TY - JOUR AU - McGann, PJ PY - 2010/04/26 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - DESIRE/GENDER/POWER JF - TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology JA - TRAILS VL - IS - SE - DO - UR - https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/desiregenderpower SP - AB - All societies make distinctions among their members on the basis of presumably "natural" sexual differences. However, the way in which bodies are differentiated, and the meanings attributed to them, vary. This course is an advanced exploration of sex, gender, and sexuality as fundamental organizing principles of individual bodies and institutionalized social life. Students will be encouraged to move beyond conceptions such as "sex-" or "gender-roles," toward an understanding of sex/gender/desire as relations of difference located in patterned social arrangements that in turn connect to other cross-cutting systems of power (such as race, class, and disability). Biological distinctions between the sexes will be problematized that we may consider the ways in which these "natural" differences are socially created and sustained, then linked to forms of desire. Through sociological case studies and historical reports we will explore the multiple ways in which sex, gender, and desire pattern one’s life chances and structure experience. Specific topics of study include theories of becoming gendered; intersexuality and transgenderism; the socially constructed nature of human sexuality; how sexuality has become an increasingly central part of personal identity in the West; links between gender, race, class, disability, and sexuality; sport as a gendering institution; and violence and the gender order. ER -