Abstract
Sex, Gender, Sexuality (SGS) is a sensitizing concept that can be used to guide our inquiry, as teachers and learners, into the complexity of “real life” and sociological understandings of how social notions related to sex, gender and sexuality affect the realities of peoples’ lives. It provides a reference point for a critical examination of these issues. It can help students move from the personal views of these issues that they typically bring to the classroom towards more critical and sociological understandings of gender diversity. This chapter provides (1) an overview of SGS as a sensitizing concept; (2) two teaching strategies or techniques for introducing it to students; (3) some thoughts on how it can be used to structure course content; and (4) some student feedback about the effectiveness of using the concept of SGS in their sociology of gender class.
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Acknowledgements
Some of the information in this chapter was presented at the Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, Portland, Oregon, 2014.
Special thanks to the students of SOCI 303, Sociology of Gender and Gender Relations: The Complexity of SGS, Fall 2014, St. Mary’s University, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Their comments were collected with REB approval and are included here with their permission.
Very special thanks to Kristin Haltinner and Ryanne Pilgeram for their insightful and influential comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Henderson, L.J. (2016). SGS: A Sensitizing Concept for Teaching Gender Diversity. In: Haltinner, K., Pilgeram, R. (eds) Teaching Gender and Sex in Contemporary America. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30364-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30364-2_7
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