The Power of Gender
People often believe a person 's gender is based on their biological sex; biological sex is defined as the anatomy you are born with. Gender is the identity of a person based on their environment and how they have been influenced. Which shows that the biological makeup of a person and what gender they identify with has nothing to do with each other. Today gender and sexuality has become so fluent that gender role stereotypes should be changed too; over decades of powerful movements have been made to change stereotypes but the work is not over.
In a reading taken from Women 's Voices Feminist Visions called Trans Identities and Contingent Masculinities: Being Tombois in Everyday Practice, the author Evelyn Blackwood went
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Interests and hobbies should not be labeled on women or men based on their biological sex. The people and things that’s surrounding you have so much influence on the person you are and you become. If someone told me that couldn’t lift weights or go out whatever time I wanted it would really upset me. In the reading it says, “Tombois I interviewed understood that their families would be ashamed (mah) if they did not marry, yet most tombois that I knew told me story about finding a way to pull off marriage indefinitely.” (Blackwood 152) This is explaining that even though not being who everyone expects you to be can be discouraging, you can always find a way to be who you …show more content…
When kids hate their bodies it affects their lives in many ways, including during school and at work. She believes that gender equality and biological stereotypes can be eliminated if we start to teach young kids to love themselves and not worry about everything going on around them. I completely agree with what Ramsey is saying because if we taught children as they got older to continue to love themselves it could cut down on the amount of mental illness and eating disorders
While sex refers the biological characteristics that make up a person, their gender is determined by the behaviors and attitudes considered “proper” by society according to their sex.
“There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in women. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the women is judged by man’s law, as though she were not a woman but a man.” Those words were said by the great Henrik Ibsen himself. Henrik Ibsen was born on March twentieth eighteen twenty eight in Skien, Norway. He grew up in poverty following the demise of his father’s business. He was exiled to Italy, and then moved on to Germany. Ibsen wrote A Doll’s House in 1879, while in Germany. He sought to question social practices in the real world, and women’s position in society. He was commonly known as “The Father of Modern Drama”. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was published in 1879 and first performed shortly after in the same year and month. The play turned out to be very controversial, which lead Ibsen to write an alternate ending. The play was later turned into a television show and multiple movie adaptations. (Galens 106,107 ) Ibsen creates many static and strong characters that help convey his message. Nora Helmer is the play’s protagonist and wife of Torvald Helmer. Torvald, Nora’s husband, is shown to be extremely controlling and dominating. He often treats Nora like a doll or child. There are many relevant themes in the play such as: appearance and reality, pride, honor, sexism, and the search for self-identity. Nora’s life as a married woman is overall symbolized by a doll. Henrik Ibsen’s characters Nora, Christine, and Torvald perfectly depict the marital and societal trends of the 19th century; while further explaining the choices some made leading to a more feminist and gender equal nation.
The clusters of social definitions used to identify persons by gender are collectively known as “femininity” and “masculinity.” Masculine characteristics are used to identify persons as males, while feminine ones are used as signifiers for femaleness. People use femininity or masculinity to claim and communicate their membership in their assigned, or chosen, sex or gender. Others recognize our sex or gender more on the basis of these characteristics than on the basis of sex characteristics, which are usually largely covered by clothing in daily life.
The reading also discussed the difference between sex and gender. While sex is biological, gender is socio-cultural, meaning it is a social construct. These constructs create stereotypes enforced by the culture. Gender roles are formed and become the "social roles that a person is expected to fulfill based upon his
Gender is not about the biological differences between men and women but rather the behavioral, cultural and psychological traits typically associated with one sex. Gender is socially constructed meaning it 's culturally specific, it 's learned and shared through gender socialization. What it means to be a woman or man is going to differ based on the culture, geographical location, and time. What it meant to be a woman in the US in the 19th century is different than what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. As cultures evolve over time so are the ideals of what it means to be man or woman.
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).
