence of the civil rights movement

• Second wave feminism was influenced and facilitated by the civil rights movement in several ways:
  • Tactics: Marches, sit-ins, nonviolent direct action.
  • Organizational models: NOW was modeled after the NAACP.
  • Legal precedents: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited sex discrimination in employment.
  • Activist experience: Many women who participated in civil rights activism became second wave feminists and challenged gender norms that confined women to the private sphere.

🏢 Formation of NOW and key goals

• When the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) largely ignored women's complaints of employment discrimination, 15 women and one man formed the National Organization of Women (NOW) in the mid-1960s.
• NOW focused on:
  • Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
  • Fighting sex discrimination in education.
  • Defending Roe v. Wade (1973 Supreme Court decision striking down state laws prohibiting abortion in the first three months of pregnancy).

🌍 Multiracial feminist organizing

• Not only white women spearheaded second wave feminism.
• In the mid and late 1960s, Latina, African American, and Asian American women developed multiracial feminist organizations that became important players in the second wave.
• The second wave generally focused on fighting patriarchal structures of power, combating occupational sex segregation, and securing reproductive rights.

🖤 Black feminist critique and intersectionality

🖤 Limitations of second wave feminism

• Second wave feminism challenged gendered inequalities and brought women's issues to national politics, but it also reproduced race and class inequalities.
• Black women writers and activists (Alice Walker, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins) developed Black feminist thought as a critique of second wave feminism's tendency to ignore racism and class oppression.

🔗 Intersectional analysis

• The Combahee River Collective (formed 1974) was one of the first formal Black feminist organizations.
• bell hooks (1984) argued:
  • Feminism cannot just fight to make women equal with men, because not all men are equal in a capitalist, racist, homophobic society.
  • Sexism cannot be separated from racism, classism, and homophobia; these systems of domination overlap and reinforce each other.
  • You cannot fight sexism without fighting racism, classism, and homophobia.
• Intersectional perspective: Makes visible and critiques multiple sources of oppression and inequality.
• Coalitional activism: Brings people together across race, class, gender, and sexual identity lines based on shared experiences of oppression.

🌈 Third wave and coalitional politics (late 20th–early 21st century)

🌈 Hybridity and influences

Third wave feminism: A hybrid movement influenced by second wave feminism, Black feminisms, transnational feminisms, Global South feminisms, and queer feminism.

• Third wave activists grew up in a world where "equal rights" for racial minorities, sexual minorities, and women are supposedly guaranteed by law.
• However, the gap between law and reality reveals the necessity of both old and new forms of activism.

📊 Persistent inequalities (examples from the excerpt)

Issue	Data/Example
Wage gap	White women paid only 75.3% of what white men are paid for the same labor (2016)
Police violence	Much higher rates in Black communities; 58% of transgender people surveyed experienced mistreatment from police in the past year (2016)
Homelessness	40% of homeless youth organizations' clientele are LGBTQ (2012)
Wealth and income	People of color make less income and have considerably lower wealth than white people on average
Militarization	The military is the most funded institution by the government

🤝 Coalitional politics

Coalitional politics: Organizing with other groups based on shared (but differing) experiences of oppression, rather than organizing around a specific identity.

• Feminists increasingly realized that coalitional politics is absolutely necessary.
• Angela Davis quote: "We are living in a world for which old forms of activism are not enough and today's activism is about creating coalitions between communities."
• Don't confuse: Coalitional politics does not erase specific identities; it recognizes that different groups experience overlapping oppressions and can unite around shared goals while respecting differences.
• Example: Rather than organizing only "as women," third wave feminists organize with LGBTQ groups, racial justice movements, labor movements, etc., because their struggles are interconnected.

🧭 Overview

🧠 One-sentence thesis

Third wave feminism emerged as a hybrid movement that shifted from identity-based politics to coalitional politics, recognizing that multiple, intersecting forms of oppression require activists to organize across race, class, gender, and sexual identity lines rather than within single-identity groups.

📌 Key points (3–5)

• Core shift: Third wave moved from identity politics (organizing around one shared identity) to coalitional politics (organizing across different identities based on shared experiences of oppression).
• Hybridity: Third wave is influenced by second wave feminism, Black feminisms, transnational feminisms, Global South feminisms, and queer feminism.
• New tactics: Activists developed confrontational street theater, cultural production (Riot Grrrl, zines, feminist media), and sex-positive spaces as forms of resistance.
• Common confusion: Third wave is sometimes called "post-feminist" or "not feminist" because it uses different activist forms (cultural production, media) rather than traditional second wave tactics (marches, policy change), but creating alternative culture is itself political resistance.
• Intersectional critique: Movements like queer politics challenged hierarchies within liberation movements (e.g., homonormativity, homonationalism) that marginalized people of color, trans people, and others within already marginalized groups.

