GENDER & SOCIETY NOTES

MODULE 1: GENDER AS CONSTRUCTED

Reading: The Egg and the Sperm
- How science construes, the egg, the sperm and the reproductive system.
- Analogy with stereotypical romantic portrayal.
- Female biological processes are less worthy compared to the males.
- Woman’s mensural cycle is a failure and wasteful process. Words: Ceasing, Dying, and Losing
- The kind of words used for women and men, and reproductive are different.
- Portrayal that the egg is usually the feminine “damsel in distress” while the sperm is the masculine
“heroic warrior” coming to the rescue.
- Science shows that they both have equal participative but the portrayal is not the same.
- The eggs roles is much larger, if at all.
- Problematize such portrayal as problematic – cultural imagery – social stereotypes – language –
repercussions.

Reading: Seeing Like a Feminist

- Speaks about feminist struggles and challenges in India.
- Draws parallel between nude makeup and the maintenance of social order. – “nude make-up looks are
all about your skin looking fresh and dewy, without looking like you're even wearing any make-up.
The whole point of nude make-up, clearly, is to spend hours painting your face in order to make it look
like you had not touched it at all.”
- Feminism is thus not about individual men and women, but about understanding the ways in which
'men' and 'women' are produced and inserted into patriarchies that differ according to time and place.
- Feminist, marriage and the institution of family - “The family is an institution that rigidly enforces
systems of inheritance and descent, and in this structure, individuals – sons, daughters, wives,
husbands – are resources that are strictly bound by the violence, implicit and explicit, of this frame.
As feminists, we need to build up the capacity and the strength of both men and women to live in ways
in which marriage is voluntary, and to build alternate non-marriage based communities.”
- Individualization is a process of recognizing oneself as primarily an individual-is always an on-going process
in the present continuous in our parts of the world. It is against this backdrop that we must ask the question:
Was sex/gender a universally relevant criterion of social differentiation at all? That is, did all societies at all
times and in all places make male/female distinctions that sustained themselves over stable bodies?
- She argues that Western anthropologists, even feminists, failed to understand African society in its
own terms, because they assumed that gender identities and hierarchies were universal: 'If the
investigator assumes gender, then gender categories will be found whether they exist or not.'
- Some languages are genderless, names are genderless, so does the understanding of that society
become different?
- Oyewumi insists that the African ways of understanding the world were radically different from the
Western, but have been continually translated, even by African scholars, into Western categories and
languages already loaded with gendered and patriarchal assumptions.
- It is told in ancient artefacts that women engaged in tribal warfare and married other women, and there
were men who married other men.
- The making of a distinction between sex and gender is intrinsic to feminism. The initial move was to use the
term 'sex' to refer to the biological differences between men and women, while gender' indicated the vast range
of cultural meanings attached to that basic difference.
- This distinction is important for feminism to make because the subordination of women has been fundamentally
justified on the grounds of the biological differences between men and women.
- Racism is a good example of biological determinism, as is the caste system, because both ideologies
are based on the assumption that certain groups of people are superior by birth, and that they are born
with characteristics, such as greater intelligence and special skills, that justify their power in society.
- Not only do different societies identify a certain set of characteristics as feminine and another set as
masculine, but also, these characteristics are not the same across different cultures. Thus, feminists
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 have argued that there is no necessary cor-relation between the biology of men and women and the
qualities that are thought to be masculine and feminine.
- In addition, societies generally value 'masculine' characteristics more highly than 'feminine' ones and
at the same time, ensure that men and women who do not conform to these characteristics are
continuously disciplined into the appropriate behaviour.
- Even when it is a woman who has shown bravery, it still cannot be understood as a 'feminine' quality.
Bravery is seen as a masculine virtue no matter how many women may display it or how few men. But
of course, what is considered to be masculine or feminine shifts from time to time. Until the middle of
the twentieth century in the West, for instance, pink was the colour for boys and blue for girls! In the
1800s, most infants were dressed in white, and gender differences weren't highlighted until well after
they were able to walk.
- In 1927, Time magazine wrote about the disappointment in Belgium at the birth of a girl to the royal
family, saying her cradle had been 'optimistically decorated in pink, the colour for boys'. Close to the
end of World War I, Ladies' Home Journal advised new mothers that 'the generally accepted rule is
pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger
colour, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the
girl'. Some argued that pink was a close relative of red, which was seen as a fiery, manly colour. Others
traced the association of blue with girls to the frequent depiction of the Virgin Mary in blue.
- When we apply the understanding-to the sex/gender distinction-that biology and culture are
interrelated- we see that women's bodies have been shaped by social restrictions and by norms of
beauty. That is, the 'body' has been formed as much by 'culture' as by 'nature'.
- Sex', seen thus, is not an unchanging base upon which society constructs 'gender' meanings, but rather,
sex itself has been affected by various factors external to it-there is no clear and unchanging line
separating nature and culture. A second kind of rethinking of sex/gender has come from a kind of
feminism which argues that feminists must not underplay the biological difference between the sexes,
and attribute all difference to 'culture' alone. To do so is to accept male civilization's devaluing of the
female reproductive role. This is a criticism of the liberal feminist understanding that, in an ideal world,
men and women would be more or less alike. The contrary claim is that patriarchal social values have
denigrated feminine qualities and that it is the task of feminism to recover feminine qualities as being
valuable.
- Boys come into adulthood learning to differentiate themselves from the mother, while girls do so by
identifying with the mother. That is, in a sex-differentiated society, while all infants identify with the
mother, boys gradually learn that they are 'different' from, while girls learn that they are the 'same' as,
their mother. This results, Gilligan argues, in women having a more subjective, relational way of
engaging with the world, while men have a more objective, autonomous mode. Women relate to others,
while men learn to separate themselves.
- 'Gender' is not the cultural inscription of meaning on a pre-given 'sex'. Rather, gender as a way of
thinking and as a concept, pre-exists the body; it is gender that produces the category of biological sex.
- Since the hegemonic understanding of the human body now is that each and every body is clearly and
unambiguously male or female, large numbers of bodies that do not fit this description are designated
as diseased or disordered in some way.
- Nearly a third of the male population can have 'breasts', and if it is not due to rare endocrinological
causes, the condition is perfectly normal. It seems to have no other ill effects than causing 'disgust' but,
nevertheless, it is pathologized and made into a disease (gynaecomastia), and when other serious
illnesses have been ruled out, the advice given is not to relax and stop worrying, but to undertake
surgery, to make that body conform to a mythical norm.
- This 'one-sex' model of humanity, with the woman as a lesser version of the male body, had been
dominant since antiquity.
- Menstruation is certainly one feature inescapably associated with the female body. But the ways in
which it acts as a disability have to do with social and cultural, not natural constraints.
- Men would brag about how long and how much. Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed-for proof of manhood, with religious
ritual and stag parties . Sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free . Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious
fundamentalists would cite menstruation ('men-struation') as proof that only men could serve in the Army ('you have to give blood to

