What are the political implications of biological essentialism.
They are generally politically conservative because these arguments tend to postulate that the statue quo of the unchangeable statue of nature.
What evidence is there for the claim that women's evolutionary "strategy" might be promiscuity
Women are the only primate females who are potentially sexually receptive even when they are not fertile.
What are the three areas from which current biological theories of gender difference draw their evidence
Brain research, endocrinology all research on sex hormones, and evolutionary theory.
What is a problem with the argument that rape is an evolutionary adaptation designed to ensure maximal reproduction
Rape is motivated by rage more than lust. Many rape victims are male. Many women are rapes who are outside of reproductive age.
All of the above
What have the studies of testosterone and aggression revealed?
Testosterone does not cause aggression, but rather amplifies the aggression that is already there.
What is the "biological determinism" theory of gender?
The theory that men and women are hard wired to be different.
What is the interplanetary theory of gender difference?
Men and women are from two different planets.
What is the difference between "sex" and "gender"
"Sex" refers to physiological differences between men and women; "gender" refers to differences that various cultures attach to physiological sexual differences.
What is wrong with calling the other sex the "opposite" sex?
It obscures the many ways we are alike
What is the Oedipal crisis?
The way the boy comes to heterosexuality by identifying with his father rather than his mother and learning to desire someone like his mother.
What did terman and Miles's research enable psychologists to do?
Diagnose individuals with inappropriate gender traits and devise strategies to facilitate the adoption of more appropriate strategies.
What mistake does sex rolw theory make about it's understanding of the location of gender
It assumes that only individuals are gendered and ignores the way in which gender organizes the institutions of our lives
How did talcott parsons shift the emphasis of sex role research?
By considering the need of society for individuals to fill specific slots rather than the need of the infant to be coming either masculine or feminine
What are the three stages a child experiences along the way to adult sexuality according to Freud?
Topographic, structural, and economic
What does it mean to say that gender identity is socially constructed?
Our identities are a fluid assemblage of the meanings and behaviors that we construct from the values, images, and prescriptions we find in the world around us.
What are the four ways gender varies according to a social constructionist perspective?
By culture over time in history over the course of a life, and within culture based on other axes of difference such as class and race.
How does power play a part in gender difference?
It is about the power men as a group have over women as a group, as well as the power some men have over other men.(or women have over other women)
According to the sociological point of view would we be any safer if women took over powerful roles in political institutions.
No because the office itself demands a certain type of behavior independent of the gender of the person who holds it.
What does west and Zimmermans argument mean the gender is something we do?
Gender is less a component of identity fixed static that we take with us into our interactions Bennett is the product of those interactions
What is the sexual double standard
The fact that men stand to gain status and women to lose status from sexual experience
What is one problem with the studies that easily identify great differences in men's and women's styles of friendship
They risk ignoring styles of intimacy because feminine expressions of intimacy now define the criteria for evaluation
What is one implication of transgenderism?
It suggests the gender is not determined by Biology
What does the history of friendship show about the gendering of intimacy
That it was once men not women who were seen as uniquely capable of forming intense emotional bonds with others
What does it mean to say that sexuality has become masculinized
The model of appropriate sexual behavior has come to resemble what we label as traditionally masculine models of sexuality