🌐 The Gap Between Law and Reality

📜 Why third wave emerged

• Late 20th and early 21st century feminists grew up in a world that supposedly did not need social movements because "equal rights" were guaranteed by law.
• However, the gap between law and concrete lived experience revealed the necessity of both old and new forms of activism.

📊 Evidence of ongoing inequality

The excerpt provides specific examples showing the gap between legal equality and reality:

Group	Inequality described
White women	Paid only 75.3% of what white men are paid for the same labor
Black communities	Police violence occurs at much higher rates
Transgender people	58% experienced mistreatment from police officers in the past year
LGBTQ youth	40% of homeless youth organizations' clientele are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender
People of color	Make less income and have considerably lower amounts of wealth than white people on average

• These realities showed that legal guarantees were insufficient and that activism addressing multiple, intersecting oppressions was necessary.

🤝 Coalitional Politics vs Identity Politics

🆔 What identity politics means

Identity politics: organizing politically around the experiences and needs of people who share a particular identity.

• This approach focuses on a single shared identity (e.g., women, gay men, lesbians).
• It can leave out concerns of individuals who are marginalized within those identity groups.

🤝 What coalitional politics means

Coalitional politics: organizing with other groups based on their shared (but differing) experiences of oppression, rather than their specific identity.

• This is a defining characteristic of the third wave.
• The move recognizes that oppression operates along multiple, constantly shifting bases.
• Example: Rather than organizing only as "women" or only as "people of color," coalitional politics brings together people across race, class, gender, and sexual identity lines who share experiences of oppression.

🎯 Why the shift happened

• Feminists increasingly realized that you cannot fight sexism without fighting racism, classism, and homophobia.
• Heywood and Drake (1997) argue that a crucial third wave goal is "the development of modes of thinking that can come to terms with the multiple, constantly shifting bases of oppression in relation to the multiple, interpenetrating axes of identity."
• An intersectional perspective that makes visible and critiques multiple sources of oppression also inspires coalitional activism.

⚠️ Don't confuse

• Coalitional politics is not abandoning concern for specific groups; it is recognizing that different groups' struggles are interconnected and that organizing together is more effective than organizing separately.

🏳️‍🌈 Queer Politics and Critiques of Normativity

🏳️‍🌈 What queer politics means

Queer: a term explicitly reclaimed from its derogatory use against gay men and lesbians; also describes anti-categorical sexualities.

• In the latter part of the 1980s, a more radical subset of individuals began to articulate a queer politics.
• They distanced themselves from the gay and lesbian rights movement, which they felt mainly reflected the interests of white, middle-class gay men and lesbians.
• The queer turn sought to develop more radical political perspectives and more inclusive sexual cultures and communities.
• It aimed to welcome and support transgender and gender non-conforming people and people of color.

🏠 Homonormativity

Homonormativity (coined by Lisa Duggan, 2002): the normalization and depoliticization of gay men and lesbians through their assimilation into capitalist economic systems and domesticity—individuals who were previously constructed as "other."

• These individuals gained entrance into social life at the expense and continued marginalization of queers who were non-white, disabled, trans, single or non-monogamous, middle-class, or non-western.
• Critiques of homonormativity were also critiques of gay identity politics, which left out concerns of many gay individuals who were marginalized within gay groups.

🌍 Homonationalism

Homonationalism (coined by Jasbir Puar, 2007): the white nationalism taken up by queers, which sustains racist and xenophobic discourses by constructing immigrants, especially Muslims, as homophobic.

• This concept shows how even marginalized groups can participate in oppressing others.

🎭 Intersectional critique within movements

• The queer turn was motivated by an intersectional critique of existing hierarchies within sexual liberation movements.
• These hierarchies marginalized individuals within already sexually marginalized groups.
• Example: A white, middle-class gay man might gain acceptance, while a trans person of color remains marginalized—even within LGBTQ spaces.

🎨 New Tactics and Cultural Production

🎭 ACT UP and street theater

• ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) began organizing in the mid-1980s to press the US government and medical establishment to develop affordable drugs for people with HIV/AIDS.
• They used powerful street theater that brought the death and suffering of people with HIV/AIDS to the streets and to politicians and pharmaceutical companies.
• Tactics included:
  • Die-ins (mass demonstrations where activists lay down as if dead)
  • Inflating massive condoms
  • Occupying politicians' and pharmaceutical executives' offices
• Their confrontational tactics were emulated by anti-globalization activists and the radical Left throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
• Queer Nation was formed in 1990 by ACT UP activists and used these tactics to challenge homophobic violence and heterosexism in mainstream US society.

🎸 Riot Grrrl and alternative culture

• The Riot Grrrl movement, based in the Pacific Northwest of the US in the early 1990s, consisted of:
  • Do-it-yourself bands predominantly composed of women
  • Creation of independent record labels
  • Feminist 'zines
  • Art
• Their lyrics often addressed gendered sexual violence, sexual liberationism, heteronormativity, gender normativity, police brutality, and war.

