Lorber’s Doing Gender/Observing Gender Writing Assignment I was assigned to the female sex category at birth and raised as a girl; the very fact that I can state that simple statement and people can get a fairly clear idea how I was raised shows just how intertwined we are with the social construction of gender. Women can relate because they were probably raised in a similar fashion, and men know that they were raised differently than I was. This is one of the many ways our society supports Lorber’s claim that gender translates to a difference among the binary American society operates on (Lorber, pp. 47-48). My parents kept my hair long until I decided to donate it when I was 12 years old, my ears were pierced when I was 8 years old, and …show more content…
But as Lorber discusses, gender roles change. I imagine my parents would be having a very different conversation with me had I been raised in the 50’s (pp. 50). Even so, the division of labor in my relationship is gendered. While my boyfriend and I take turns cooking, I usually clean and do laundry and he fixes things around the house. When one of us does something outside of our gendered expectations we expect special praise. I expect people to be impressed when I inform them that I take care of my …show more content…
His situation is particularly unique because he is a single, gay, man who is doing IVF with a surrogate and an egg donor; despite the uncommon situation he is in, my co-workers treated him the same as they would treat a traditional situation where a woman is expecting. What was particularly interesting about this conversation was the planning of the baby shower depending on the sex of the child. The women in this conversation gave suggestions about filling balloons with pink or blue glitter or a cake with blue or pink icing. One of my co-workers shared that she wished the child would be female because the options they have for baby girls are endless in regards to decorations and
The information acquired over the semester, whether through text or visual media, vividly brought the importance of knowing how one’s gender is identified and developed.
Fresh from the womb we enter the world as tiny, blank slates with an eagerness to learn and blossom. Oblivious to the dark influences of culture, pre-adult life is filled with a misconception about freedom of choice. The most primitive and predominant concept that suppresses this idea of free choice involve sex and gender; specifically, the correlation between internal and external sex anatomy with gender identity. Meaning, those with male organs possess masculine identities, which involve personality traits, behavior, etcetera, and the opposite for females. Manipulating individuals to adopt and conform to gender identities, and those respective roles, has a damaging, life-long, effect on their development and reflection of self through prolonged suppression. This essay will attempt to exploit the problems associated with forced gender conformity through an exploration of personal experiences.
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
Gender tends to be one of the major ways that human beings organize their lives” (Lorber 2). Throughout the article Judith Lorber talked about how gender construction starts right at birth and we decide how the infant should dress based on their genitalia. The authors ideas relates to my life because my friend is about to have a baby girl in a couple of weeks from now and when she is born we are buying her all girly stuff so that everyone else knows she is a girl. My family has already bought her bows for her hair, dresses, and everything was pink and girly. Since society tells us that infants should wear pink and boys should wear blue we went with it. I never thought about this until reading this article and I noticed that gender construction does in fact start right at birth.
In today’s society, it can be argued that the choice of being male or female is up to others more than you. A child’s appearance, beliefs and emotions are controlled until they have completely understood what they were “born to be.” In the article Learning to Be Gendered, Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell- Ginet speaks out on how we are influenced to differentiate ourselves through gender. It starts with our parents, creating our appearances, names and behaviors and distinguishing them into a male or female thing. Eventually, we grow to continue this action on our own by watching our peers. From personal experience, a child cannot freely choose the gender that suits them best unless our society approves.
When one does gender, one’s behavior, language, and mannerisms are perceived by others as indicators of the specific gender that the person identifies with. If one acts effeminately, that individual is regarded as a female and vice versa for males, irrespective of genital markers. The authors claimed that gender is something one does, not necessarily something that one is biologically. As an example, West and Zimmerman looked at Harold Garfinkel’s case study of an individual who was born male but completed sex reassignment to become a female. West and Zimmerman used this individual, named Agnes, to explain how she passed as a woman even though at one point he had male genitalia and would always have XY chromosomes. They explained that because Agnes had figured out how to act in social settings based off of general “conceptions of femininity” (West, Zimmerman 1987 p.131), she was perceived as a woman by society. Agnes proves West and Zimmerman’s theory, that doing gender reflects either feminine or masculine natures which, creates the gender that the individual identifies
"A lot of people see gender as very one-sided, girl or boy, but in reality, even the choices of one, the other, both, or neither just don't feel right.” Many people don’t realize that there are more gender identities than just “male” and “female.” In June 2016, The Williams Institute at UCLA estimated that about 1.4 million US adult’s genders don't align with the one they were assigned at birth. One can identify as the opposite gender from their assigned sex, as no gender, as both, or as a unique identity not so easily categorized.