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 take blood'), occupy political office ('can women be aggressive without that steadfast cycle governed by the planet Mars?'), be priest
and ministers ('how could a woman know what it is to give her blood for our sins?') or rabbis ('without the monthly loss of impurities,
women remain unclean').
- The fact remains that something which affects half the population is simply absent in the public consciousness.
Clean and plentiful public toilets and inexpensive and easily accessible sanitary napkins would make monthly
periods for most women simply routine.
- Intersex people, hermaphrodites, as they used to be called, were not a problem for society until the
rigid male/female binary was constructed with the coming of modernity. In the West, from the
twentieth century, it became common for doctors to assign one sex or the other to intersex babies, and
to make surgical interventions to match this assignment.
- 'The gender assignment takes into account the prevalent social factors in a community and the parents'
desire.' This could well mean, said the report, that in some cases, the desire of Indian parents for a boy
could influence the doctor's assignment of
- sexual identity.
- There is, of course, another possibility-that they could live perfectly healthy and fulfilling lives as
intersex people, even being capable of reproduction. So the only reason ' to shape them into the
either/or pattern is cultural, not 'biological'. There is a growing intersex movement globally, that draws
attention to the fact that treating the intersex condition as a disease is a phenomenon that started in the
nineteenth century in the West.
- Maleness and femaleness are not only culturally different, they are not even biologically stable features
at all times.
- But in sports, as in all other spheres of life, despite evidence to the contrary, it continues to be assumed
that every human being can be assigned to one of two sex categories. Thus, the Olympic Committee
retained a policy of 'suspicion based testing' on a case-by-case basis, as did other sports bodies. This
policy at different times resulted in two women athletes-South African Caster Semenya and Indian
Santhi Soundarajan-being disqualified after winning their events, for failing 'gender tests'.
-
Reading: If Men Could Menstruate
- The essay is an attempt to show how a natural reproductive process, which is considered negative and
stigmatized because it is associated with women’s bodies, would become positive and worthy of
attention and pride if it were associated with men’s bodies.
- Male human beings have built whole cultures around the idea that penis-envy is “natural”
- What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could
not? The answer is clear—menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event:
Men would brag about how long and how much. Boys would mark the onset of menses, that longed-
for proof of manhood, with religious ritual and stag parties.
- Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation
(“menstruation”) as proof that only men could serve in the Army (“you have to give blood to take
blood”), occupy political office (“can women be aggressive without that steadfast cycle governed by
the planet Mars?”), be priests and ministers (“how could a woman give her blood for our sins?”) or
rabbis (“without the monthly loss of impurities, women remain unclean”).
- Men would convince women that inter- course was more pleasurable at “that time of the month.”
Lesbians would be said to fear blood and therefore life itself—though probably only because they
needed a good menstruating man. Of course, male intellectuals would offer the most moral and logical
arguments. How could a woman master any discipline that demanded a sense of time, space,
mathematics, or measurement, for instance, without that in-built gift for measuring the cycles of the
moon and planets—and thus for measuring anything at all? In the rarefied fields of philosophy and
religion, could women compensate for missing the rhythm of the universe? Or for their lack of
symbolic death-and-resurrection every month?

Reading: Sultana’s Dream

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 - It was written in 1905 by Begum Rokeya, is a science-fiction short story published in The Indian
Ladies' Magazine that depicts a society in which the practice of purdah is inverted, thus transforming
into a feminist utopia - Ladyland.
- The novel portrays a world in which women rule the world and men are the subordinate beings.
Women control all aspects and are aided by new technology such as flying cars and solar energy in
order to help maintain their rule.
- Hossain emphasises how most of the world’s problems are manmade, and if women were to take
charge, most of these problems wouldn’t exist. A world ruled by women would mean lesser crime and
more peace and harmony.
- The story talks about enslaving the whole men community which is itself criminal. This story does fall
prey to the patriarchal thought that men are more strong than women, they are much more valuable in
terms of physical strength.

MODULE 2: INTERSECTIONALITY

Reading: The Combahee River Collective Statement

- The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed
to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task
the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of
oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As
Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and
simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.
- Our (Black women) politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently
valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's may because of our
need as human persons for autonomy.
- We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are
us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows
us to continue our struggle and work.
- This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that
the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as
opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression. In the case of Black women this is a
particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is
obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy
of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be
recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.
- We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in Black women's lives as are the
politics of class and race.
- We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely
sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a weapon of political repression.
- We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-
economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy.
- We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist
revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing an
understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of Black women
who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily
viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the
real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and
sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives.
- Even our Black women's style of talking/testifying in Black language about what we have experienced
has a resonance that is both cultural and political.
- The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on
one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial,

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 sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to
resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have.
- Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of Black people because it calls into
question some of the most basic assumptions about our existence, i.e., that sex should be a determinant
of power relationships.
- The inclusiveness of our politics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives
of women, Third World and working people. We are of course particularly committed to working on
those struggles in which race, sex, and class are simultaneous factors in oppression.
- One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to publicly address is racism in the
white women's movement. As Black feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how
little effort white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires among
other things that they have a more than superficial comprehension of race, colour, and Black history
and culture. Eliminating racism in the white women's movement is by definition work for white women
to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.
- As feminists we do not want to mess over people in the name of politics. We believe in collective
process and a non-hierarchical distribution of power within our own group and in our vision of a
revolutionary society. We are committed to a continual examination of our politics as they develop
through criticism and self-criticism as an essential aspect of our practice.