📰 Feminist media production

• Feminist news websites and magazines became important sources of feminist analysis on current events and issues.
• Examples mentioned: Bitch, Ms., Feministing, and the Feminist Wire.
• These function as alternative sources of feminist knowledge production.

🎨 Why cultural production is political

• Some commentators deemed the third wave "post-feminist" or "not feminist" because it often does not utilize the activist forms (e.g., marches, vigils, and policy change) of the second wave movement.
• However, the creation of alternative forms of culture in the face of a massive corporate media industry can be understood as quite political.
• If we consider the creation of lives on our own terms and the struggle for autonomy as fundamental feminist acts of resistance, then creating alternative culture on our own terms should be considered a feminist act of resistance as well.

💗 Sex-Positive Feminism

💗 What sex-positive feminism means

Sex-positive feminism: the view that sexual liberation, within a sex-positive culture that values consent between partners, would liberate not only women, but also men.

• This emerged around the same time as ACT UP was beginning to organize in the mid-1980s.
• It arose amidst what is known now as the "Feminist Sex Wars" of the 1980s.

🧠 Social constructionist perspective

• Sex-positive feminists such as Gayle Rubin (1984) argued that no sexual act has an inherent meaning.
• Not all sex, or all representations of sex, were inherently degrading to women.
• Sexual politics and sexual liberation are key sites of struggle for white women, women of color, gay men, lesbians, queers, and transgender people—groups historically stigmatized for their sexual identities or sexual practices.

🤝 Creating sex-positive spaces

• A key aspect of queer and feminist subcultures is to create sex-positive spaces and communities that:
  • Valorize sexualities that are often stigmatized in the broader culture
  • Place sexual consent at the center of sex-positive spaces and communities
• Part of this project is creating media messaging that attempts to both consolidate feminist communities and create knowledge from and for oppressed groups.

🌍 Transnational Feminism

🌍 What transnational feminism means

Transnational feminism: a body of theory and activism that highlights the connections between sexism, racism, classism, and imperialism.

• This emerged in a world characterized by global capitalism, transnational immigration, and a history of colonialism that still has effects today.
• Feminist activism and theorizing by people outside the US context has broadened the feminist frameworks for analysis and action.

👁️ Critique of Western feminism

• Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1991) in "Under Western Eyes" critiques the way much feminist activism and theory has been created from a white, North American standpoint.
• This standpoint has often:
  • Exoticized "3rd world" women
  • Ignored the needs and political situations of women in the Global South

🚫 Problems with "saving" projects

• Western feminist projects to "save" women in another region do not actually liberate these women.
• This approach constructs the women as passive victims devoid of agency to save themselves.
• These "saving" projects are especially problematic when accompanied by Western military intervention.

🇦🇫 Example: Afghanistan

• In the war on Afghanistan (begun shortly after 9/11 in 2001), U.S. military leaders and George Bush often claimed to be waging the war to "save" Afghani women from their patriarchal and domineering men.
• This crucially ignores the role of the West—and the US in particular—in supporting Islamic fundamentalist regimes in the 1980s.
• It positions women in Afghanistan as passive victims in need of Western intervention—similar to victimizing rhetoric often used to talk about "victims" of gendered violence.

🔍 Transnational feminist challenge

• Transnational feminists challenge the notion—held by many feminists in the West—that any area of the world is inherently more patriarchal or sexist than the West because of its culture or religion.
• They argue we need to understand how Western imperialism, global capitalism, militarism, sexism, and racism have created conditions of inequality for women around the world.

💪 Strengths and Future Directions

💪 Third wave strengths

• Third wave feminism's insistence on grappling with multiple points-of-view.
• Its persistent refusal to be pinned down as representing just one group of people or one perspective may be its greatest strong point.
• Similar to how queer activists and theorists have insisted that "queer" is and should be open-ended and never set to mean one thing, third wave feminism's complexity, nuance, and adaptability become assets in a world marked by rapidly shifting political situations.

🔄 Intersectional reflexivity

• The vibrancy and longevity of feminist movements might be attributed to intersectional reflexivity—the critique of race, class, and gender dynamics in feminist movements.
• The emphasis on coalitional politics and making connections between several movements is another crucial contribution of feminist activism and scholarship.

🔮 21st century challenges

In the 21st century, feminist movements confront an array of structures of power:

• Global capitalism
• The prison system
• War
• Racism
• Ableism
• Heterosexism
• Transphobia

❓ Open questions

The excerpt concludes with questions that feminist activists are grappling with:

• What kind of world do we wish to create and live in?
• What alliances and coalitions will be necessary to challenge these structures of power?
• How do feminists, queers, people of color, trans people, disabled people, and working-class people go about challenging these structures of power?
• Their actions point toward a deepening commitment to an intersectional politics of social justice and praxis.