Paula England, the author of “The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled,” sheds light on how the gender system has progressively become unbalanced. England 's main focus for this article is to provide the reader with an understanding of how women 's drive to change hasn 't just affected their labor, but men 's labor as well. She states “Since 1970, women increasingly majored in previously male-dominated, business-related fields, such as business, marketing, and accounting; while fewer chose traditionally female majors like English, education, and sociology; and there was little increase of men’s choice of these latter majors” (England and Li, 2006, 667-69). This quote supports the fact that women have been branching out in the workplace, however
In Feminist Theory: from margin to center, bell hook states on the first page what she believes to be the problem with feminism. In her opinion the biggest problem with feminism is that there is no real definition of what feminism is. The definition many people have formulated for feminism is having the goal of making woman socially equal to men. hook’s problem with this is the fact that all men are not socially equal. If women are to be the social equals to men then another question would be which men women will be socially equal to. While many white middle and upper class women accept this definition, the lower socioeconomic classes can not because it does not take race and its disadvantages into account.
The word gender refers to a general classification of human beings into male and female with socially and culturally constructed characteristics, behaviors, attributes and roles preconceived and labelled as appropriate for each class. The society and culture today have placed human beings in a box which to a large extent dictates how we act in the world.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian author who has received numerous awards and distinctions. Her main argument is that everyone should be a feminist not because of our gender, but because it is what is right. Adichie has been featured in Beyonce’s song, “Flawless”, spreading awareness to the idea of feminism. “We Should All Be Feminists” is a book about her experiences in Nigeria, where men are more powerful than women. The intended audience of the passage is each and every person residing in heavily patriarchal societies. Hesr thesis is “we should all be feminists”.
Gender refers to psychological and emotional characteristics that cause people to assume, masculine, feminine or androgynous (having a combination of both feminine and masculine traits) roles. Your gender is learned and socially reinforced by others, as well as by your life experiences and g...
Everybody is born and made differently, but one thing is similar, our gender. We are born either male or female, and in society everybody judges us for our gender. This is called gender roles; societies expecting you to act like a male or female (Rathus, 2010). Some people say, “act like a lady,” or “be a man,” these are examples of how gender roles work in our everyday lives. In society when we think stereotypes, what do we think? Many think of jocks, nerds, or popular kids; gender stereotyping is very similar. Gender stereotypes are thoughts of what the gender is supposed to behave like (Rathus, 2010). One example of a gender stereotype for a man would be a worker for the family, and a women stereotype would be a stay at home mom. Though in todays age we don’t see this as much, but it is still around us. In different situations both gender roles and stereotypes are said and done on a daily basis and we can’t avoid them because everyone is different.
At the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, a series of events occurred that would be known as the feminist movement. During this time, many woman were starting to change the way they thought of themselves and wanted to change their social roles. In his views on feminist analysis Donald Hall says, “Feminist methodologies focus on gender…and explore the complex ways in which women have been denied social power and the right to various forms of self-expression the many perspectives that fall under the heading ‘feminism’ vary wildly”(Hall 199). Since women were denied social power and self-expression, they went against what society saw as acceptable, a patriarchal world. In the stories The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, “Story of an Hour” also by Chopin, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman we see just how woman’s expected gender roles affect these woman. In The Awakening we meet Edna Pontellier who struggles with her social and gender role. In “Story of an Hour” we see a woman who is glad she is free from her husband. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” a woman fights for her happiness. Through the author’s portrayal of these characters, we see how feminism affects the actions of the characters and how the woman change.
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional or philosophical dissertation. It helps to explain the main nature of gender inequality. It further explains the social roles of women in the society such as education, communication, philosophy, sociology and so on (Chodrow, Nancy 1991).
Sex and gender are terms that are mixed up from day to day and seen as similarities rather than differences. Sex is what distinguishes people from being either male or female. It is the natural or biological variations between males and females (Browne, 1998). Some of these variations are genitals, body hair and internal and external organs. It is the make-up of chromosomes, men have one X and one Y chromosome and women have two X chromosomes, these are responsible for primary characteristics (Fulcher and Scott, 2003). Gender on the other hand refers to the sociological differences between male and female. This is teaching males and females to behave in various ways due to socialisation (Browne, 1998). Example: masculinity and femininity. Girls are supposed to show their femininity by being non-competitive, sensitive, dependent, attractive and placid. If and when some girls don’t succeed in keeping this image they will be referred to as a tomboy. On the other hand, boys show their masculinity through aggression, physical strength...