The Lenses of Gender: Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality
by Sandra Lipsitz Bem
On This Page
Description
In this book a leading theorist on sex and gender discusses how hidden assumptions embedded in our cultural discourses, social institutions, and individual psyches perpetuate male power and oppress women and sexual minorities. Sandra Lipsitz Bem argues that these assumptions, which she calls the lenses of gender, shape not only perceptions of social reality but also the more material things-like unequal pay and inadequate daycare-that constitute social reality itself. Her penetrating and show more articulate examination of these hidden cultural lenses enables us to look at them rather than through them and to better understand recent debates on gender and sexuality.According to Bem, the first lens, androcentrism (male-centeredness), defines males and male experience as a standard or norm and females and female experience as a deviation from that norm. The second lens, gender polarization, superimposes male-female differences on virtually every aspect of human experience, from modes of dress and social roles to ways of expressing emotion and sexual desire. The third lens, biological essentialism, rationalizes and legitimizes the other two lenses by treating them as the inevitable consequences of the intrinsic biological natures of women and men.After illustrating the pervasiveness of these three lenses in both historical and contemporary discourses of Western culture, Bem presents her own theory of how the individual either acquires cultural gender lenses and constructs a conventional gender identity or resists cultural lenses and constructs a gender-subversive identity. She contends that we must reframe the debate on sexual inequality so that it focuses not on the differences between men and women but on how male-centered discourses and institutions transform male-female difference into female disadvantage. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
by anonymous user
Member Reviews
This is the book that helped me see that gender is a cultural construct, and how it's the cultural construct that shapes my life, not my so-called "gender dysphoria." Probably not a book I'd go back to now that I understand that.
I read this book in 1992 at the recommendation of one of her relatives, a man with whom I worked at a local clinic. This book is among those titles I consider life-changing (and I had already read a number of books and research reports related to gender studies in college). It absolutely awakened me to the ways by which gender is socially assigned, developed and reinforced. I cannot recommend this book enough.
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Lists
Five star books
1,767 works; 110 members
List of Removed Books from Nimitz Library
353 works; 1 member
Author Information
3+ Works 169 Members
Sandra Lipsitz Bem is professor of psychology, women's studies, and lesbian, bisexual, and gay studies at Cornell University. (Bowker Author Biography)
Awards and Honors
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Sexuality and Gender Studies, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 305.3 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social group - Age, Gender, Ethnicity People by gender or sex
- LCC
- HQ1075 .B45 — Social sciences The family. Marriage, Women and Sexuality The Family. Marriage. Women Sex role
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 134
- Popularity
- 244,482
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.63)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 4
- ASINs
- 1
