- Summary
- Contents
- Subject index
This accessible introduction to gender and sexuality theory offers a comprehensive overview and critique of the key contemporary literature and debates in feminism, sexuality studies and men's studies. Chris Beasley's clear and concise introduction combines a wide-ranging survey of the major theorists and key concepts in an ever-growing and often passionately debated field. The book contextualizes a wide range of feminist perspectives, including: modernist, liberal, postmodern, queer and gender difference feminism; and in the realm of sexuality studies covers modernist liberationism, social constructionism, transgender theorising and queer theory. In men's studies, Chris Beasley examines areas of debate ranging from gender and masculinity to questions of race, ethnicity, imperialism and gay masculinities. Interconnections between the subfields are highlighted, and Beasley considers the implications of body theory ...
Chapter 12: Social Constructionism: Jackson, Weeks
Social Constructionism: Jackson, Weeks
I spent some time in the section dealing with Feminism (Part 1) discussing Modernist thinking, including Emancipatory Humanist, Gender Difference, and Race/ethnicity/imperialism perspectives. I mentioned the Social Constructionist approach only in passing (see Chapter 1) but return to it here largely because, while it has a diminished significance in Feminism (Jackson, 1998a: 25), the approach remains very important in Sexuality (and Masculinity) Studies. Social Constructionism, on the one hand, resists any set or fixed content to identities (rejects, for example, any notion of ‘woman’ or ‘lesbian’ as having certain set qualities), but also refuses the Postmodern antagonism to identity. Gender and sexuality are not, within this framework, simply a matter of identity differences but of hierarchical social division ...
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