Reading: How Young People with Disabilities Conceptualize The Body, Sex and Marriage in Urban India
- Instead of giving rights to citizens with disabilities and empowering them, a culture of charity and
welfare has been systematically promoted in India since the colonial period. The disability discourse
has primarily focused on issues related to the medical management, education and employment of
persons with disabilities.
- A landmark judgment, ‘Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities and Protection of Rights and
Full Participation) Act was passed by the Indian Parliament in 1995. However, since the focus of
discussion and activities both by the state and the non-government organizations in the disability sector
is still confined to enhancing the educational and employment opportunities of differently-abled
persons, other critical areas of concern such as their fertility, sexual behaviour and reproductive health
have not yet found articulation in the public discourse in this country.
- Furthermore, negative stereotyping of persons with disabilities as either asexual or sexual perverts find
expressions in the media, films and matrimonial columns validating its neglect as a priority in their
day to day lives. Needless to say, the situation of women with disabilities is more fraught as they suffer
the double burden of gender and disability-based oppression.
- Consequently, disabled sexuality is an important area in the discipline of disability studies, more
particularly feminist disability studies.
- For instance, notions of sexual identity and self-concept in the context of various types of disabilities
have been examined Furthermore, their higher vulnerability to sexual abuse and exploitation has also
been explored. The theme of consensual sex in the context of mental retardation has been examined
from an ethical perspective.
- In societies like India, men with dis- abilities have greater access to health, education and employment
opportunities than their female counterparts. They also find it easier to find sexual partners, both with
and without disabilities. Indeed, being male shields them from some of the more dehumanizing con-
sequences of being disabled that women with disabilities cannot escape. A woman with a disability is
considered incapable of fulfilling the normative feminine roles of homemaker, wife and mother. Then,
she also does not fit the stereotype of the normal woman in terms of physical appearance. Since women
embody family honour in the Indian context, girls with disabilities are more often than not kept hidden
at home by families and denied basic rights to mobility, education and employment. Parents become
more protective and restrictive, especially after the adolescent girl reaches puberty. Travelling to
school is a double burden, with transport difficulties coupled with the danger of sexual abuse and
violation. Furthermore, some believe there is no point investing in the education of a girl with
disabilities since she will never be able to earn a living. She will eventually be a life-long burden on

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 the natal family because marriage is also not a realistic option. So, it is economically unsound to invest
in her education or vocational training.
- In short, women with disabilities do not have the same options of mar- riage and motherhood as non-
disabled women. Being nurturing and caring are core components of normative constructions of
femininity, but women with disabilities may themselves be in need of care. This inversion reduces
them to the status of being less than women.
- In males, dependency needs are extremely stigmatizing. The disjunction between traditional notions
of what it means to be a man: aggressive, strong, self-reliant and providing financial security and social
status to the family, and being a man with a disability in need of assistance, has potentially devastating
consequences on sexual identity and overall self- concept of men with disabilities.
- The narratives reveal that although gender is a major defining element of the disability experience in
general and of the self as a sexual being in particular, it does not operate in isolation but intersects
closely with other equally important variables such as social class (and caste in the case of India),
family composition and dynamics and geographical location. Secondly, the segregation–inclusion
discourses influence informants’ opinions of marriage and family life as also their actual social
behaviour. Thirdly, although the charity discourse on disability is slowly giving way to the human
rights perspective in the public sphere, the transition to a social model approach is far from complete.
Indeed, as the case studies show individuals with disabilities may selectively appropriate both
perspectives as strategic devices to further their goals.
- While there is a general recognition of the need to enhance educational and employment opportunities
of persons with disabilities in order to promote economic self-reliance, their sexual needs, dreams and
aspirations remain more or less unrecognized. Despite being socialized into enacting a form of
desexualised subjectivity, the narratives presented in this paper mark the fissures and points of
resistance that enable persons with disabilities to affirm their sexuality. The resilience of young women
inhabiting patriarchal spaces is considerable.
- Special modules and training programs have been developed to address the sexual and reproductive
health needs of persons with disabilities both in domestic and institutional settings. There is clearly a
need to develop similar culturally sensitive and gender specific programs in India.

Reading: Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Colour
- Kimberlé Crenshaw’s article explaining “intersectionality”, through violene against women of colour.
- Both antiracist and feminist activism failed women of color because either their race or gender was
considered in isolation. Rather, activists needed to consider how different axes of oppression like race
and gender “intersect.”
- The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social
justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal
discourse as vestiges of bias or domination -that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which
social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding,
our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance.
- The concept has also been elaborated to describe how different axes of identity intersect in addition to
race and gender. For instance, class, age, disability status, citizenship status, and sexual orientation can
all be seen to intersect, producing different kinds of injustice or access to opportunity.
- The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge,
but rather the opposite that it frequently con-fates or ignores intragroup differences. In the context of
violence against women, this elision of difference in identity politics is problematic, fundamentally
because the violence that many women experiences is often shaped by other dimensions of their
identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring difference within groups contributes to tension
among groups, another problem of identity politics that bears on efforts to politicize violence against
women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and an-tiracist efforts to politicize
experiences of people of color have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they

