How gender studies examines lived experience

Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field that analyses gender identity and gendered representation, originating in women's studies and its concerns with women, feminism, gender, and politics. These lessons answer how gender norms shape lived experience and what we can understand by examining them. They consider how gender is shaped across social, cultural, and historical contexts.

2 articles, 1 video, 1 book · about 55 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   gender studies · Wikipedia · 32 min read

   In gender studies, the philosopher Judith Butler's Gender Trouble discussed gender performativity. In Butler's terms, the performance of gender, sex and sexuality is about power in society. Transnational feminist scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty published Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses in 1984. She critiqued the homogeneous, victimized image of "Third World Woman," arguing that women's experiences are diverse across historical, cultural and individual backgrounds. This raised the power relations between different lived experiences and the need for diverse narratives in gender studies. The Samoan term fa'afafine, meaning "in the manner of a woman," refers to a third-gender or non-binary role in society. Polynesian languages are also consistent with the idea of a third gender or non-binary gender.

2. Read
   

   Gender Studies: Foundations and Key Concepts - JSTOR Daily · JSTOR Daily · 10 min read

   Gender studies examines how structures naturalize, normalize, and discipline gender across historical and cultural contexts. It also considers how gender intersects with sexuality, race, class, ability, religion, region of origin, citizenship status, life experiences, and access to resources. Susan Stryker, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore map ways transgender studies can expand feminist and gender studies. "Transgender" can provide a lens for examining all bodies' relationships to gendered spaces and disrupting strict identity categories; the "trans-" in transgender is a conceptual tool for interrogating how institutions discipline bodies.

3. Watch
   

   Berkeley professor explains gender theory | Judith Butler · YouTube · 13 min watch

   Judith Butler explains gender as performative, shaped by culture, history and individual action, and that view bears on debates about identity and rights.

4. Book
   

   Stone Butch Blues · Bookshop.org

   Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg follows a journey through history and politics and a gender transformation and exploration, portraying longing, vulnerability, and working-class grit. Its personal account describes what it can mean to suffer or glory in being different.

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