IB Philosophy 8.3 Gender Key Definitions

Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, identities, and expectations that a given society associates with being male, female, or other categories.

Gender identity is an individual's internal sense of their own gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth or to the gender roles expected by society.

Gender performativity is Judith Butler's thesis that gender is not an innate quality but a repeated performance of socially scripted acts, where there is no pre-existing identity behind these performances because the identity is constituted by the very acts said to express it.

Gendered socialisation describes the process through which children learn and internalise the behaviours, attitudes, and identities that their culture defines as appropriate for their sex. De Beauvoir argues this channels girls away from autonomy and self-assertion and toward passivity, compliance, and dependence.

Raewyn Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity describes the culturally idealised form of masculinity that dominates a given society, subordinating both femininity and alternative masculinities while being embodied by relatively few actual men.

Heteronormativity is the assumption that heterosexuality is the default, natural, and normal form of sexual orientation, structuring social institutions and cultural expectations so that non-heterosexual identities appear deviant or marginal.

Intersectionality is a framework developed by Kimberle Crenshaw showing that forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, and classism overlap and interact, producing distinct experiences of disadvantage that cannot be understood by examining each category in isolation.

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the fundamental nature of reality, including questions about existence, substance, causation, and the relationship between mind and body. Ayer argues that metaphysical statements are cognitively meaningless because they are neither analytic nor empirically verifiable.

On Kate Manne's analysis, misogyny is not simply hatred of women but the enforcement mechanism of a patriarchal social order that polices and punishes women who violate gendered norms and expectations. It is distinguished from sexism, which provides the ideological justification for gender hierarchy.

In feminist philosophy, objectification occurs when a person is treated as a thing, reducing them to their body, appearance, or usefulness. Nussbaum identified seven forms, including instrumentality, denial of autonomy, and fungibility, all of which deny the full humanity and agency of the person.

Role distribution is the social process by which different tasks, responsibilities, and behaviours are allocated to individuals based on their gender, creating distinct masculine and feminine spheres.

Role identification is the psychological process by which individuals come to see particular social roles as part of who they are, internalising the expectations associated with those roles.

the biological classification of organisms as male, female, or intersex, typically based on chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive anatomy.

Sexism is the systematic disadvantaging of individuals on the basis of sex or gender, operating through individual attitudes, institutional practices, and cultural norms that treat one gender as inferior or subordinate.

Social constructionism about gender is the thesis that gender categories and gender identity are produced by social practices, institutions, and cultural norms rather than determined by biology or nature.