Based on data from participant observation and in-depth interviews with women who live in a relatively homogeneous small, rural town, this article examines how women act to produce social class representations. By presenting symbols of socioeconomic positions, including behaviors, tastes, and values, during their work, the women in the town present themselves as working, middle, or upper class women. Through these representations, they secure a place within the town's subjective social class system.

This paper provides an analysis of the dynamics of secrecy and the secrets business. Secrets are defined as bits of information that, for one reason or another, are kept hidden or controlled so as to elude attention, observation or comprehension. Three conceptual lenses — the micro-analytic focusing on self-deception, the social-psychological focusing on self-disclosure, and the macro-analytic focusing on public secrets — are probed. Secrecy at each of the three levels is revealed to be a janusfaced issue providing undeniable benefits (...) to Homo sapiens in their efforts to adapt to a changing world yet also creates undeniable problems. While secrecy provides the occasion for the demonstration of loyalty and intimacy, it also generates the conditions for exclusion and betrayal. The contemporary impulse to create public forums in which all is revealed, in which sunlight prevails, is too simple a panacea to those who use the topic of secrecy as an occasion to correct social, political and economic problems. (shrink)

This article brings together two case studies that examine how nontransgender people, “gender normals,” interact with transgender people to highlight the connections between doing gender and heteronormativity. By contrasting public and private interactions that range from nonsexual to sexualized to sexual, the authors show how gender and sexuality are inextricably tied together. The authors demonstrate that the criteria for membership in a gender category are significantly different in social versus sexual circumstances. While gender is presumed to reflect biological sex in (...) all social interactions, the importance of doing gender in a way that represents the shape of one's genitals is heightened in sexual and sexualized situations. Responses to perceived failures to fulfill gender criteria in sexual and sexualized relationships are themselves gendered; men and women select different targets for and utilize gendered tactics to accomplish the policing of supposedly natural gender boundaries and to repair breaches to heteronormativity. (shrink)

In this article I undertake an analysis of erotic sexual intercourse - commonly, and more accurately, designated as love-making - in the spirit of Durkheim's social analysis of religion. Thus, based on a phenomenological semiotic analysis of the peculiar things we do and feel in the course of making love, I propose, first, to uncover the implicit `logic' that generates and governs these distinctly sociable doings and sociable feelings. Second, I proceed to suggest that the sameself logic, albeit in an (...) attenuated version, also generates and governs the broad class of `social occasions proper', and that this homology calls for gathering erotic and social occasions under one and the same rubric, which I propose to call the `socio-erotic' (since the term `social' has been denatured through overuse). Third, I conclude with a discussion of how socio-erotic domains fit into a larger world structured and governed mainly by interest-driven and power-driven conflictual fields. (shrink)

We present an investigation of the ways in which speakers' subjective perspectives are likely to affect the meaning of gradable adjectives like tall or heavy. We present the results of a study showing that people tend to use themselves as a yardstick when ascribing these adjectives to human figures of varied measurements: subjects' height and weight requirements for applying tall and heavy are found to be positively correlated with their personal measurements. We draw more general lessons regarding the definition of (...) subjectivity and the ways in which a standard of comparison and a significant deviation from that standard are specified. (shrink)

This article examines the construction of gender within men's accounts of domestic violence. Analyses of in-depth interviews conducted with 33 domestically violent heterosexual men indicate that these batterers used diverse strategies to present themselves as nonviolent, capable, and rational men. Respondents performed gender by contrasting effectual male violence with ineffectual female violence, by claiming that female partners were responsible for the violence in their relationships and by constructing men as victims of a biased criminal justice system. This study suggests that (...) violence against female partners is a means by which batterers reproduce a binary framework of gender. (shrink)