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 each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Although racism and sexism readily intersect in the
lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices.
- In an earlier article, I used the concept of intersectionality to denote the various ways in which race
and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women's employment experiences.? My
objective there was to illustrate that many of the experiences Black women face are not subsumed
within the traditional boundaries of race or gender discrimination as these boundaries are currently
understood, and that the intersection of racism and sexism factors into Black women's lives in ways
that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences
separately. I build on those observations here by exploring the various ways in which race and gender
intersect in shaping structural, political, and representational aspects of violence against women of
color.
- Structural Intersectionality and Battering - Many women of color, for example, are burdened by
poverty, child care responsibilities, and the lack of job skills. Where systems of race, gender, and class
domination converge, as they do in the experiences of battered women of color, intervention strategies
based solely on the experiences of women who do not share the same class or race backgrounds will
be of limited help to women who because of race and class face different obstacles.
- Immigrant women are also vulnerable to spousal violence because so many of them depend on their
husbands for information regarding their legal status. Many women who are now permanent residents
continue to suffer abuse under threats of deportation by their husbands. Even if the threats are
unfounded, women who have no independent access to information will still be intimidated by such
threats.
- Language barriers present another structural problem that of opportunities of non-English-speaking
women to take advantage support services. Such barriers not only limit access to inform shelters, but
also limit access to the security shelters.
- These examples illustrate how patterns of subordination intersect in wo- men's experience of domestic
violence. Intersectional subordination need not be intentionally produced; in fact, it is frequently the
consequence of the imposition of one burden that interacts with preexisting vulnerabilities to create
yet another dimension of disempowerment.
- Structural Intersectionality and Rape - Women of colour are differently situated in the economic,
social, and political worlds. When reform efforts undertaken on behalf of women neglect this fact,
women of colour are less likely to have their needs met than women who are racially privilege. The
fact that minority women suffer from the effects of multiple subordination, coupled with institutional
expectations based on inappropriate no intersectional contexts, shapes and ultimately limits the
opportunities for meaningful intervention on their behalf. Recognizing the failure to consider
intersectional dynamics may go far toward explaining the high levels of failure, frustration, and burn-
out experienced by counsellors who attempt to meet the needs of minority women victims.
- Political Intersectionality - The concept of political intersectionality highlights the fact that women of
color are situated within at least two subordinated groups that pursue conflicting political agendas. The
need to split one's political between two sometimes opposing groups is a dimension of intersect
empowerment that men of color and white women seldom confront. Indeed their specific raced and
gendered experiences, although intersection define as well as confine the interests of the entire group.
- Among the most troubling political consequences of the failure of an-tiracist and feminist discourses
to address the intersections of race and gender is the fact that, to the extent they can forward the interest
of "people of color" and "women," respectively, one analysis often implicitly denies the validity of the
other. The failure of feminism to interrogate race means that the resistance strategies of feminism will
often replicate and reinforce the subordination of people of color, and the failure of antiracism to
interrogate patriarchy means that antiracism will frequently reproduce the subordination of women.
- Race and culture contribute to the suppression of domestic violence in other ways as well. Women of
color are often reluctant to call the police, a hesitancy likely due to a general unwillingness among
people of color to subject their private lives to the scrutiny and control of a police force that is
frequently hostile. There is also a more generalized community ethic against public intervention, the
product of a desire to create a private world free from the diverse assaults on the public lives of racially

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 subordinated people. The home is not simply a man's castle in the patriarchal sense, but may also
function as a safe haven from the indignities of life in a racist society. However, but for this "safe
haven" in many cases, women of color victimized by violence might otherwise seek help.
- Women working in the field of domestic violence have sometimes reproduced the subordination and
marginalization of women of color by adopting policies, priorities, or strategies of empowerment that
either elide or wholly disregard the particular intersectional needs of women of color. While gen-der,
race, and class intersect to create the particular context in which women of color experience violence,
certain choices made by "allies" can reproduce intersectional subordination within the very resistance
strategies designed to respond to the problem.
- systems of subordination and at the mar- gins of feminism and antiracism. When race and gender
factors are examined in the context of rape, intersectionality can be used to map the ways in which
racism and patriarchy have shaped conceptualizations of rape, to describe the unique vulnerability of
women of color to these converging systems of domination, and to track the marginalization of women
within antiracist and antirape.
- The early emphasis of rape law on the property-like aspect of women's chastity resulted in less
solicitude for rape victims whose chastity had been in some way devalued. Some of the most insidious
assumptions were written into the law, including the early common-law notion that a woman alleging
rape must be able to show that she resisted to the utmost in order to prove that she was raped, rather
than seduced. Women themselves were put on trial, as judge and jury scrutinized their lives to
determine whether they were innocent victims or women who essentially got what they were asking
for. Legal rules thus functioned to legitimize a good woman/bad woman dichotomy in which women
who lead sexually autonomous lives were usually least likely to be vindicated if they were raped.
- Where racial discrimination is framed by LaFree primarily in terms of a contest between Black and
white men over women, the racism experienced by Black women will only be seen in terms of white
male access to them. When rape of Black women by white men is eliminated as a factor in the analysis,
whether for statistical or other reasons, racial discrimination against Black women no longer matters,
since LaFree's analysis involves comparing the "access" of white and Black men to white women. 121
Yet Black women are not discriminated against simply because white men can rape them with little
sanction and be punished less than Black men who rape white women, or because white men who rape
them are not punished the same as white men who rape white women. Black women are also
discriminated against because interracial rape of white women is treated more seriously than inter
racial rape of Black women. But the differential protection that Black and white women receive against
inter racial rape is not seen as racist because inter racial rape does not involve a contest between Black
and white men. In other words, the way the criminal justice system treats rapes of Black women by
Black men and rapes of white women by white men is not seen as raising issues of racism because
Black and white men are not involved with each other's women. In sum, Black women who are raped
are racially discriminated against because their rapists, whether Black or white, are less likely to be
charged.
- Representational Intersectionality - Perhaps the devaluation of women of color implicit here is linked
to h women of color are represented in cultural imagery. Scholars in a w range of fields are increasingly
coming to acknowledge the centrality o sues of representation in the reproduction of racial and gender
hierarchy the United States. Yet current debates over representation continually e the intersection of
race and gender in the popular culture's construction images of women of colour.
- This article has presented intersectionality as a way of framing the various interactions of race and
gender in the context of violence against women of colour.

MODULE 3: CASTE-ING GENDER

Reading: Castes in India

- The caste problem is a vast one, both theoretically and practically. Practically, it is an institution that
portends tremendous consequences. It is a local problem, but one capable of much wider mischief,

