Gender as a Spectrum, Not a Divide
This short clip describes the four categories of gender in the Navajo culture and contrasts this with the dichotomous understandings of gender and the mandate that one’s gender must necessarily correspond to one’s biological sex.

Questions to Consider:

1. How many genders are there in the Navajo culture? Are these related to biological sex?
2. What does it mean to be a “two spirit”?
3. At the end of the segment, a tradition of “swapping” clothing is described. Do you think that most people in the U.S. would be comfortable participating in this? Who do you think would be most reluctant to participate in the “swap”: males or females?

College Rape Victims Speak Out
College students who have been raped speak about the experience.

Questions to Consider:

1. In the taped segments, what do the women say has been taken from them? In other words, what was lost as result of the rape?
2. What role did Facebook play in the contact the women had with the perpetrators after being raped?
3. Katelyn said that she had known the man who raped her and had even considered him a good friend. Did you find it peculiar that the interviewer then asked Katelyn to offer an explanation for why he would have done this? How did Katelyn answer the question?

Profile of Malala Yousafzai Pakistani Girl Shot by the Taliban 
This 2009 New York Times documentary profiles Malala Yousafzai, a young girl living in an area of Pakistan that has come under Taliban control. When her school was going to be shut down, she decided to speak up for the right of girls to receive an education. This documentary was filmed before she was shot in 2012.

Questions to Consider:

1. Is Malala conforming to or breaking gender norms? Explain your answer.
2. What role does Malala’s family play in this story?
3. Use the three major sociological perspectives—functionalist, interactions, conflict—to analyze the central issues (problems) presented in the documentary.

Malala Yousafzai UN Speech
In 2012 Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl who’d become an international symbol of the suffering of girls in Pakistan and who’d been an outspoken advocate for the right of girls to receive education, was shot by members of the Taliban while she and her friends were on the way to school. Though shot and the head and sustaining sever and life threatening injuries, she survived. In this video she addresses the United Nations and talk about her hopes for girls in Pakistan and around the world.

Questions to Consider:

1. How does Malala connect her situation to larger social structures and forces?
2. Malala seems to have grasped the basics of Mills’s “sociological imagination” at a young age. In what places in her speech can you see this?
3. Many girls and women are subject to oppression and are the victims of violence. Why do you think Malala has captured global attention?