SUMMER SESSION

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GNDR_ST 390-0 : Social Regulation of Sex, Gender, and Sexualities

Description

Gay-bashing. Conversion therapy. ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law. The overturning of Roe v. Wade. Heteronormative marriages. “Corrective” rape. Forced marriage. Female genital mutilation/cutting. Abuse and misuse of science.Across space and time, there have been many instances wherein sex, gender, and/or sexualities are put on the pedestal as subjects of contentions. In this course, we will explore the various mechanisms that regulate, control, surveil, and discipline individuals’ sex, gender, and/or sexualities.

In the first part of the course, we will survey theoretical frameworks that examine the reasoning, motives, and other related analytics on social regulation of sex, gender, and sexualities. In the second part of the course, we will draw on ethnographic and empirical discussions on instances pertaining to social regulation of sex, gender, and sexualities in different settings, including the family, formal education system, and religious communities. In the last part of the course, we will situate our theoretical and empirical discussions to date into the broader social, political, cultural, and economic contexts to interrogate why people, society, and the state regulate sex, gender, and sexualities. Among others, we will look into the subject of moral panic, colonization and social regulation of sexualities, and transnational contexts of homophobic bylaws in the last part of the course.