Rafael Braz | Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (original) (raw)
Uploads
Papers by Rafael Braz
The definition of sex and gender-role as two distinct concepts -sex being the biological differen... more The definition of sex and gender-role as two distinct concepts -sex being the biological differences between male and female and gender-role referring to certain behaviours and characteristics attributed to each sex as a social construction 1 -by the second wave of western feminists resulted in a turning point for the media. Some argue that the difference between gender-role and sex has been broken since biology is, to a certain extent, no less of a cultural construction than gender socialization. 2 This doesn't necessarily mean that there is no biology, what it means though is that it´s arguably impossible to determine where biology or culture begin and end. Human linguistics categorizes both sexes in its flexion and from that point on there is a shaping of the sexes both on how they are represented and how we understand them. The duality of male and female, in its core, is a false binary since it discards anything that does not fit the norm. What do you call a hermaphrodite? It is a "he"? A "she"? Should I call a hermaphrodite an "it"? This is the role of linguistics that allows sexism to develop from its very origin. I won't be discussing in detail the debate that revolves around the conceptualization of sex and gender. Instead, I will be discussing the messages that are portrayed in the media regarding gender as a whole. I will focus of the role of women and their stereotyping using different and disperse (from Craig to Tuchman) theories as my guidelines. I will also brush on queer theory and masculinity portrayal in the media, attempting to give examples and concrete reasoning to this stereotyping.
The definition of sex and gender-role as two distinct concepts -sex being the biological differen... more The definition of sex and gender-role as two distinct concepts -sex being the biological differences between male and female and gender-role referring to certain behaviours and characteristics attributed to each sex as a social construction 1 -by the second wave of western feminists resulted in a turning point for the media. Some argue that the difference between gender-role and sex has been broken since biology is, to a certain extent, no less of a cultural construction than gender socialization. 2 This doesn't necessarily mean that there is no biology, what it means though is that it´s arguably impossible to determine where biology or culture begin and end. Human linguistics categorizes both sexes in its flexion and from that point on there is a shaping of the sexes both on how they are represented and how we understand them. The duality of male and female, in its core, is a false binary since it discards anything that does not fit the norm. What do you call a hermaphrodite? It is a "he"? A "she"? Should I call a hermaphrodite an "it"? This is the role of linguistics that allows sexism to develop from its very origin. I won't be discussing in detail the debate that revolves around the conceptualization of sex and gender. Instead, I will be discussing the messages that are portrayed in the media regarding gender as a whole. I will focus of the role of women and their stereotyping using different and disperse (from Craig to Tuchman) theories as my guidelines. I will also brush on queer theory and masculinity portrayal in the media, attempting to give examples and concrete reasoning to this stereotyping.