Gender, Difference and Identity

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Gender, Difference and Identity

• -Multiracial feminism
• -Gender and Identity

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Multiracial Feminism

• Definitional Issues
• Zinn and Dill- not multicultural feminism
• social location-location in a social structure
• Distinguishing features
• interlocking inequalities (matrix of domination)
  simultaneity of systems
• intersectionality- not Pop-beads
• relational nature of dominance and
  subordination-race as an important axis
• structure and agency
• methodological variety/range
• draws on lived experience of diverse women-
  tension between commonalities and differences

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Multiracial Feminism cntd

• Standpoint Theory - A Theory of Knowledge
  (Epistemology)
• historically shared group-based experiences
• reconstitute this theory to reflect power/social
  structure
• example residential racial segregation
• distinctive contexts experienced or interpreted
  differently a similar frame of reference or angle

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Burnham Doing Double Duty
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Gender and Identity

• Essentialism-one is born with sex (sexgender)
  fixed shared across group- attributes a basic
  essence to a category
• socialization- not innate, learned through
  observation, imitation, interaction-schemas
• stereotypes
• processes of learning not social context

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Gender and Identity cntd.

• social construction-interaction critical to the
  construction of identity not just in childhood-
  constant-in every interaction
• gender identity accomplished by individual
  everyday behavior and display this sustains
  everyday reality of gender- sex not dichotomous
  (micro-level)
• structuralism-macro-level patterns
• power and inequality (who constructs?)

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