Week 11 · Chapter

Chapter 11 — Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Cultural Anthropology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~30–40 minutes · Objective 7 (explain how sex, gender, and sexuality and race and ethnicity are culturally organized, describing documented cross-cultural gender diversity, continuous human variation, and census categories as the issuing body's own categories), Objective 1 (explain the anthropological perspective (holism, comparison, and fieldwork), the four subfields and applied anthropology, and the culture concept, distinguishing culture from society, enculturation from acculturation, and ethnocentrism from cultural relativism as a method and from moral relativism) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, and the quiz all build on it.

In plain language

Every family and every society sorts some of its work, clothing, and expectations by whether a person is a man or a woman, but the sorting differs from place to place. This week you will keep three ideas apart: sex (the body's biological traits), gender (the roles and identities a culture builds around sex), and sexuality (patterns of attraction and the rules a culture sets around them). You will test a famous model of who hunted and who gathered, meet documented cases of gender diversity in the communities' own words, and weigh one classic study and its critics. Then you will read who does which job at the market's family-run stall.

Why you already care about this

Picture an illustrative family's holiday dinner. One relative always carves. A cousin always washes the dishes, and the 3 youngest guests are sent to set the table before anyone sits down. Nobody wrote these jobs down, yet the whole family knows them, and a newcomer who grabs the carving knife will hear about it.

Now ask the anthropologist's question: who decided which person does which task? In some families the split follows age. In others it follows who is a man and who is a woman, and in others it follows who arrived first or who cooks best. If the split were set by biology, every family would split the tasks the same way. They do not, and that difference is where this week begins.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

define sex, gender, and sexuality and keep the three apart;
explain how gender roles are learned, differ across societies, and change over time;
describe the gendered division of labor and treat the classic foraging model as a model with exceptions;
describe documented cases of gender diversity in each community's own terms;
state Mead's 1935 argument and the critique of it, with no verdict;
read who moves at marriage and who does which job at the family stall, by gender and by generation.

Carry this sentence with you: the body is not the job description.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 2 taught that culture is learned, shared but never uniform, and changing, and it set cultural relativism as a method apart from moral relativism. Week 3 taught reflexivity. Week 9 taught kinship diagrams and matrilineal descent, and Week 10 taught residence rules.
This week: sex, gender, and sexuality; gender roles; the gendered division of labor and the debate over women's hunting; documented gender diversity; Mead (1935) and its critique; and the family stall's division of labor.
How they connect: Week 10 asked where a couple lives; this week asks which partner moves and who does which work, and the answer turns out to be a cultural rule.
Where we're going next: Week 12, Race, Ethnicity, and Human Variation, studies another category that a culture organizes around a biological starting point.

Three earlier ideas carry this week. From Week 2, cultural relativism is a method: describe a practice in the terms of the culture it belongs to before judging it. From Week 3, reflexivity is noticing how the observer's own position shapes what they record. From Week 9, the illustrative kinship set (Dataset B, constructed for this course) has 21 positions across three generations, drawn with a triangle for a man and a circle for a woman. The running fieldwork site is still the same illustrative, unnamed weekly neighborhood farmers' market of 24 stalls.

1. Keep three ideas apart: sex, gender, and sexuality

Go back to the holiday dinner. A relative's body did not hand them the carving knife. The family did, and the family could have chosen differently. To compare families and societies, you need three separate words.

Sex is biological traits, such as chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy, that are kept distinct from gender and from sexuality.
Gender is the roles, behaviors, and identities a culture organizes around sex; what it includes differs across societies and changes over time.
Sexuality is patterns of attraction and the cultural rules around them, kept distinct from both sex and gender.

The three answer different questions, and you will use all three all week. Sex asks what the body's traits are. Gender asks what a culture expects of, and offers to, a person in light of those traits. Sexuality asks about attraction and about the rules a culture sets around it.

Worked example — sorting four illustrative statements. Each statement below is constructed for this chapter. Name the idea it is about.

"The hormone levels differed between the two groups of runners." Hormones are a biological trait, so this is about sex.
"In that family, the oldest daughter is expected to host the holiday." An expectation assigned by a culture is about gender.
"The club's members agreed not to date each other." A rule about whom a person may date is a cultural rule around attraction, so it is about sexuality.
"The team's coed rule says each side fields mixed players." A rule a league writes about who plays together is about gender.