In this article, I examine how gay Christian men constructed compensatory manhood acts. Based on more than 450 hours of fieldwork in a southeastern LGBT Christian organization, I analyze how a group of gay men, responding to sexist, heterosexist, and religious stigma, as well as the acquisition of a new pastor, constructed identities as gay Christian men by emphasizing paternal stewardship, stressing emotional control and inherent rationality, and defining intimate relationships in a Christian manner. These subordinated men, regardless of their (...) intentions, collaboratively drew on and reproduced cultural notions that facilitate and justify the subordination of women and sexual minorities. Specifically, their compensatory manhood acts symbolically positioned them as superior to supposedly promiscuous, self-centered, and effeminate others. In conclusion, I draw out implications for understanding how groups of gay Christian men engage in compensatory manhood acts, and the consequences these actions have for the reproduction of inequality. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the ways gendered frames shift to make room for societal changes while maintaining existing pillars of systemic gender inequality. Utilizing the case of U.S. media representations of transgender people who reproduce, we analyze how media outlets make room for increasing societal recognition of transgender people and maintain cisnormative and repronormative traditions and beliefs in the process. Specifically, we outline how these media outlets accomplish both outcomes in two ways. First, they reinforce cisgender-based repronormativity via conceptualizations (...) of transgender reproduction as new and occurring in contrast to normative, cisgender reproduction. Second, they create a transnormative reproductive subject, which establishes a new socially sanctioned script for what it means to be transgender and what types of transgender experience may be recognized or accepted in mainstream society. In conclusion, we draw out implications for understanding how social authorities may shift existing gender frames to make room for changes in society while at the same time maintaining normative beliefs. These normative beliefs continue to facilitate societal patterns of gender inequality within such new frames. (shrink)

This article explores “determining gender,” the umbrella term for social practices of placing others in gender categories. We draw on three case studies showcasing moments of conflict over who counts as a man and who counts as a woman: public debates over the expansion of transgender employment rights, policies determining eligibility of transgender people for competitive sports, and proposals to remove the genital surgery requirement for a change of sex marker on birth certificates. We show that criteria for determining gender (...) differ across social spaces. Gender-integrated spaces are more likely to use identity-based criteria, while gender-segregated spaces, like the sexual spaces we have previously examined, are more likely to use biology-based criteria. In addition, because of beliefs that women are inherently vulnerable and men are dangerous, “men’s” and “women’s” spaces are not policed equally—making access to women’s spaces central to debates over transgender rights. (shrink)

To reduce sex differences in employment outcomes, we must examine them in the context of the sex-gender hierarchy. The conventional explanation for wage gap—job segregation—is incorrect because it ignores men's incentive to preserve their advantages and their ability to do so by establishing the rules that distribute rewards. The primary method through which all dominant groups maintain their hegemony is by differentiating the subordinate group and defining it as inferior and hence meriting inferior treatment. My argument implies that neither sex-integrating (...) jobs nor implementing comparable worth will markedly improve women's employment status because men can subvert these mechanisms or even change the rules by which rewards are allocated. As evidence, I show that occupational integration has failed to advance women appreciably, and I argue that comparable worth is not likely to be much more effective. Instead, we must seek political analyses and political solutions. (shrink)

Algorithmic biases, or algorithmic unfairness, have been a topic of public and scientific scrutiny for the past years, as increasing evidence suggests the pervasive assimilation of human cognitive biases and stereotypes in such systems. This research is specifically concerned with analyzing the presence of discursive biases in the text generated by GPT-3, an NLPM which has been praised in recent years for resembling human language so closely that it is becoming difficult to differentiate between the human and the algorithm. The (...) pertinence of this research object is substantiated by the identification of race, gender and religious biases in the model’s completions in recent research, suggesting that the model is indeed heavily influenced by human cognitive biases. To this end, this research inquires: How does the Natural Language Processing Model GPT-3 replicate existing social biases?. This question is addressed through the scrutiny of GPT-3’s completions using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a method which has been deemed as amply valuable for this research as it is aimed at uncovering power asymmetries in language. As such, the analysis is specifically centered around the analysis of gender and race biases in the model’s generated text. Research findings suggest that GPT-3’s language generation model significantly exacerbates existing social biases while replicating dangerous ideologies akin to white supremacy and hegemonic masculinity as factual knowledge. (shrink)

