1. Gender and Culture: Social Construction of Knowledge
Chapter 3
Gender and Culture: Social Construction of Knowledge

2. Please Note
These slides are meant to help students think about the material. They are not meant to replace reading the material or taking notes. Using these slides as your only means of garnering information could harm your ability to understand the content of this class.
Please turn off cell phones, MP3 players and other technology of which I’m unaware.

3. Popular Culture
1) Definition– beliefs, practices and objects that are part of everyday traditions at a particular time and cultural period.
2) Popular Culture helps create our:
Body of knowledge, identities about self and other, notions of right and wrong.

4. How is Popular Culture Spread?
1) Language
Shapes identity by telling us what is possible, normal and desirable.
What does language tell us about our popular notions of gender?
Males are the norm –
Hey guys
Oh boy!
He is neutral?

5. How is Popular Culture Spread?
Language continued….
ii) Males have power
Mr/Miss and Mrs.
names cars after women?
name-changing?
cuss words ---
powerful jobs perceived as masculine
when women use powerful words, they’re perceived negatively
feminist is a bad term!
men interrupt more, gaze longer

6. How is Popular Culture Spread?
Language Continued
iii) It’s important for us to see men and women as opposites:
“opposite sex”
men from venus/women from mars
Oppressed groups try to reclaim language.

7. How is Popular Culture Spread?
Media
Women as Objects of Media
Women are sex objects to exist for men, thus, they must compete with each other
Women are maternal
People of Color are often excluded, except to be presented as “other” or secondary.

8. How is Popular Culture Spread?
Media continued….
Transgressors are dealt with in two ways:
Symbolic annihilation – women portrayed in ways which trivializes or condemns them
Cooptation – (ideas of an oppressed group are adopted by the powerful but those ideas thus become meaningless)
Women can do everything
You’ve come a long way baby!

9. Theories of Popular Culture
Reflection thesis
Role-Model thesis
Post-Modern Theories– Viewers are not passive.
Marxists Theories– Capitalists use media to maintain oppressive ideas. Reduce the media to a few owners so knowledge will be less varied.