Although Bo and I have very district pathways into My mother and grandma performed their gender identities of being a woman by cleaning, cooking, and taking car of the children. This began my developing definition of what it means to be a girl. However, I did not consciously accept this identity until I was in elementary school. One day after school I went into my mother’s closet and put on a pair of her heels. This instance could be referred to as an identity contingency. According to Claude steel, identify contingencies are “ the things that you have to deal with in a situation because you have a given societal identity”. In this revelation, my given social identity was my gender as a girl and I realized this when I put on my mother heels
Firstly, I personally view my gender to be a predominant factor in my sense of self. Gender, unlike sex, is a social perception of how we or others view ourselves based on our behavior or presentation. For example, the terms “male” and “female” relate to sex, while gender is not determined by biology. I argue that it is difficult to separate oneself from gender, as gender is heavily intertwined with the socialization process that occurs starting from birth. For example, parents choose gender appropriate names that put their child down a designated path of socialization for their respective gender. Afterwards, we begin to be socialized by our families and peer groups as to what is deemed appropriate behavior, dress, and even language for the gender that we or others identify ourselves as. Furthermore, the media and culture that extends beyond the confines of families and peer groups has a substantial impact on gender socialization. This symbolic interactionist approach to gender socialization sees that many of our everyday interactions influence our gender and reinforce or foster a belief in how
It is common that the woman nurtures of the children, makes the meals and does the laundry, but it is becoming more common that the man now aides in those roles. As I was reading Gray’s article I envision something from 1950 when the wife did not work, stayed home and took care of the children. Having 3 dogs in our house we both share the responsibility for them. If the food bowl is empty you fill it, if the water is empty you give them water, if they need to go outside you let them out, the same goes with our horses or other chores on the farm. We have no gender roles in our house, if something needs to be done, just do it. When we built our house we worked side by side, I did everything he did, it was a joint effort. Everything around the house is a joint effort except I do fix the meals because I enjoy it. Maybe being raised where there were no gender roles because everyone worked even my mother so it’s common to pitch in and do whatever needs to be done. If this is true, then that would mean communication is not in the DNA or gender but it’s a learned behavior. My sister’s husband cooks most of the meals in their family and cleans the house, another example of learned behavior which goes against Gray’s gender role philosophy of men and women. The most important part of a relationship is being compatible and knowing that you are not going to change your partner’s
Dads would expect their sons to help him in the garage or any other projects around the house and moms expect their daughters to help them in the kitchen. All of these characteristics are not unusual or out of the ordinary, this has been the tradition for hundreds of years and as far as I can see it will still remain the same. Society is a social factor that has many ways in which it molds an individual and defines his/her gender as a character. Society includes your friends, mentors, enemies, and our. co-workers and significant others.
Therefore, the constrictive American ideals of male and female gender identities inhibits growth and acceptance of gender expression. Each gender is separated by rules and guidelines that they must abide by. This, in turn, creates inner tensions that inhibit personal growth. For males, this may be, or is, an extraordinarily arduous task. More often than not, it is other male figures, such as the father, that administer and enforce these certain rules.
As a child grows and conforms to the world around them they go through various stages, one of the most important and detrimental stages in childhood development is gender identity. The development of the meaning of a child’s sex and gender can form the whole future of that child’s identity as a person. This decision whether accidental or genetic can effect that child’s life style views and social interactions for the rest of their lives. Ranging from making friends in school all the way to intimate relationships later on in life, gender identity can become an important aspect to ones future endeavors.
Gender is such a ubiquitous notion that humans assume gender is biological. However, gender is a notion that is made up in order to organize human life. It is created and recreated giving power to the dominant gender, creating an inferior gender and producing gender roles. There are many questionable perspectives such as how two genders are learned, how humans learn their own gender and others genders, how they learn to appropriately perform their gender and how gender roles are produced. In order to understand these perspectives, we must view gender as a social institution. Society bases gender on sex and applies a sex category to people in daily life by recognizing gender markers. Sex is the foundation to which gender is created. We must understand the difference between anatomical sex and gender in order to grasp the development of gender. First, I will be assessing existing perspectives on the social construction of gender. Next, I will analyze three case studies and explain how gender construction is applied in order to provide a clearer understanding of gender construction. Lastly, I will develop my own case study by analyzing the movie Mrs. Doubtfire and apply gender construction.
In western society males are taught what it means to be masculine and females are taught what it means to be feminine. Lorber (1994:57) states “Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be taught to be masculine or feminine.” As we grow older we are taught what is expected of us on the basis of what gender were identify as and/or what gender other people perceive us as. For instance, a woman is expected to cook, clean, and have occupations such as a nurse, or secretary. A man is expected to have be either have top jobs such as a surgeon or have a tough labor jobs, and be the bread winners. Western society expects each gender to stay within their gender role. Lorber (1994:61) argues “As, a structure, gender divides work in the home and in economic production…” Once an individual goes outside these expectations breaking they are out casted. Gender is a process that creates what is man and what woman based off of what other perceive what is expected of and should be expressed by each gender, making gender socially constructed. Lorber (1994:60) argues “As a process, gender creates the social differences that define ‘women’ and ‘man.’ In social interaction throughout their lives, individuals learn what is expected, and see what is expected act and