Kimmel, Chapter 4

Psychological Perspectives of Gender Development Psychoanalysis and Freud –Gender is acquired and determined by biology –Prior to birth, all needs are gratified –After birth, they must be provided Baby at “oral stage” where gratification is breast- feeding At “anal stage” toddler learns to control excretions At “genital stage” gender begins: boys must learn to be masculine, girls feminine. –Easier for girls who bond with mothers –Harder for boys who cannot identify with their mothers

Freud During boys’ gender differentiation, the Oedipal Crisis must be resolved –Boy must break identification with mother, desire her, realize he’s competing with his father, be afraid that his father will castrate him upon learning of his desire for his mother, resolve that fear by transferring affection from mom to dad, and come to identify with his father—thus becoming masculine, heterosexual, and capable of sex with mother- like substitutes

Freud During girls’ gender differentiation, they must renounce their sexual desire for their moms, sine they are incapable of having sexual relations with her because of differing anatomies –Women experience ‘penis envy’ because they realize they cannot have their mother, as their fathers do, so they must transfer that desire to the desire to be possessed sexually so that they can have a baby, which will be their true source of feminine gratification; they must transfer the location of sexual gratification from their atrophied penis (their clitoris) to their vagina

Freud Gender and sexuality are psychological not biological –Must be resolved within the family –Homosexuality is a gender identity issue rather than a morality issue –Traditional gender roles are success signs of good mental health

Freud Research and conclusions are debatable –Female theories Small sample of patients, wealthy upper-class women who all had some ‘psychosis’ already, which is why he was treating them He believed that many of their claims of being victims of incest were fantasies created because they desired their fathers –Male theories Even smaller sample, mostly based on his recollection of his own childhood

Freud Implications –Gender is acquired within the family, then the parents are to blame—at least in part—for their children’s failures to successfully –M-F test Scoring along cultural gender values, and children who ‘failed’ were given therapies

Cognitive Development Theories Piaget –Children are born gender neutral and develop as they process their experiences through their ‘cognitive filters’ Children are active learners not just passive recipients –By age two, they know they are a boy or a girl because of concrete clues that they interpret –After age six, the child sees the world in gendered terms, attributing gender to people and not to the markers Kimmel: Always two factors influencing gendered behavior: the demands of a social situation and the prior experience one has of being gendered already.

Feminist Critiques Freud: Penis envy –A male over-emphasizing the importance of his genitalia who saw women as naturally inferior to men Horney: the actual social subordination of women provided the context for women’s development—and their lack of satisfaction Bettleheim: women are subordinated by men because of the male envy or fear of child-bearing Chowdorow: Reverses the question, asking why do men feel inappropriately superior to women? Freud’s ‘successful’ male development creates men who are less human, less social, less capable of intimacy

Feminist Critiques Kohlberg: Moral Development –Kohlberg believed most women ‘arrested’ at the third stage of moral development and could not make ‘proper’ judgments based on universal ethics –Gilligan: Women make different, not improper, decisions, based on an ‘ethic of care’ which they balance with the ‘ethic of justice’ Seemed to some to support gender differences and discrimination as these natural psychological differences were inherent (Tannen) Gilligan says that’s a misinterpretation: both men and women’s ethics are based on their experiences

Developmental Differences Maccoby and Jacklin found only four developmental gender differences in 1600 studies, from 1966 to 1973 –Girls’ higher verbal ability –Boys’ better visual and spatial skills –Boys’ higher success at math tests –Boys’ higher aggression

Social Psychology of Sex Roles M-F Test to predict other ‘abnormalities’ –Could a gender identity disorder lead one to fascism or Nazism? –Hypothesis: Men insecure in their masculinity, internally, would act masculine to cover their insecurity, often maintaining rigid adherence to the most traditional norms Internal Psyche External Behavior MasculineFeminine Masculine MMMF Feminine FMFF

Sex Role Theories Miller and Swanson: M-F on a developmental scale Parsons: M-F exists to fulfill society's two main necessities: production and reproduction –Women may be angry when they realize they are inferior to men or that their security depends upon a man; then they may reject the feminine role—and become a feminist.

Critiques of Sex Role Theories Too oppositional or binary Too supportive of political conservatism Too dependent on coercion if sex roles are natural Power differences aren’t accounted for and individuals alone are assumed to be gendered—not institutions or roles

Kimmel, Chapter 5 Inequality and Difference

Social Construction of Gender Relations Sociology studies the variations among men and women, as well as the differences between them –Definitions of masculinity and femininity vary from culture to culture and over time –Gender definitions vary across a person’s life –Definitions of gender vary within any culture at any time—by race, class, ethnicity, age, sexuality, education, geography, etc.

Kimmel’s Conclusions Power cannot be ignored –It is held by groups rather than individuals –It is institutionalized –Can rarely be changed by individuals Gendered individuals hold places within gendered institutions –Gender differences attributed to people are/can be caused by the institutions IdentityInteractionInstitution