Reference no: EM133840127

Question 1 (Mandatory)

This is a quotation from one of the assigned articles:

1. "Societies often bestow power upon that which does not neatly fit into the usual. Since no cultural system can explain everything, a common way that many cultures deal with these inconsistencies is to imbue them with negative power, as taboo, pollution, witchcraft, or sin. That which is not understood is seen as a threat. But an alternative method of dealing with such things, or people, is to take them out of the realm of threat and to sanctify them. The berdache's role as mediator is thus not just between women and men, but also between the physical and the spiritual. American Indian cultures have taken what Western culture calls negative, and made it a positive; they have successfully utilized the different skills and insights of a class of people that Western culture has stigmatized and whose spiritual powers have been wasted. Many Native Americans also understood that gender roles have to do with more than just biological sex. The standard Western view that one's sex is always a certainty, and that one's gender identity and sex role always conform to one's morphological sex is a view that dies hard."

Based on the above quotation, and this article, found in the Readings folder on BrSp: LGBT Navajo Youth Discover Unlikely Champions _ NPR, please discuss the readings, in "Deviance and Social Control" and elsewhere - those in the syllabus, for example (please, provide citations), that address the complexity of gender and sexual identities: readings about becoming a homosexual, readings about the phantom sexual identification, and readings about other social treatments of "confused" gender categories.

a. What do they suggest about norm and deviance from the norm, in the most rudimentary sense of who we are and how we identify ourselves?

b. What theories of deviance would apply to our classification of sexual and gender realities?

c. How would you describe the emic and etic views of each classification - how does each culture perceive the anomalous behavior?

ALWAYS, in all your answers, be sure to follow the above outline, copying the question and then providing the answer. No credit for not following the instructions...