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These notes are only for revision, not for preparation.
 for "as long as caste in India does exist, Hindus will hardly intermarry or have any social intercourse
with outsiders; and if Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world
problem."
- Through constant contact and mutual intercourse they evolved a common culture that superseded
their distinctive cultures.
- The amalgamation can never be the sole criterion of homogeneity as predicated of any people.
Ethnically all people are heterogeneous. It is the unity of culture that is the basis of homogeneity. It
has not only a geographic unity, but it has over and above all a deeper and a much more fundamental
unity—the indubitable cultural unity that covers the land from end to end. But it is because of this
homogeneity that Caste becomes a problem so difficult to be explained.
- Definition of Caste: (a) Mr. Senart, a French authority, defines a caste as "a close corporation, in
theory at any rate rigorously hereditary: equipped with a certain traditional and independent
organisation, including a chief and a council, meeting on occasion in assemblies of more or less
plenary authority and joining together at certain festivals: bound together by common occupations,
which relate more particularly to marriage and to food. (b) Mr. Nesfield defines a caste as "a class
of the community which disowns any connection with any other class and can neither intermarry nor
eat nor drink with any but persons of their own community." ; (c) According to Sir H. Risley, "a
caste may be defined as a collection of families or groups of families bearing a common name which
usually denotes or is associated with specific occupation, claiming common descent from a mythical
ancestor, human or divine, professing to follow the same professional callings and are regarded by
those who are competent to give an opinion as forming a single homogeneous community." ; (d) Dr.
Ketkar defines caste as "a social group having two characteristics: (i) membership is confined to
those who are born of members and includes all persons so born; (ii) the members are forbidden by
an inexorable social law to marry outside the group."
- None is complete or correct by itself and all have missed the central point in the mechanism of the
Caste system. Their mistake lies in trying to define caste as an isolated unit by itself, and not as a group
within, and with definite relations to, the system of caste as a whole.
- Limitations of definition: The "idea of pollution" is a characteristic of Caste only in so far as Caste
has a religious flavour.; Mr. Nesfield has mistaken the effect for the cause. Caste, being a self-
enclosed unit, naturally limits social intercourse, including messing etc., to members within it.
Consequently this absence of messing with outsiders is not due to positive prohibition, but is a
natural result of Caste, i.e. exclusiveness. ; Dr. Ketkar - His definition merits consideration, for he
has defined Caste in its relation to a system of Castes, and has concentrated his attention only on
those characteristics which are absolutely necessary for the existence of a Caste within a system,
rightly excluding all others as being secondary or derivative in character.
- This critical evaluation of the various characteristics of Caste leave no doubt that prohibition, or
rather the absence of intermarriage—endogamy, to be concise—is the only one that can be called
the essence of Caste when rightly understood.
- Caste in India means an artificial chopping off of the population into fixed and definite units, each
one prevented from fusing into another through the custom of endogamy. Thus the conclusion is
inevitable that Endogamy is the only characteristic that is peculiar to caste, and if we succeed in
showing how endogamy is maintained, we shall practically have proved the genesis and also the
mechanism of Caste.
- Indian society still savours of the clan system, even though there are no clans; and this can be easily
seen from the law of matrimony which centres round the principle of exogamy, for it is not that
Sapindas (blood-kins) cannot marry, but a marriage even between Sagotras (of the same class) is
regarded as a sacrilege.
- If this tendency is to be strongly counteracted in the interest of Caste formation, it is absolutely
necessary to circumscribe a circle outside which people should not contract marriages.
- The husband may die before the wife and create a surplus woman, who must be disposed of, else
through intermarriage she will violate the endogamy of the group. In like manner the husband may

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These notes are only for revision, not for preparation.
 survive, his wife and be a surplus man, whom the group, while it may sympathise with him for the
sad bereavement, has to dispose of, else he will marry outside the Caste and will break the endogamy.
- First: burn her on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband and get rid of her. This, however, is
rather an impracticable way of solving the problem of sex disparity. She is therefore a menace in
any case, and something must be done to her if she cannot be burned along with her deceased
husband. The second remedy is to enforce widowhood on her for the rest of her life.
- The problem of the surplus man (= widower) is much more important and much more difficult than
that of the surplus woman in a group that desires to make itself into a Caste.
- But man as a maker of injunctions is most often above them all. Such being the case, you cannot
accord the same kind of treatment to a surplus man as you can to a surplus woman in a Caste.
- On the other hand, as is very likely to be the case, if the surplus man remains in the group as an
active participator in group activities, he is a danger to the morals of the group.
- If he observes genuine celibacy and renounces the world, he would not be a menace to the
preservation of Caste endogamy or Caste morals as he undoubtedly would be if he remained a secular
person.
- Regarding the question of the growth and spread of the caste system all over India. The question I have
to answer is: How did the institution of caste spread among the rest of the non-Brahmin population of
the country?
- The nuclei, round which have "formed" the various castes in India, are, according to them: (1)
occupation; (2) survivals of tribal organization etc.; (3) the rise of new belief; (4) cross-breeding; and
(5) migration.
- At some time in the history of the Hindus, the priestly class socially detached itself from the rest of
the body of people and through a closed-door policy became a caste by itself . The other classes being
subject to the law of social division of labour underwent differentiation, some into large, others into
very minute, groups. The Vaishya and Shudra classes were the original inchoate plasm, which formed
the sources of the numerous castes of today. As the military occupation does not very easily lend itself
to very minute sub-division, the Kshatriya class could have differentiated into soldiers and
administrators.
- This sub-division of a society is quite natural. But the unnatural thing about these sub-divisions is that
they have lost the open-door character of the class system and have become self-enclosed units called
castes. The question is: were they compelled to close their doors and become endogamous, or did they
close them of their own accord? I submit that there is a double line of answer: Some closed the door:
Others found it closed against them. The one is a psychological interpretation and the other is
mechanistic, but they are complementary and both are necessary to explain the phenomena of caste-
formation in its entirety.
- Some castes were formed by imitation, the best way, it seems to me, is to find out whether or not the
vital conditions for the formation of castes by imitation exist in the Hindu Society. The conditions for
imitation, according to this standard authority are: (1) that the source of imitation must enjoy prestige
in the group and (2) that there must be "numerous and daily relations" among members of a group.
That these conditions were present in India there is little reason to doubt.
- Dr. Ketkar is correct when he insists that "All the princes whether they belonged to the so-called Aryan
race, or the so-called Dravidian race, were Aryas. Whether a tribe or a family was racially Aryan or
Dravidian was a question which never troubled the people of India, until foreign scholars came in and
began to draw the line. The colour of the skin had long ceased to be a matter of importance"
- It is true that Caste rests on belief, but before belief comes to be the foundation of an institution, the
institution itself needs to be perpetuated and fortified. My study of the Caste problem involves four
main points: (1) that in spite of the composite make-up of the Hindu population, there is a deep cultural
unity; (2) that caste is a parcelling into bits of a larger cultural unit; (3) that there was one caste to start
with; and (4) that classes have become Castes through imitation and excommunication.

