GENDER QUIZ 2

Gender Quiz
PART ONE

The authors of several of your readings discuss a connection between the issue of sexual
violence and the gender socialization of men and women. Explain this connection. Why do
these authors believe, to paraphrase Susan Griffen, that rapists (and violent men who do
not rape) are “made, not born”?
Sexual violence most commonly involves female victims and male perpetrators. The men
who perpetrate sexual violence against women through actions such as rape were not born that
way. Rather, their behaviors against women are a result of socialization. Gender socialization
involves learning expectations, norms and rules that are associated with given gender. Rapists
and other men who subject women to violence without raping them are not born with such
behaviors. Instead, they learn hegemonic or toxic masculinity through socialization. This form of
masculinity holds that men ought to have complete dominance over women, have high sex drive,
and treat women as sex objects. This conception of masculinity makes it acceptable for them to
subject women to sexual and non-sexual violence both for their own pleasure and also as a
means of controlling women so that they accept the dominance of men over them. Their
behaviors are also made possible by a complicit society that treats such behaviors as normal.
Gender socialization also explains why it is often men who rape women and not the other way
round. Women are socially conditioned to believe that sexual violence and other forms of
violence against men is abnormal for a woman.
An examination of sexual violence against women, therefore, shows that the behavior is
developed more through the influence of nurture rather than nature. Since men adopt these
behaviors through socialization, the behaviors can be reduced through exposing them to different

GENDER QUIZ 3
cultural conditioning and socialization, especially in their teenage years. One way in which this
can be achieved is through exposing men to a less oppressive and more positive form of
masculinity (Jourian, 2017). For instance, having positive models who exhibit a healthier form of
masculinity can influence would be rapists and other violent men to change their idea of
masculinity and prevent them from developing into men that subject women to either physical or
sexual violence.

PART TWO

What does Christine Garcia mean when she labels the use of “Latinx” a component of
“linguistic decolonization”?
Language is not just a means of communication, it is also a carrier of culture. According
to Garcia, Latinx is a component of linguistic decolonization because it breaks away from the
standard suffixes (-o) for male and (-a) for females that are used in Spanish language, the
colonial language of most of Latin America (Garcia, 2017). By using the suffix (-x) that is
gender-neutral, Latinx helps establish a new gender conception that is different from Spanish
(the language of the colonizer) conception of gender which is binary.
What can we learn about masculinity(ies) – and how could they be transformed – by
“trans* realities”?
Growing up, men’s idea of masculinity comes from their fathers who often display a wide
of range masculinities that may include aspects of stereotypical feminism, such as showing
emotion. However, as they grow older, they get exposed to more dominant and hegemonic
masculinity which is associated with lack of emotionality and dominance over others. These
negative forms of masculinity that they adopt later in life can be transformed through having

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models of less oppressive and more positive masculinity around men, such as faculty and staff in
colleges (Jourian, 2017).
What is the difference between “womanism” and “feminism”?
Feminism is primarily focused on achieving gender equality between men and women.
Womanism, on the other hand, holds that gender inequality, class oppression, and racism are all
interlinked and should addressed as related problems. Womanism, therefore, encompasses
perspectives of black women and other women of color who suffer not just from gender
inequality but also class and racial oppression.
Why does Thompson believe “hegemonic feminism” was/is flawed
Beck Thompson defines hegemonic feminism as feminism that is led by whites, believes
that the ultimate oppression is sexism, ignores worldviews and activism of women of color and is
focused primarily on the USA. According to Thompson, this type of feminism is flawed because
it ignores the fact that the feminism of women of color was central in the Second Wave of
feminism (Thompson, 1994). It also overlooks the story of anti-racist feminism which was led by
whites and whose emergence and development was fueled and intertwined by feminism of
women of color.

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References

Garcia, C. (2017). Where We Are: Latinx Compositions and Rhetorics.
Jourian, T. J. (2017). Trans*forming College Masculinities
Thompson, B. (1994). Multiracial Feminism