In words: 1 of the 4 statements is about sex, 2 are about gender, and 1 is about sexuality, so 1 + 2 + 1 = 4, and none of the gender statements comes from the body alone.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a task in your own family or household that seems to go to the same kind of person every time. Is that split about sex, about gender, or about something else, such as age?
(b) Why might an anthropologist need three words, not one, to compare how different societies organize the lives of men and women?

Misconception check. Students often use sex and gender as synonyms, as if "gender" were a polite word for the body. That is tempting, because everyday speech swaps them all the time. But sex names biological traits, and gender names what a culture builds around them. The cure: ask "is this about the body, or about what a culture expects?" before you choose the word.

2. See gender as culturally organized

Think about a youth sports league writing its coed rules (an illustrative case). One league lets every player try every position. Another has rules about how many girls and boys each team must field. A third league keeps separate divisions until a certain age and mixed teams after that. Each rulebook is a choice, and each league can rewrite it.

Anthropologists say that gender is culturally organized. What counts as men's work or women's work differs across societies and changes over time.

Gender roles are the tasks, behaviors, and expectations a culture assigns to people by gender; they are learned, differ across societies, and change over time.

This is Week 2's culture concept, which you already know, applied to gender. Culture is learned, shared but never uniform, and changing, and gender roles are too. They are learned, because children pick them up growing up. They are shared but never uniform, because people inside one culture disagree about them. They change, because rules get rewritten.

Worked example — a dress code rewritten (illustrative). An illustrative workplace once had a dress code with 2 lists, one headed "men" and one headed "women". After staff asked for a change, the managers rewrote it as 1 list that applies to everyone. Read it with the culture concept.

Is it learned? Yes. New staff learn the dress code from a handbook and from coworkers, not from their bodies.
Is it shared but never uniform? Yes. Some staff wanted the change and some did not, yet all of them work under one code.
Does it change? Yes. The code went from 2 lists to 1, so 2 − 1 = 1 fewer list.

In words: the dress code is a gender rule because it assigns expectations by gender, and it is a cultural rule because people learned it, argued over it, and changed it.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Name one rule about gender at a school, team, or job you know that has changed, or that people argue about. What does the argument show about culture being shared but never uniform?
(b) A classmate says a rule that has lasted a long time must be natural. Using the dress code, explain why a long-lasting rule can still be a cultural one.

Misconception check. Students often think gender roles are the same everywhere, so their own society's split looks like the human default. That is tempting, because the roles you grew up with feel normal and unremarkable. But what counts as men's work or women's work differs across societies and changes over time. The cure: before you call a role natural, ask whether any society or any decade has arranged it differently.

3. Test the classic foraging model: the gendered division of labor

Think about a shared apartment or a family business you know. Someone does the shopping, someone pays the bills, and someone fixes things. When those jobs follow gender, anthropologists have a name for the pattern.

The gendered division of labor is the way a society assigns tasks to people by gender, such as who does which job in a household, a workplace, or a family business.

The most famous model of it comes from studies of foraging societies, where people live by hunting, gathering, and fishing, as Week 5 taught.

The man-the-hunter model is the classic foraging model holding that big-game hunting was done mainly by men and gathering mainly by women; it is a model with many documented exceptions, not a description of every foraging society.

The debate over how often women hunted

How often women hunted in foraging societies is debated, and the course keys no verdict. Here is each side's strongest case.

The case for the classic model. Many recorded foraging societies did divide labor this way, with men doing most big-game hunting and women most gathering. On this view the model sums up a real, widely recorded pattern, and a model that fits many cases is a useful tool for comparison.
The case against reading it as the rule. There are many documented exceptions, in which women hunted. This side also points to Week 3's reflexivity: an observer's own position, including gender, shapes what they record. Older accounts may have missed women's hunting because of who did the observing and whom they talked with.

Notice what each side does well. The first side keeps a pattern that many accounts recorded. The second side asks whether the records themselves were complete. A caveat for your own reading: this course pins no figure for how often women hunted, so you should treat any precise share you meet as a claim to check. Like the "original affluent society" debate in Week 5, this one stays open, and you can state both cases without choosing.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Make the strongest case for keeping the man-the-hunter model as a classroom tool, while saying what it cannot tell you about any one society.
(b) Use reflexivity to explain how the position of the person taking field notes could change what the notes record about who hunts.

Misconception check. Students often read the man-the-hunter model as a description of every foraging society, as if all foragers lived by one rule. That is tempting, because the model is simple and often repeated. But it is a model with many documented exceptions, and how often women hunted is debated. The cure: call it "the classic model", name the exceptions, and never treat it as a fact about a particular people.