In feminist and cultural studies, there is a growing body of work concerned with how people’s lives are subjected to multiple, intersecting axes of differentiation and power. There is growing concern that we seem unable to address more than one difference at a time, thus failing to interrogate enactments of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in science, technology, and medicine. This article aims to contribute to the effort to conceptualize the making of and interactions between differences. It explores how (...) differences such as disability, gender, and class are made and unmade in sociotechnical practices. It shows that interactions between enactments of differences are complex, contradictory, unpredictable, and surprising and defy simple conclusions about effects and politics. These patterns of interference need to be investigated in situated practices, and we have to examine carefully how processes of differentiation interact to support and reinforce but also to challenge and undermine each other. (shrink)

What are the implications of living in a gender system that recognizes “two and only two” genders? For those individuals whose “gender displays” are inappropriate, there can be a variety of consequences, many of them negative. In this article, the author provides an analysis of her experiences as a woman whose appearance often leads to gender misattribution. She discusses the consequences of the gender system for her identity and her interactions. The author also examines Lorber's assertion that “gender bending” actually (...) serves to perpetuate gender categories rather than to break them down, and she suggests how her experiences might contradict Lorber's argument. Using her biography to examine the social construction of gender, she both illustrates and extends theoretical work in this area. (shrink)

Through an analysis of two highly routinized interactive service jobs, fast food service and insurance sales, this article explores the interrelationship of work, gender, and identity. While notions of proper gender behavior are quite flexible, gender-segregated service jobs reinforce the conception of gender differences as natural. The illusion that gender-typed interaction is an expression of workers' inherent natures is sustained, even in situations in which workers' appearances, attitudes, and demeanors are closely controlled by their employers. Gender-typed work has different meanings (...) for women and men, however, because of differences in the cultural valuation of behavior considered appropriate to each gender. (shrink)

This article analyzes data available in published studies of rapists’ self-reports and argues that according to their own accounts, many men developed inaccurate impressions of women’s desires through a confident form of role-taking. While rapists’ inaccuracies have been previously described as instances of “miscommunication”or lapsed role-taking, they do not always indicate lack of emotional or intellectual depth to role-taking. The article adds to the profeminist, symbolic interactionist literature on role-taking by arguingthat relations of disavowedmale-male desire andthe exchange of women make (...) the possibility of men’s sensitive knowledge of women’s sexual desires problematic. Some of these forms of knowledge are outlined, and an approach to rape prevention is briefly suggested. (shrink)

This essay revisits Erving Goffman’s question regarding the connection between couple relationships and gender construction, expanding upon it by examining the ambivalent relationship of couples towards gender difference, in which the latter is constitutive of their formation. On the one hand, couples exploit the equality of their gender composition, while, on the other, they systematically ignore it in order to establish individualized personal relationships. The article culminates in a sociological diagnosis of this ambivalence, with statistical inequalities between men and women (...) emerging as an aggregate effect of millions of small dyadic entities, each searching for their own relational meaning. How might they reconstruct their sexual inequality in view of the fact that gender is losing its relevance? Meanwhile, what used to be thought of as homosexual and heterosexual relations are losing their meaning as gender relations. (shrink)

This paper investigates interdiscursivity in talk about gender norms in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer community. Drawing from field work conducted among gay and lesbian parents, transgender people, and the Drag King community, I show how accounts like les hommes sont comme ça or les femmes sont comme ça emerging in discourse about pregnancy reveal gender-based norms and their relationship to social conditions. Adopting a linguistic anthropology perspective, while paying particular attention to agency, categorization, circulation, and recontextualization processes, I (...) show how gender norms are constructed and deconstructed through interactional, semantic, and morphosyntactic patterns found in a variety of multisemiotic mediums and in a diversity of contexts. In addition to its contribution to the study of gender and language, this article takes new steps in the ongoing development of membership categorization analysis and queer linguistics. (shrink)

