1. October 9th Pass out Research Project #2 Collect Exams and Discuss
Lecture 5: Gendered Intimacies & Gendered Sexuality
Homework:
Nothing – catch up on readings

2. Quick Writing: Take ten minutes to answer the following questions:
How do you determine if someone is your friend?
What are the norms in our society regarding dating?
Who are we supposed to date?
How is it decided and by whom?
How do we look for a partner and where do we look?
How are we supposed to act?
How is the status of relationship determined?
How do others know the status of the relationship?

3. Gender Intimacies: Love, Relationships, and Sexuality
Lecture 5
Gender Intimacies: Love, Relationships, and Sexuality
Look at NYT article…

4. Gendered Friendships? Men’s Friendships Women’s Friendships:
Built around shared interests and activities
Men have fewer friends, weaker ties
“Segmented” relationships
Women’s Friendships:
Emotional support, intimacy
Have more friends, stronger ties
“Holistic” relationships
Read page 261
We are socialized into gendered norms around relationship building, love and friendships

5. Love & Courtship Idea of love is socially & culturally bound
We have a highly developed concept of love in American society
Social scientists view love as multi-dimensional concept experienced by individuals in relationships, but shaped by culturally specific construction
How would you define love?
How do we link it to partner selection…
“Romantic Love”
Our concept of love changed with modernization and the concept of courtly love emerged, and this was the beginning of our concept of romantic love.
Feel for anyone regardless of class or others social boundaries
Powerful force that transforms us
An exclusive relationship – monogamy
Source of intense emotional feelings - jealousy
Emerged in Victorian era
Idea that emotional attachments were becoming more important in relationships that are encompassed in the family
Mother and daughter
Husband and wife
Siblings…
Feminized during 20th Century
Love has increasingly become an emotional concept attached to women
Women are seen as being more responsible for creating and maintaining love in relationships
However, we are moving towards more equal concepts of marriage in modern societies
Love in relationships
Love is something we think of as critical to partnering relationships
In our culture we think of love as the predecessor to long term and lasting relationships
We also think of love as based a a dyad relationship
Men and women are thought to have different roles and responsibilities related to “love” in relationships
What does our culture say are the roles of men and women in relationships?
“Passionate Love”
High levels of emotional intensity
“Companionate Love”
Secure and trusting relationships
** Relate back to the gendered sexualities and the idea that women are more interested in sex as a means to building relationships and men are interested in sex for pleasure.
Idea of love is socially & culturally bound
How would you define love?
How do you know if you are in love?
“Romantic Love”
Emerged in Victorian era and focused on emotional attachment
Feminized during 20th Century

6. The Gender of Love
Men and women are thought to have different roles and responsibilities related to “love” in relationships
How do you know when someone loves you?
What does our culture say are the roles of men and women in relationships?

7. The Dating & Love Script
Social script: set of procedural norms and expectations
All societies have a set of procedures (rules) that people follow in starting relationships
The Dating Script: What does dating look like today?

8. Who are we supposed to date?
How is it decided and by whom?
How do we look for a partner and where do we look?
How are we supposed to act?
How is the status of relationship determined?
How do others know the status of the relationship?

9. Gendering “Love” Masculine Love - ‘providing’ Feminine Love - ‘caring’
Spending time together, shared activities, sex, and help
Suppress emotions
Feminine Love - ‘caring’
Nurturing, emphasis on talking and feelings
Reveal emotions
Documented that people view women’s style of love as “better”

10. Gendered Sexuality
Sexual ideology supports the idea that men and women have naturally different:
sexual desires – sexual urges and sexual pleasure.
sexual roles – in the private and public realm
and sexual practices – appropriate sexuality
Femininity and sexuality
passive, emotional/irrational, monogamous, vaginal, penetrated
Masculinity and sexuality
aggressive/assertive, unemotional/rational, multiple partners, penal, penetrate

11. What are the roles that are expected of men in relationships? Women?
I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them.  ~Jay McInerney
Do you think sex means different things to men and women in relationship? Why?
What are the roles that are expected of men in relationships? Women?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

12. Constructing Heterosexuality
Historical, political, and cultural factors have shaped the way we understand sexuality
Idea of sexual identity emerged in late 1800’s
Modernization and Industrialization affected ideas of sexuality
Heteronormativity: culture where heterosexuality is accepted as the “normal” mode of sexual expression
Gender and sexuality are linked through the nuclear family ideal

13. Gender and Learning Sexuality
Men and women are socialized to think differently about sexuality and relationships
Men and women experience different paths to sexual orientation
How are gays and lesbians affected by the sexual ideology?
Gay men associate sexual identity with erotic experiences
Lesbians associate identity with relationships

14. Developing our Gendered Sexuality
According to Freud, Children’s sexual pleasure derives from the same erotoenic zone – penis or penis equivalent (clitoris)
“With the change to femininity the clitoris should wholly hand over its sensitivity, and at the same time importance, to the vagina…[however] the man has only to continue the activity that he previously carried out”

15. “Female Hysteria” 25% of women were diagnosed with hysteria
Over 75 possible symptoms
Nervousness, insomnia, or a "tendency to cause trouble"
Women went to the doctor for “pelvic stimulation” until the home vibrator emerged
1902 electric vibrator was for sale in home catalogs like Sears

16. “Vibration promotes life and vigor, strength and beauty “

17. Slut-bashing: Good Girl Vs.Bad Girl

18. Language and Sexual Politics
Sexual Politics: the exercise of power through sexuality
How does language control our behavior?
“Slut” and “Fag”
Structures adolescent sexuality
Sexual Double-Standard
Slut – Stud Dichotomy