4. Describe gender diversity in each community's own terms

Imagine you joined a new club and found that its members used a word for one kind of member that has no match in your own vocabulary. You could force the word into a category you already know. Or you could learn what the word means to the people who use it. Week 2 named the second choice: cultural relativism as a method.

Anthropologists have documented many ways that societies recognize and organize gender.

Cross-cultural gender diversity is the documented range of ways societies recognize and organize gender beyond one fixed pattern, described in each community's own terms.

The course meets three documented cases, each named in the community's own word.

Two-Spirit is an English umbrella term adopted by Indigenous people at a gathering near Winnipeg in the summer of 1990 to describe a range of gender and sexual identities within their own nations' traditions; it is not an ancient word from one Indigenous language.
Hijra is a Hindi and Urdu term for documented communities in South Asia that are a case of cross-cultural gender diversity, described in the communities' own terms.
Fa'afafine is a Samoan term for a documented case of cross-cultural gender diversity in Samoa, described in the community's own terms.

After first use, the course writes hijra and fa'afafine plainly. The people these words describe are living communities who speak for themselves, so you describe each case as its own sources describe it, and you add no detail that a source has not given.

Worked example — reading Two-Spirit with three questions. Use the pinned facts about the term.

What language is the term in? English. It is an umbrella term, which means one word that covers a range of identities.
Who adopted it, and when? Indigenous people, at a gathering near Winnipeg in the summer of 1990.
What does it describe? A range of gender and sexual identities within their own nations' traditions, so the term points back to many nations, each with its own traditions.

In words: Two-Spirit is a recent English umbrella term that Indigenous people chose for themselves, so reading it as an ancient word from one language gets both its age and its language wrong.

The course describes these cases plainly and argues no policy question about gender. That is relativism as a method, not "anything goes": you describe before you judge, and you leave each community to speak in its own terms.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Why does it matter that a community chose its own term, such as Two-Spirit, rather than having outsiders name it? Connect your answer to how this course names peoples.
(b) What could go wrong if an observer translated one of these terms into the closest word from their own culture? Name one detail that might be lost.

Misconception check. Students often read Two-Spirit as an ancient word in one Indigenous language. That is tempting, because the term refers to traditions that are old and because it sounds like a translation. But it is a 1990 English umbrella term chosen by Indigenous people. The cure: give its language, its year, and who chose it before you say what it describes.

5. Weigh a classic study: Mead's argument and its critics

Think of two families you know that expect different things of a son. In one, a son is expected to be loud and competitive. In the other, a son is expected to be calm and caring. If you saw only one family, you might think one temperament came with being a boy.

Mead (1935), Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, made that comparison across three societies she studied. The title is quoted as published, in the period's wording, which the course never uses in its own voice. Mead argued that temperament linked to sex differs across societies, so much of what a society calls a masculine or feminine temperament is learned.

Later critics argued that her contrasts among the three societies were drawn too sharply. The course teaches both sides at full strength and keys no verdict.

Mead's strongest case. If three societies paired temperament and sex in different ways, then sex alone cannot fix temperament. Comparison is the anthropologist's tool for showing that a trait thought to be natural is learned.
The critics' strongest case. Neat contrasts flatten the variety inside each society. Week 2 taught that culture is shared but never uniform, so a society described as having one temperament for men and one for women may hide many people who did not fit.

Worked example — the comparison move, step by step. Read the shape of Mead's argument without adding any detail the course has not pinned.

The observation. Three societies, compared on how temperament was linked to sex.
The claim. The link differed across the three.
The conclusion Mead drew. Temperament linked to sex is largely learned, not fixed by sex.
The critics' question. Were the contrasts as sharp as the book drew them, or did each society hold more variety?

In words: Mead used 3 societies to argue that temperament linked to sex is learned, and her critics asked whether 3 neat contrasts hid variety within each society, so the debate is about how sharp the differences were.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Make the strongest case for Mead's method of comparing several societies to test whether a trait is natural.
(b) Make the strongest case for the critics, using the idea that culture is shared but never uniform.

Misconception check. Students often treat a famous study as settled, either fully right or fully wrong. That is tempting, because a classic book is quoted often and its critics are quoted too. But the course teaches Mead's argument and the critique of its sharp contrasts as a debate. The cure: state each side's strongest case in one sentence and leave the verdict open.

6. Separate gender from authority and descent: who moves at marriage

In Week 9 you met a wrong turn that returns this week. A society that traces descent through women is not, for that reason, a society that women rule. Gender, authority, and descent are three separate questions.