Reading: Who is a Woman and who is Dalit’

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 - In several cases, the category ‘women’, excludes Dalit women in India. The notion that ‘all women
are white and all blacks are men’ becomes ‘all women are upper-castes and all Dalits are men’ in the
Indian context.
- The media, while projecting the upper-caste middle class woman figure and invoking the ‘sexual
purity’ of the rape victim, overlooked the endemic caste based sexual violence against Dalit women.
In this case, the innocence of the rape victim was not overtly asserted, but through projection of the
rape victim as an upper-caste/middle class woman whose purity had to be guarded by the caste groups
or even by the state.
- The protests around the Nirbhaya rape had also taken similar tones in that it is the state’s responsibility
to protect woman’s purity. This signifies merely the upper-caste woman’s purity because the category
of Dalit women falls outside these constructions of caste and sexual purity. The silence of mainstream
feminists on the Khairlanji caste atrocity against a Dalit woman is a prime example of the feminist
movement’s exclusion of Dalit women.
- In almost all regional languages in India the word for ‘rape’ is equivalent to the phrase ‘stealing the
honour of’ and since lower caste women by the virtue of their double oppression have no ‘honour’ to
speak of the right to redressal is often denied.
- Many Dalit ideologues have practiced inter-caste marriage in their lives as part of their political
struggle. Whether these ideologues or indeed the Dalit movement has thought about the position of
Dalit women in inter-caste marriage remains impalpable— reinforcing the sense of the saying ‘all the
Dalits are men’. While the upper-caste woman’s marriage with a Dalit man gains more respectability
within the Dalit family by the virtue of her caste position, Dalit women end up being exploited by
upper-caste men and not given the position of a wife.
- The Dalit ideology on inter-caste marriage today has to rethink the Dalit family based on the conditions
of Dalit women. The inheritance of caste identity from the father figure is the result of patriarchy.
- However, casteist patriarchy makes the children of Dalit women unacceptable to the upper-caste
families in inter-caste marriage. The argument that the children of Dalit women who marry upper-
caste men should not use reservations because they inherit the property of the upper-caste father or
that such Dalit women have acted against the interest of their community is based solely on casteist
and patriarchal attitudes.
- Dalit ideology on marriage, therefore, should not only be free from caste but from sexism and
patriarchy as well.

Reading: The Sexual Politics of Caste

- Dalit emancipation was predicated on the existential, political, and ethical reordering of Indian society,
but it also pre- supposed the imagination of the Dalit as a specific kind of political subject. It is the
contention of this book that by examining how people without rights came to possess them, and how
stigmatized subjects were transformed into citizens, we can also learn something about the enabling
conditions and constitutive contradictions of India’s political modernity: the becoming Dalit of the
stigmatized subject is also a genealogy of the Indian political.
- Dalit enfranchisement and the forms of governmental reparation for stigmatized personhood have
produced new forms of vulnerability, together exacerbating the relevance of conjunctural violence to
contemporary Dalit identity.
- They did not demand Hindu inclusion, but instead conceived the untouchable as a unique political
subject, as non-Hindu and Dalit.
- A Dalit history of caste politics brings into view a wider set of relationships—those between state,
caste and community, between nation and minority, and ultimately, between the religious and the
political. The history of how untouchables became Dalits is the story of how alterations in the social
relations of caste became central to debates about equality and discrimination.
- While such works focused on the social practice of distinction and dis- crimination, they also assumed
the ideological power of dominant castes’ conception of social order. That is, they equated power with
the power of upper castes. To maintain that “impurity is a relative concept” and that the untouchable’s
stigma is inherited and irreversible, as Robert Deliège has argued, reveals a gap between the

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These notes are only for revision, not for preparation.
 description of caste stigma at the level of practice and scholarly reproduction of upper-caste ideology
as a descriptor of social reality.
- Dirks argues that Dumont’s orderly caste structure headed by Brahmins was an artifact of colonial
power; that caste and religion were always political.
- The subsequent appearance of caste politics within the Indian social domain was taken to be a category
mistake reflecting Indians’ political backwardness.
- Community is a misleading rubric under which to examine changing forms of power and political
subjectivity, however. Like caste, it is a putatively primordial entity resignified under colonial
conditions as the enabling form, or receptacle, of an aberrant politics
- The Dalit demand for public access was efficacious because it created equivalence between different
practices of caste segregation and across sites of exclusion. Together and separately, such analogical
efforts were supported by new conceptions of civic access. A rights claim required legal adjudication,
however. As Dalit and caste Hindu conflict over practices of social exclusion increased, struggles
moved from polemics and public action into the colonial law courts.
- Case by case, the customary segregation of space was likened to the exclusive rights derived from the
ownership of property.
- The Dalits’ position was that both civic and sacred spaces were al- ready politicized. Both produced
the same effect, Dalits’ civic exclusion.
- Ambedkar’s argument rooted right of access in the public nature of a facility rather than in religious
custom or precedent. A public institution, by definition, envisioned social intercourse across
particularistic or exclusionary identities. This went against the equation of custom with social
separation.

Reading: Rejecting Ideal Womanhood

- This standardized “normative behavior” expected of a sexual violence victim, places undue reliance
on her conduct before, during and after the offence in fixing guilt in the trial. Scholars have noted how
consent in rape cases has been inferred based on discharge during intercourse, absence of bodily
injuries or signs of physical struggle, among other things.
- It was held by the Karnataka High Court that falling asleep after being raped is “unbecoming of an
Indian woman and not the way our women react when they are ravished.” This observation is the
clearest indication that the “normative behavior” expected of a survivor is based on “Indian values”
rather than any empirical evidence which suggests there being any natural or normal behavior in such
cases.
- Brahminical hegemony is maintained by preserving the “chastity and virtue” of Dwij-Savarna (upper
caste) women while sanctioning the violation of Bahujan women by Dwij-Savarna men.
- For Bahujan (caste oppressed) and trans women, relegated to the sphere of vulnerabilities, and often
viewed as lacking virtue and ritual purity owing to their caste positionality, it is virtually impossible
to fall within the ideal victim construct deemed credible by the courts. This makes the Bahujan woman
a default outsider to the modern criminal justice system. Examples: Tukaram, Bhavri Devi, Khairlanji.