Bigenderism maintains there are only two genders, which correspond with the two sexes, male and female. Basic bigenderism requires that legal documents and public institutions designate a single invariant gender (that is, sex). Strict bigenderism applies these categories in a social context that stigmatizes "imperfect" men and women who do not reach ideals set by the bigenderist schema. I discuss these concepts and their implications, present three models that successively weaken bigenderist assumptions, and argue for the most radical of the (...) three. (shrink)

Potential romantic partners often employ specific communicative strategies in computer-mediated communication based on their anticipation of future interactions. This conversation analytic study examines the practice of assessments used in WeChat conversations between potential romantic partners. We found that people recurrently mobilize the action of assessment to maintain or terminate their relationships. Especially, people tend to provide more assessments after an initial assessment, which we term ‘continuing assessment’. We show that continuing assessments are sequentially organized in conversational context between co-participants and (...) are essential for relational developments. When potential partners aim to maintain or advance their relationships, continuing assessments are used to prevent a structurally integrated conversation from falling into closure. In contrast, continuing assessments are applied to put an end to the dialogue and to manage face work. Our study furthers the understanding of the communicative strategies of online dating. (shrink)

In this article, we advance a new understanding of “difference” as an ongoing interactional accomplishment. Calling on the authors' earlier reconceptualization of gender, they develop the further implications of this perspective for the relationships among gender, race, and class. The authors argue that, despite significant differences in their characteristics and outcomes, gender, race, and class are comparable as mechanisms for producing social inequality.

Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, this article analyzes the ways that male residents in a drug treatment program signified a masculine self through compensatory manhood acts. I analyze four strategies of identity work that men used during group accountability sessions called “games”: signifying masculinity through aggression; subordinating women and nonconventional men; calling others to account as men; and “keeping your head”: managing emotions to assert control. This article adds to our understanding of the ways that compensatory manhood acts (...) are structured locally through interaction, highlighting ways that men’s interactions may be self-defeating and also reproduce inequality by reinforcing dominant ideologies of misogyny and homophobia. In addition, it speaks to the ways that masculine subjectivity is constructed against and through dominant narratives of addiction and treatment. (shrink)

Gynecological surgery prompts women to consider the meanings of their uteruses and ovaries, generally taken for granted as “natural” components of female bodies. Analysis of 44 in-depth interviews with women who underwent hysterectomy indicates that a preponderance of respondents conceptualized a socially constructed hormonal hierarchy based on the degree to which ovaries were excised in the course of surgery. While retained ovaries may not always produce actual physiological benefits, respondents placed great symbolic value on ovaries as the source of female (...) normality. This reflects cultural understandings that hormones produced by the ovaries are the essential determinants of sexual difference. The interweaving of social constructionist and biological perspectives in respondents' narratives helps to elucidate the complicated interaction between the material body and the social body. (shrink)

Regression analysis using coded ethnographic data from a sample of 93 nonindustrial societies showed that patterns of child rearing and property control are significantly associated with outward displays of men's dominance. In societies in which women exercise significant control over property and men have close relationships with children, men infrequently affirm their manliness through boastful demonstrations of strength, aggressiveness, and sexual potency. Under these conditions, women show less deference to men, and husbands are less likely to dominate wives. Displays of (...) manliness are also prevalent in less complex societies with frequent warfare. An ideology of women's inferiority was found to be most common in complex societies with distant father-child relationships. Illustrative cases are presented, and theoretical explanations for observed correlations are discussed. (shrink)

To help consider why some groups solve problems successfully but others do not, this article introduces a framework for analyzing sequences of group members' actions. The dimensions of evaluation of the previous action , knowledge content , and invitational form organize twenty-seven individual actions, each with specific functions and conditions of use. Evaluations, repetitions and invitational forms link actions together to create coherent social interactions, and thereby serve as possible quantitative measures of collaboration quality. Specific individual action also helps constitute (...) specific social interactions. Six types of social interactions that occur during group problem-solving are organized by problem knowledge distribution and degree of cooperation . This framework's mutually exclusive categories and multi-function individual actions allow statistical analyses of many group interactions both in their entirety and infine detail. (shrink)

