Topic: science and the brain, hormones and genetics

Order Description Topic 1 1. Gender neutrality and gender fluidity Read this article, what is your thoughts? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/07/my-life-without-gender-strangers-are-desperate-to-know-what-genitalia-i-have 2. New York Times opinion piece on gender Read this article, what is your thoughts? http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/richard-a-friedman-how-changeable-is-gender.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1 3. Objectification in everyday life I thought i'd kick things off here by sharing something I started thinking about early in the first lecture when the study of everyday life was being discussed. If you aren't familiar with it already, objectification theory posits that sexual objectification socialises girls and women to perceive themselves more as objects to be looked at and evaluated - a perception referred to in literature as self-objectification. In other words, it can cause women and girls to view themselves through an external lens and spend more cognitive resources on habitual body monitoring. This heightened state of self-objectification has been associated with a bunch of psychological consequences in literature including body shame, appearance anxiety, depression and disordered eating. Typically when we talk about sexual objectification, it's easy to think of the blatant examples seen in advertising and media, but what about the more subtle everyday forms of sexual objectification that have the potential to fly completely under our radar? For example, Calogero (2004) found that in a sample of 105 females, the anticipation of a male gaze alone produced significantly greater body shame and social physique anxiety than the anticipation of a female gaze. So, to kick of a discussion, what do you guys think about the idea of subtle everyday practices of sexual objectification having the power to socialise girls and women to think about themselves more from an external point of view? Do you think it's problematic or not a big deal? And can you think of any other examples of situations that girls and women face on a daily basis that might contribute to this heightened state of habitual body monitoring? Calogero, R. M. (2004). A test of objectification theory: The effect of the male gaze on appearance concerns in college women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 28(1), 16-21.