MODULE 4: GENDER, SEXUALITY AND DESIRE

Reading: Thinking Sex

- The realm of sexuality also has its own internal politics, inequities, and modes of oppression. They are
imbued with conflicts of interest and political maneuver, both deliberate and incidental. In that sense,
sex is always political. But there are also historical periods in which sexuality is more sharply contested
and more overtly politicized. In such periods, the domain of erotic life is, in effect, renegotiated.
- There were educational and political campaigns to encourage chastity, to eliminate prostitution, and
to discourage masturbation, especially among the young.
- The consolidation of Victorian morality, and its apparatus of social, medical, and legal enforcement,
was the outcome of a long period of struggle whose results have been bitterly contested ever since.

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These notes are only for revision, not for preparation.
 - The idea that masturbation is an unhealthy practice is part of that heritage. During the nineteenth
century, it was commonly thought that ‘premature’ interest in sex, sexual excitement, and, above all,
sexual release, would impair the health and maturation of a child.
- Much of the sex law currently on the books also dates from the nineteenth-century morality crusades.
- Although sodomy statutes date from older strata of the law, when elements of canon law were adopted
into civil codes, most of the laws used to arrest homosexuals and prostitutes come out of the Victorian
campaigns against ‘white slavery’.
- he term ‘sex offender’ sometimes applied to rapists, sometimes to ‘child molesters’, and eventually
functioned as a code for homosexuals. In its bureaucratic, medical, and popular versions, the sex
offender discourse tended to blur distinctions between violent sexual assault and illegal but consensual
acts such as sodomy
- Right-wing opposition to sex education, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, and pre-marital sex
moved from the extreme fringes to the political centre stage after 1977, when right-wing strategists
and fundamentalist religious crusaders discovered that these issues had mass appeal.
- A radical theory of sex must identify, describe, explain, and denounce erotic injustice and sexual
oppression.
- One such axiom is sexual essentialism – the idea that sex is a natural force that exists prior to social
life and shapes institutions
- Sexual essentialism is embedded in the folk wisdoms of Western societies, which consider sex to be
eternally unchanging, asocial, and transhistorical. Dominated for over a century by medicine,
psychiatry, and psychology, the academic study of sex has reproduced essentialism. These fields
classify sex as a property of individuals. It may reside in their hormones or their psyches. It may be
construed as physiological or psychological.
- homosexuality as we know it is a relatively modern institutional complex. 7 Many historians have come
to see the contemporary institutional forms of heterosexuality as an even more recent development
- The interplay of social forces such as ideology, fear, political agitation, legal reform, and medical
practice can change the structure of sexual behaviour and alter its consequences.
- Foucault criticizes the traditional understanding of sexuality as a natural libido yearning to break free
of social constraint. He argues that desires are not pre-existing biological entities, but rather that they
are constituted in the course of historically specific social practices. He emphasizes the generative
aspects of the social organization of sex rather than its repressive elements by pointing out that new
sexualities are constantly produced.
- he new scholarship on sexual behaviour has given sex a history and created a constructivist alternative
to sexual essentialism. Underlying this body of work is an assumption that sexuality is constituted in
society and history, not biologically ordained.8 This does not mean the biological capacities are not
prerequisites for human sexuality. It does mean that human sexuality is not comprehensible in purely
biological term
- The body, the brain, the genitalia, and the capacity for language are necessary for human sexuality.
But they do not determine its content, its experiences, or its institutional forms. Moreover, we never
encounter the body unmediated by the meanings that cultures give to it.
- Sexuality in western societies has been structured within an extremely punitive social framework, and
has been subjected to very real formal and informal controls.
- Most radical thought about sex has been embedded within a model of the instincts and their restraints.
Concepts of sexual oppression have been lodged within that more biological understanding of
sexuality.
- hese are sex negativity, the fallacy of misplaced scale, the hierarchical valuation of sex acts, the domino
theory of sexual peril, and the lack of a concept of benign sexual variation.
- Western cultures generally consider sex to be a dangerous, destructive, negative force
- It construes and judges almost any sexual practice in terms of its worst possible expression. Sex is
presumed guilty until proven innocent.

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These notes are only for revision, not for preparation.
 - What I call the fallacy of misplaced scale is a corollary of sex negativity. Susan Sontag once
commented that since Christianity focused ‘on sexual behaviour as the root of virtue, everything
pertaining to sex has been a “special case” in our culture’
- Individuals whose behaviour stands high in this hierarchy are rewarded with certified mental health,
respectability, legality, social and physical mobility, institutional support, and material benefits. As
sexual behaviours or occupations fall lower on the scale, the individuals who practice them are
subjected to a presumption of mental illness, disreputability, criminality, restricted social and physical
mobility, loss of institutional support, and economic sanctions.
- Sex laws derived from Biblical pronouncements were aimed at preventing the acquisition of the wrong
kinds of affinal partners: consanguineous kin (incest), the same gender (homosexuality), or the wrong
species (bestiality). When medicine and psychiatry acquired extensive powers over sexuality, they
were less concerned with unsuitable mates than with unfit forms of desire.
- Low-status sex practices are vilified as mental diseases or symptoms of defective personality
integration. Sexual masochism with self-destructive personality patterns, sexual sadism with
emotional aggression, and homoeroticism with immaturity. These terminological muddles have
become powerful stereotypes that are indiscriminately applied to individuals on the basis of their
sexual orientations.
- Popular culture is permeated with ideas that erotic variety is dangerous, unhealthy, depraved, and a
menace to everything from small children to national security.
- According to this system, sexuality that is ‘good’, ‘normal’, and ‘natural’ should ideally be
heterosexual, marital, monogamous, reproductive, and non-commercial. It should be coupled,
relational, within the same generation, and occur at home.
- Bad sex may be homosexual, unmarried, promiscuous, non-procreative, or commercial. It may be
masturbatory or take place at orgies, may be casual, may cross generational lines, and may take place
in ‘public’, or at least in the bushes or the baths. It may involve the use of pornography, fetish objects,
sex toys, or unusual roles (see Figure 9.1).
- Figure 9.2 diagrams another aspect of the sexual hierarchy: the need to draw and maintain an imaginary
line between good and bad sex. Most of the discourses on sex, be they religious, psychiatric, popular,
or political, delimit a very small portion of human sexual capacity as sanctifiable, safe, healthy, mature,
legal, or politically correct.
- All these models assume a domino theory of sexual peril.
- This kind of sexual morality has more in common with ideologies of racism than with true ethics. It
grants virtue to the dominant groups, and relegates vice to the underprivileged. A democratic morality
should judge sexual acts by the way partners treat one another, the level of mutual consideration, the
presence or absence of coercion, and quantity and quality of the pleasures they provide. Whether sex
acts are gay or straight, coupled or in groups, naked or in underwear, commercial or free, with or
without video, should not be ethical concerns.
- For religion, the ideal is procreative marriage. For psychology, it is mature heterosexuality.
- Like homosexuals, prostitutes are a criminal sexual population stigmatized on the basis of sexual
activity. Prostitutes and male homosexuals are the primary prey of vice police everywhere.
- Sex law is the most adamantine instrument of sexual stratification and erotic persecution. The state
routinely intervenes in sexual behaviour at a level that would not be tolerated in other areas of social
life. Most people are unaware of the extent of sex law, the quantity and qualities of illegal sexual
behaviour, and the punitive character of legal sanctions.
- Sex law is harsh. The penalties for violating sex statutes are universally out of proportion to any social
or individual harm. A single act of consensual but illicit sex, such as placing one’s lips upon the
genitalia of an enthusiastic partner, is punished in many states with more severity than rape, battery,
or murder. Each such genital kiss, each lewd caress, is a separate crime.
- Sex law is not a perfect reflection of the prevailing moral evaluations of sexual conduct. Sexual
variation per se is more specifically policed by the mental-health professions, popular ideology, and
extra-legal social practice.