This article uses Acker's theory of gendered organizations to frame an analysis of the ways in which policies and practices in a men's and a women's prison reflect and reproduce gendered inequalities. The article offers a working definition of one of Acker's key theoretical concepts, the notion of “gendered organizational logic.” Then, using interview data collected from correctional officers in a men's and a women's prison, the article examines the ways in which officer training and assignments, although designed to be (...) nominally generic, assume a male worker and disproportionately benefit male officers working in men's institutions. These findings imply that the perspective could more usefully be conceived as a theory of “masculinized” organizations. (shrink)

Cultural capital and hegemonic masculinity are two concepts that have received intense attention. While both have received serious consideration, critique and analysis, the context or field-specificity of each is sometimes ignored. They have been used in a diversity of ways. Using ethnographic and interview data from a US male bodybuilding community, this study highlights one useful employment. Hegemonic masculinity takes different shapes in different fields of interaction, acting as a form of cultural capital: gender capital. Inherent in this discussion are (...) the cultural contradictions apparent among individuals striving for either physical or ideological embodiments of gender capital. Individuals can attempt to embody hegemonic idealizations, but bodies are not only inscribed with gender, inscriptions are read, and read differently by different social actors and in different settings. The capacity of gender capital to remain elusive is precisely what enables gender practices and projects like bodybuilding to retain passionate participation. (shrink)

Building on more than two decades offeminist analysis of the family, this article takes a neoinstitutionalist approach to examine some of the ways that sex, gender, and sexual orientation intersect in lesbianheaded two-parent families, affecting how they construct their roles as mothers. Institutionalist theory tends to de-emphasize how actors deliberately construct social arrangements such as parenting roles within the family. The authors' analysis of interviews from 14 lesbian mothers remedies this deficiency by focusing both on how they draw upon and (...) transform institutionalized scripts, practices, and understandings of family roles and relations. Their findings reveal how these mothers reinscribed gendered understandings while simultaneously challenging heteronormative ones in their efforts to construct and maintain socially viable two-parent families. (shrink)

Ancré en sociologie, ce texte vise à clarifier l’emploi du concept d’arrangements de famille dans les sciences sociales de langue française et anglaise et précise son intérêt par rapport au terme concurrent de négociation pour décrire la prise collective de décisions par des personnes apparentées. Cette conceptualisation permet de penser la production plus ou moins formalisée d’un consensus entre des personnes apparentées qui ont éventuellement des intérêts contradictoires et sont prises localement dans des rapports de pouvoir, et plus généralement dans (...) des rapports de domination qui les dépassent. L’article insiste sur la dimension temporelle de ces arrangements qui sont tout à la fois un processus et un résultat. (shrink)

Its importance for understanding social dynamics notwithstanding, the concept of agency is one of sociology’s more controversial ideas. The debate around this concept has mostly been developed at a theoretical level and the empirical studies tend to rely on socio-psychological interpretations of agency as a stable, inner force capable of influencing prospects, decisions, and behavior with little room for change in agency capacity. Social sciences, though, should take a more dynamic stance on agency and highlight the role of the different (...) elements of the social context that can enable or hinder individual agency capacity. Prompted by recent developments of the Capability Approach, this article proposes a framework for the study of agency that defines individual agency as the result of a conversion process of personal resources shaped by conversion factors. Conversion factors operate at micro, meso, and macro levels of analysis, each of which can be oriented toward past experiences, present conditions, and future prospects. This article also seeks to analytically distinguish three types of agency outcome: adaptation, autonomy, and influence. Such a framework will facilitate the transformation of the slippery notion of agency into more tractable empirical phenomena which increase its analytical and critical capacity. (shrink)