You saw two documented matrilineal cases. The Haudenosaunee are a documented matrilineal case: clan membership passed through women, and clan mothers held recognized roles, including in choosing chiefs. In the 1910s, Trobriand Islanders traced descent matrilineally, and a man's heir was his sister's son. In both, membership passed through women, and you still have to ask your own separate question about who held which role.

Now ask a gender question of Week 10's residence rules: which partner moves? Under patrilocal residence the couple lives near the husband's father's kin, so the wife moves. Under matrilocal residence the couple lives near the wife's mother's kin, so the husband moves. The rule, not the body, decides who packs up.

Worked example — the kinship set's in-married spouses (Dataset B, illustrative). Read the parents' generation by gender, then ask who moves.

The positions. The parents' generation has 10 positions, drawn as 5 triangles (F, FB, FZH, MB, MZH) and 5 circles (M, FZ, FBW, MZ, MBW), so 5 + 5 = 10, and 10 ÷ 2 = 5 married couples.
The in-married spouses. FBW (father's brother's wife), FZH (father's sister's husband), MBW (mother's brother's wife), and MZH (mother's sister's husband) are 4 in-married spouses: 2 women (FBW and MBW) and 2 men (FZH and MZH), so 2 + 2 = 4.
Patrilocal residence. The wife moves in each of the 5 couples, so 5 women move. Ego's mother (M) would live near FF and FM.
Matrilocal residence. The husband moves in each of the 5 couples, so 5 men move.

In words: the same 5 couples send 5 women under one rule and 5 men under the other, so the gender of the person who moves is set by a cultural rule, not by sex itself.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a couple you know. Did one partner move closer to the other's family? What shaped that choice, and was it a rule, a preference, or a job?
(b) Explain why "membership passes through women" and "women hold authority" are two separate claims, using the Trobriand heir as your example.

Misconception check. Students often read matrilineal as matriarchal, and they often assume that the woman is always the one who moves at marriage. Both are tempting, because the words sound alike and because one pattern can feel familiar. But descent says how membership passes, and the residence rule says who moves. The cure: ask "how does membership pass?", "who holds authority?", and "who moves?" as three separate questions.

7. Read the family stall's division of labor

Walk back into the running fieldwork site (Dataset A, illustrative, constructed for this course, not a real place). Field-note entry 6, 8:50 a.m., family-run stall, records an older woman directing a man and a teenager who restock the bins while a younger woman runs the card reader. Week 9 drew this family as a diagram with roles, not names. This week you ask who does which job, by gender and by generation.

Worked example — the stall's working roles. Read the roles, then count.

The roles (roles, not names). In the first generation, the founding grower, a woman in her seventies, directs the stall. In the second, her son drives the truck and restocks, his wife runs the card reader, and her daughter keeps the books. In the third, her granddaughter, the son's daughter, a teenager, restocks and weighs produce, and her grandson, the daughter's son, a college student, handles online orders.
By generation. 1 + 3 + 2 = 6 working roles.
Who does no stall work. The founding grower's late husband and the daughter's husband, who does not work at the stall. The stall family has 8 roles, so 8 − 2 = 6 of them do stall work.
By gender. 4 women (the founding grower, the son's wife, the daughter, and the granddaughter) and 2 men (the son and the grandson), so 4 + 2 = 6, and 4 − 2 = 2 more women than men.
The second generation's share. 3 of the 6 working roles sit in the second generation, so 3 ÷ 6 × 100 = 50 percent.
Restocking. The son and the granddaughter both restock, 1 man and 1 woman, so 1 + 1 = 2 people share one task across the gender line and across two generations.

Here is the reading in plain words: at the family-run stall, work is divided by generation as much as by gender, and restocking crosses the gender line, while in the kinship set the residence rule, not sex itself, decides which partner moves, so who does what is a cultural arrangement that a family or a society organizes around sex.

An honesty note on this reading: the notes record who does each job, not why. Like the carving knife at your holiday dinner, a job can stick to one person for reasons nobody wrote down. The family might say the grandson handles online orders because he is the one in college, not because he is a man. A fieldworker would need the family's own account, gathered with consent, before saying what rule, if any, the family follows.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Look at the stall's 6 working roles. Which split do you think explains more of them, gender or generation? Give one role as evidence for your view.
(b) Write one observation and one possible interpretation, in two columns, about the restocking job. Keep the interpretation out of the observation.