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These notes are only for revision, not for preparation.
 - The law is especially ferocious in maintaining the boundary between childhood ‘innocence’ and ‘adult’
sexuality. Rather than recognizing the sexuality of the young, and attempting to provide for it in a
caring and responsible manner, our culture denies and punishes erotic interest and activity by anyone
under the local age of consent. The amount of law devoted to protecting young people from premature
exposure to sexuality is breath-taking.
- Adults who deviate too much from conventional standards of sexual conduct are often denied contact
with the young, even their own. Custody laws permit the state to steal the children of anyone whose
erotic activities appear questionable to a judge presiding over family court matters. Countless lesbians,
gay men, prostitutes, swingers, sex workers, and ‘promiscuous’ women have been declared unfit
parents under such provisions.
- The only adult sexual behaviour that is legal in every state is the placement of the penis in the vagina
in wedlock
- Laws like these criminalize sexual behaviour that is freely chosen and avidly sought. The ideology
embodied in them reflects the value hierarchies discussed above. That is, some sex acts are considered
to be so intrinsically vile that no one should be allowed under any circumstance to perform them.
- The state also upholds the sexual hierarchy through bureaucratic regulation. Immigration policy still
prohibits the admission of homosexuals (and other sexual ‘deviates’) into the United States. Military
regulations bar homosexuals from serving in the armed forces. The fact that gay people cannot legally
marry means that they cannot enjoy the same legal rights as heterosexuals in many matters, including
inheritance, taxation, protection from testimony in court, and the acquisition of citizenship for foreign
partners.
- Families play a crucial role in enforcing sexual conformity. Much social pressure is brought to bear to
deny erotic dissidents the comforts and resources that families provide. Popular ideology holds that
families are not supposed to produce or harbor erotic non-conformity.
- The system of sexual stratification provides easy victims who lack the power to defend themselves,
and a preexisting apparatus for controlling their movements and curtailing their freedoms. The stigma
against sexual dissidents renders them morally defenceless. Every moral panic has consequences on
two levels. The target population suffers most, but everyone is affected by the social and legal changes.
- In the absence of a more articulated radical theory of sex, most progressives have turned to feminism
for guidance. But the relationship between feminism and sex is complex. Because sexuality is a nexus
of relationships between genders, much of the oppression of women is borne by, mediated through,
and constituted within, sexuality. Feminism has always been vitally interested in sex. But there have
been two strains of feminist thought on the subject. One tendency has criticized the restrictions on
women’s sexual behaviour and denounced the high costs imposed on women for being sexually active.
This tradition of feminist sexual thought has called for a sexual liberation that would work for women
as well as for men. The second tendency has considered sexual liberalization to be inherently a mere
extension of male privilege. This tradition resonates with conservative, anti- sexual discourse. With
the adv
- This discourse on sexuality is less a sexology than a demonology. It presents most sexual behaviour
in the worst possible light. Its descriptions of erotic conduct always use the worst available example
as if it were representative. It presents the most disgusting pornography, the most exploited forms of
prostitution, and the least palatable or most shocking manifestations of sexual variation.
- Psychology is the last resort of those who refuse to acknowledge that sexual dissidents are as conscious
and free as any other group of sexual actors. If deviants are not responding to the manipulations of the
social system, then perhaps the source of their incomprehensible choices can be found in a bad
childhood, unsuccessful socialization, or inadequate identity formation.
- The relationship between feminism and a radical theory of sexual oppression is similar. Feminist
conceptual tools were developed to detect and analyse gender-based hierarchies. To the extent that
these overlap with erotic stratifications, feminist theory has some explanatory power. But as issues
become less those of gender and more those of sexuality, feminist analysis becomes misleading and
often irrelevant. Feminist thought simply lacks angles of vision which can fully encompass the social

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These notes are only for revision, not for preparation.
 organization of sexuality. The criteria of relevance in feminist thought do not allow it to see or assess
critical power relations in the area of sexuality.
- Like gender, sexuality is political. It is organized into systems of power, which reward and encourage
some individuals and activities, while punishing and suppressing others. Like the capitalist
organization of labour and its distribution of rewards and powers, the modern sexual system has been
the object of political struggle since it emerged and as it has evolved. But if the disputes between
labour and capital are mystified, sexual conflicts are completely camouflaged.
- If sex is taken too seriously, sexual persecution is not taken seriously enough. There is systematic
mistreatment of individuals and communities on the basis of erotic taste or behaviour. There are serious
penalties for belonging to the various sexual occupational castes. The sexuality of the young is denied,
adult sexuality is often treated like a variety of nuclear waste, and the graphic representation of sex
takes place in a mire of legal and social circumlocution. Specific populations bear the brunt of the
current system of erotic power, but their persecution upholds a system that affects everyone.

Please do the complete readings. These are not the important readings. Do not skip other material. 16
These notes are only for revision, not for preparation.