Gender (in)difference in gender (un)equal couples

intimate dyads between gender nostalgia and post genderism

Stefan Hirschauer

pp. 309-330

in: Human Studies 40 (3), 2017.

Abstract

This essay revisits Erving Goffman's question regarding the connection between couple relationships and gender construction, expanding upon it by examining the ambivalent relationship of couples towards gender (in)difference, in which the latter is constitutive of their formation. On the one hand, couples exploit the (in)equality of their gender composition, while, on the other, they systematically ignore it in order to establish individualized personal relationships. The article culminates in a sociological diagnosis of this ambivalence, with statistical inequalities between men and women emerging as an aggregate effect of millions of small dyadic entities, each searching for their own relational meaning. How might they reconstruct their sexual inequality in view of the fact that gender is losing its relevance? Meanwhile, what used to be thought of as homosexual and heterosexual relations are losing their meaning as gender relations.

Cited authors

Goffman Erving