Misconception check. Students often read one family's jobs as proof of a gender rule, so "the son drives the truck" becomes "men drive at this market". That is tempting, because the job fits a familiar pattern. But one family is one case, and the granddaughter restocks too. The cure: write each job in the observed column, and keep "a gender rule" as a possible interpretation until more cases and the family's own words arrive.

Key terms

Sex — Biological traits, such as chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy, that are kept distinct from gender and from sexuality. (first used: 1. Keep three ideas apart: sex, gender, and sexuality)
Gender — The roles, behaviors, and identities a culture organizes around sex; what it includes differs across societies and changes over time. (first used: 1. Keep three ideas apart: sex, gender, and sexuality)
Sexuality — Patterns of attraction and the cultural rules around them, kept distinct from both sex and gender. (first used: 1. Keep three ideas apart: sex, gender, and sexuality)
Gender roles — The tasks, behaviors, and expectations a culture assigns to people by gender; they are learned, differ across societies, and change over time. (first used: 2. See gender as culturally organized)
Gendered division of labor — The way a society assigns tasks to people by gender, such as who does which job in a household, a workplace, or a family business. (first used: 3. Test the classic foraging model: the gendered division of labor)
Man-the-hunter model — The classic foraging model holding that big-game hunting was done mainly by men and gathering mainly by women; it is a model with many documented exceptions, not a description of every foraging society. (first used: 3. Test the classic foraging model: the gendered division of labor)
Cross-cultural gender diversity — The documented range of ways societies recognize and organize gender beyond one fixed pattern, described in each community's own terms. (first used: 4. Describe gender diversity in each community's own terms)
Two-Spirit — An English umbrella term adopted by Indigenous people at a gathering near Winnipeg in the summer of 1990 to describe a range of gender and sexual identities within their own nations' traditions; it is not an ancient word from one Indigenous language. (first used: 4. Describe gender diversity in each community's own terms)
Hijra — A Hindi and Urdu term for documented communities in South Asia that are a case of cross-cultural gender diversity, described in the communities' own terms. (first used: 4. Describe gender diversity in each community's own terms)
Fa'afafine — A Samoan term for a documented case of cross-cultural gender diversity in Samoa, described in the community's own terms. (first used: 4. Describe gender diversity in each community's own terms)

Summary

Sex is the body's traits; gender is what a culture builds around them.
Sexuality is attraction and the cultural rules around it, a third idea.
Gender roles are learned, differ across societies, and change over time.
The man-the-hunter model is a model with exceptions, not a rule.
How often women hunted is debated; state both cases and no verdict.
Two-Spirit is a 1990 English umbrella term chosen by Indigenous people.
Mead argued temperament is learned; critics said her contrasts were too sharp.
Matrilineal is not matriarchal, and a residence rule decides who moves.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative youth soccer league has 40 players on mixed teams: 18 girls and 22 boys. A parent says the league's mixed-team rule is "biology". Is the rule about sex or about gender, and what percent of the players are girls?
In an illustrative village, people follow matrilocal residence, and 6 couples marry in one year. How many husbands and how many wives move? How would the count change under patrilocal residence?
A classmate writes, "In foraging societies, only men hunted, and that is a fact about all of them." Name the wrong turn and rewrite the sentence so it is fair.
Label each illustrative statement as sex, gender, or sexuality: (a) "The study measured chromosomes." (b) "At that office, only one list of dress rules applies to all staff." (c) "That community had rules about whom a person could court."

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

A rule a league writes about who plays together is about gender, not sex: the league could write it differently, and other leagues do. The share of girls is 18 ÷ 40 × 100 = 45 percent, and 22 ÷ 40 × 100 = 55 percent are boys, so 45 + 55 = 100.
Under matrilocal residence the couple lives near the wife's mother's kin, so the husband moves: 6 husbands move and 0 wives. Under patrilocal residence the couple lives near the husband's father's kin, so the count flips: 6 wives move and 0 husbands. The rule, not sex, decides who moves.
The sentence reads the man-the-hunter model as a description of every foraging society. A fair version: "The classic foraging model says big-game hunting was done mainly by men and gathering mainly by women, but it has many documented exceptions, and how often women hunted is debated."
(a) Chromosomes are a biological trait, so sex. (b) A dress rule assigned by a workplace is a gender rule, here rewritten to apply to everyone. (c) A rule about whom a person may court is a cultural rule around attraction, so sexuality.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week, Race, Ethnicity, and Human Variation asks how a society's classification of people relates to continuous human variation.

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