Perceiving gender identities and understanding bodies and and sexualities for higher education through 2 lectures by Dr Poulami Aich Mukherjee

1. PERCEPTION OF GENDER
Lecture 1
Bodies and Sexualities
Dr Poulami Aich Mukherjee
mepoulami@gmail.com

2. Embodiment in Gender Studies
• Embodiment may be defined as the ways in which cultural ideals
of gender in a given society create expectations for and influence
the form of our bodies. It shows how bodies bear the imprint of
gender inequalities
• The more physically and mentally free and socially empowered a
human feels, the more likely he/she is to experience a positive
embodiment, defined as encompassing agency, self-care, and
joyfulness
• Embodiment means to relate to the body as a subject, rather than
an object. It is the process and state of being sensitised or re-
sensitised by bringing the whole body online and aligned with the
way you want to feel, act and express yourself

3. 1. Body in Biomedicine: the goal of biomedicine is to promote human health and
healing. Includes many biomedical disciplines and areas of specialty that typically contain the
„bio-‟ prefix such as molecular biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, cell biology,
embryology, nano-biotechnology, biological engineering, laboratory medical biology,
cytogenetics, genetics, gene therapy, bioinformatics etc.
2. Labouring Body: is a combination of productive and reproductive functions, which
act together to keep the market forces running. The relationship between productive and
reproductive work, only the time. allocated to productive work is considered valuable.
Housework is therefore. a key element in the process of reproduction of labourers from
which. surplus value is taken
3. Racialized Body: The term „racialized bodies‟ means the multiple processes whereby
bodies come to be seen as „having‟ a racial identity. „race‟ is an effect of this process, rather
than its origin or cause.
4. Performative Body: The human body as cultural object always has and is a
performing subject, which binds the political with the theatrical, shows the construction of
ethnicity and technology, unveils private and public spaces, transgresses race and gender, and
finally becomes a medium that overcomes the borders of art and life
5. Commodified Body: historically well-documented forms of body commodification
include slavery and other oppressive labor practices, female reproduction etc. The
reproductive medicine, transplant surgery, and bioethics but also journalism and other
cultural specialists are the partners in commodification of live and dead human organisms
Embodiment in Gender Studies

4. Abled Bodies and Disability
What is ‘ableism’?
– Ableism is a word for unfairly favouring non-disabled people
– Ableism means prioritising the needs of non-disabled people. In
an ableist society, it‟s assumed that the “normal” way to live is as
a non-disabled person
– It is ableist to believe that non-disabled people are more valuable
to society than disabled people
What is ‘disablism’?
– Disablism is a word for negative opinions, behaviour or abuse
against disabled people.
– You are being disablist if you treat someone differently, or
choose to offend or hurt someone, because of their disability

5. Abled Bodies and Disability
• Disablism is a newer word. Some disability activists prefer the word
“disablism” to “ableism” because they believe it makes it clear that
disablism has nothing to do with the disabled person‟s “ability”
• It‟s a form of discrimination like racism or sexism
• In general, ableism can be used to describe the way society and people
tend to favour non-disabled people
• Disablism can be used to describe more direct, conscious acts of
discrimination or abuse against disabled people

6. Body & Motherhood
What is the concept of motherhood?
• Motherhood is the state of being a mother. A person enters
motherhood when they become a mother.
• This most commonly happens when their child is born, but it can
also happen through adoption or by marrying or becoming a
partner to someone with children.
• Motherhood is a gender-specific version of the term parenthood
What is the feminist critique of motherhood?
• Feminists argued that throughout human history, maternal
experience has been defined and written by patriarchal culture.
• Religion, art, medicine, psychoanalysis, and other bastions of male
power have objectified motherhood, have disregarded female
subjectivity, and have silenced the voice of the mother.

7. Assisted Reproductive Technology
(ART)
• Artificial insemination
• Artificial reproduction
• Cloning
• Cytoplasmic transfer
• Cryo-preservation of sperm, oocytes, embryos
• Embryo transfer
• Fertility medication
• Hormone treatment
• In vitro fertilization
• Intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection
• In vitro generated gametes
• Preim-plantation genetic diagnosis
• Same-sex Procreation

8. Reproductive Technologies/ Surrogacy
• Surrogacy is often thought to be a „treatment‟ option for the
infertile or an alternative to adoption, and so to be celebrated in
fulfilling people‟s desires to be parents.
• Surrogacy also brings a wealth of more complex ethical issues
around gender, labour, payment, exploitation and inequality.
• When a surrogate agrees to carry a pregnancy for another person
(s), new relationships are formed. Surrogacy is an arrangement or
agreement whereby a woman agrees to carry a pregnancy for
another person or persons, who will later become the new-born
child's future parent(s).
• Some Feminists believe that surrogacy is one of the many
reproductive choices that women should be free to make.
• Few Feminists see surrogacy as a form of slavery or prostitution
in which the surrogate is exploited through the enticements of
money, the social expectation of self-sacrifice, or both

9. Conclusion
• Disciplining gendered bodies is the practice of conforming one's body to
society‟s standards and expectations
• There are various visible ways in which people and cultures consciously and
unconsciously maintain binary heteronormative norms, which involve choices
of female or male gender actions and performances
• The more physically and mentally free and socially empowered a woman feels,
the more likely she is to experience a positive embodiment, defined as
encompassing agency, self-care, and joyfulness
• Embodiment may be defined as the ways in which cultural ideals of gender in
a given society create expectations for and influence the form of our bodies
• It shows how bodies bear the imprint of gender inequalities

10. Thank You

11. PERCEPTION OF GENDER
Lecture 2
Prof Judith Butler on Bodies and Sexualities:
Dr Poulami Aich Mukherjee
mepoulami@gmail.com

12. Judith Butler (24 February 1956)
‘Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act, a ‘doing’ rather
than a ‘being’. There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that
identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its
results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called
‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender,
with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no
distinction at all.’
Judith Butler

13. Judith Butler
‘because there is neither an ‘essence’ that gender expresses or externalizes
nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires, and because gender is not a
fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those
acts, there would be no gender at all.’ –Butler (1990)
‘if gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or
produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no
preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there
would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the
postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory
fiction.’ –Butler (1990)
‘Femininity is thus not the product of a choice, but the forcible citation of
a norm, one whose complex historicity is indissociable from relations of
discipline, regulation, punishment.’ –Butler (1996)
‘There is no ‘one’ who takes on a gender norm. On the contrary, this
citation of the gender norm is necessary in order to qualify as a ‘one,’ to
become viable as a ‘one,’ where subject formation is dependent on the prior
operation of legitimating gender norms.’ –Butler (1996)

14. Gender Performitivity Theory

15. Gender Performitivity Theory

16. Gender Performitivity Theory

17. Performing Gender
 ‘Gender has no essential existence. It is not innate or static, but a fluid
concept determined historically, culturally, and socially. Gender is not fact.’
 ‘Dominant ideas of gender become normalized through repetition,
habituation, and enculturation. We take them as ‘natural fact’ simply
because we have been habituated to do so.’
 ‘Gender is a set of repeated ‘acts’ and only reified to the extent that its
performed.’
 ‘Those who do not conform to the normalized, dominant ideas of gender
are typically ostracized.’

18. Phenomenology
 Study of the development of human consciousness and self-awareness as a
preface to or a part of philosophy.
 Our social reality is constituted, or created, through repeated, sanctioned
acts carried out through the language, gesture, behavior, etc of ‘social
agents’ (us).
 For Butler, the ‘social agent’ is the object of constitution, rather than the
active subject.
 Because gender is constituted, that also means it can be constituted
differently! Meaning we can dismantle the normalized ‘man/woman’
binary to which we are limited.

19. The Body
 De Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty: ‘Our bodies have physicality, but our
definitions and understandings of that physicality is ultimately socially
determined.’
 Butler: ‘The body is an active process and is culturally and historically
situated, thus changeable.’
 Butler: ‘Gender is not passively scripted on the body...Gender is what is put
on, invariably, under constraint, daily and incessantly, with anxiety and
pleasure’.

20. Intersectionality
 Intersectionality is a theoretical framework rooted in the premise that
human experience is jointly shaped by multiple social positions like race,
gender and cannot be adequately understood by considering social
positions independently.
 ‘There is a good deal about the diverse experiences of women that is
being expressed and still needs to be expressed’
 ‘Just as gender has no essentialised, discrete categories, there is no
essentialised experience of being a specific gender.’
 ‘A corporeal field of cultural play’.
 What connections can we see between Butler’s ideas of ‘performing’
gender and the idea of performing race? Especially the power dynamic in
our readings of those who can ‘perform’ whiteness?

21. David Gauntlett
‘Culture compels us to take sex as a biological given, which then dictates
a given gender and sexual desires…we should not accept that any of
these follow from each other—we should shatter the imagined
connections’ -David Gauntlett

22. Conclusion
 ‘Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed’
 ‘We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and
part of a more expansive world’
 ‘Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread’
 ‘We form ourselves within the vocabularies that we did not choose, and sometimes
we have to reject those vocabularies, or actively develop new ones’
 ‘All of us, as bodies, are in the active position of figuring out how to live with
and against the constructions – or norms – that help to form us’
 ‘To operate within the matrix of power is not the same as to replicate
uncritically relations of domination’
 ‘As we interpret ourselves differently, we also live ourselves differently’
 ‘All gender is dragged out of the shadows of anonymity, exposed to the public
gaze and made visible through the stylization of bodily acts’
 ‘We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of
being a man or being a woman’

23. Thank You