Gender In Judith Lorber's Night To His Day

708 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Body image of girls in society

Child X, unfortunately this child isn’t professor X’s super power wielding prodigy, they have another power instead; X was raised free of sexual roles in a world that revolves around the socially acceptable labeling process that is gender. The excerpt “Night to his Day” analyzes and shows the significance of how society perceives and controls everyday thought of how people look. Judith Lorber hits the point that is becoming increasingly relevant in my life and the lives of many other Americans growing up in today’s world. “Indeed, it is at puberty, when sex characteristics become evident, that most societies put pubescent children through their most important rites of passage, the rituals that officially mark them as fully gendered- that is, …show more content…

These colors also covered a child in that pumpkin patch that day, covered with a tee-shirt and a pair of shorts. “Ah, a boy, I thought. Then I noticed the gleam of tiny earrings in the child’s ears, and as they got off, I saw the little flowered sneakers and lace-trimmed socks. Not a boy after all. Gender done,” (Lorber). This child, me, never grew out of this style of clothing and always went for the comfortable lifestyle avoiding jeans and skirts for more “boyish” graphic tees. Society may look at me and think this person is not ready to be a woman or this thing is not fit to be a man. At the end of the day the only thing I want to be is myself. “Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be taught to be masculine or feminine,” (Lorber). Without the ability to specifically identify who or what a person is, a plethora of people feel left in the dark, and aren’t sure what to do without their carefully constructed classification system. Do I even fit in with the social construct of gender? Or am I just this special child X that defies the stereotypes, growing up and leaving other members in the dark just by showing my true

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Bedecked By Victoria Redel

    598 Words  | 2 Pages

    Humans are not born with a label, they are taught to adhere to certain principles after suffering judgement from others. It is often found that gender is a barrier that prevents humans from experimenting. One finds that he or she cannot partake in an activity in fear of being judged and labeled. The poem Bedecked by Victoria Redel criticizes people’s judgement on her son, as he does not conform to societal standards. Gender and their associated stereotypes are presented in the poem through mundane items, purposeful diction, and the the motif of jewels.

    Read More

  • Gender Identity In Doc Mcstuffins

    2060 Words  | 5 Pages

    The creation of an identity involves the child's understanding of the public disposition of the gender normalities, and the certain gender categories that

    Read More

  • Gender In Karen Horney's The Distrust Between The Sexes?

    1173 Words  | 3 Pages

    At birth, we are a blank slate, regardless of gender. We are introduced into a world that wrongly believes gender defines who we are and what we shall be. Everything we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel impacts our minds and how we react. Therefore, behaviors between the sexes are learned from our interactions with the opposite sex and how we, as individuals, see our world. In the literary piece, The Distrust between the Sexes, Karen Horney asks this question: “…What special factors in human development lead to the discrepancy between expectations and fulfillment and what causes them to be of special significance in particular cases” (Horney)?

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Lorber's Doing Gender/Observing Gender Writing

    1334 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Masulinty and its depependance upon femininity

    981 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...younger children. My aspirations are to be an elementary or middle school special education teacher and then a school psychologist, so I know how important it is for me to not compromise who I am or what I do to fit with the male gaze, so that I can set an example for the students I work with. Additionally, as a school psychologist, it seems likely that I will be counseling students who are struggling for an identity, or perhaps those who realize they don’t fit the body that they were born in, or even those who discover that they don’t identify with either of the binary genders. These students will need to understand that they exist for reasons far beyond reassuring the identity of someone else. This is a problem that needs to be addressed, and as teachers, we can do so by teaching our students to be comfortable with who they are, no matter who they choose to be.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in Society

    2016 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Gender In Down From Heaven By Colleen Wagner's Down From Heaven?

    1871 Words  | 4 Pages

    What defines gender? The sex of a person refers to their physical anatomy, their sexual orientation refers to whom they are attracted to. The gender identity of a person, however, is their internal sense of being male, female, neither or both. The way in which they manifest their masculinity and/or femininity is their gender expression. Society has no right to dictate a person’s gender identity or manifestation, nor does it have the right to confine them to any one of these. Too often does the public deem someone’s gender and expression the same as their sex, and treat them as such without consulting the individual. The play Down from Heaven by Colleen Wagner and the novel Annabel by Kathleen Winter depict the ongoing battle that society faces

    Read More

  • Learning Gender In a Diverse Society

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Article 'Learning To Be Gendered'

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Gender Identity In David Levithan's Two Boys Kissing?

    1217 Words  | 3 Pages

    Avery colors his hair pink, a “strange color choice…for a boy born as a girl who wants to be seen as a boy” (Levithan 65). He suggests that people might assume that he would want to stray from feminine attributes in order to prove a level of masculinity that he must claim by identifying as trans. However, he says that he just likes pink, and that the idea that “pink is female” shows just how arbitrary gender is (Levithan 65). Why is a person’s gender identity instantly accompanied by an infinity of social implications? And why is everything from colors, toys, clothes, or even professions and temperaments considered either masculine or feminine? The construction of gender starts at birth. The assignment to a sex category based on the appearance of genitalia determines how babies are dressed, named, and treated throughout their lives (Lorber 20). Even when discussing their newborns, parents tend to respond differently, describing their baby’s physicality using gender stereotypes. Often, newborn boys are described as “tall, large, athletic, serious, and having broad, wide hands.” Newborn girls on the other hand are described as “small and pretty, with fine, delicate features” (Renzetti and Curran 77). Children learn from a very young age

    Read More

  • Exploring Identity: Role of Gender, Sex and Sexuality

    868 Words  | 2 Pages

    But then you can’t just determine one’s gender because of that, there are lots of girls who loves boys clothe or rather who loves being boyish, but are not gay and there are boys who actually behave feminine, have a tiny voice, loves to wear tight pants and they are still straight. In the reading “‘No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That!’: Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity” by Emily Kane, she talks about how parents determine their kids ' gender and sex, how parents are the major teacher when it comes to gender and of their children, through clothes, toys and other things they purchase for them. They teach the girls to behave like girls, wear them pink dresses and the boy dresses as heroes: superman, batman… in this reading, some parents talked about how they are ok with their daughters behaving boyish and not ok with the boys playing with Barbie dolls. I ask what is the difference between boys and girls, there are so many things boys do and girls do too, there is Bill Gate and there is Christy Walton, there is Michael Jackson and there is Beyoncé, Messi and Alex Morgan. All I am saying is that everyone, men or women, boy or girl can also be great in life not minding their

    Read More

  • The Gender Binary And Social Construction

    1237 Words  | 3 Pages

    First, I think it is important to discuss the ideas around gender and the gender binary. According to Wade and Ferree, gender “refers to the symbolism of masculinity and femininity that we connect to being male-bodied or female-bodied” (2015:5). We use gender to get an idea of which side of the spectrum someone might belong to. For example, if we notice a child wearing a hat, we might assume that the child is a boy but, if we notice the same child wearing sneakers with flowers on them, we might change our thoughts to thinking the child is a girl (Lorber 2015). We, as a society, have given these items a connection to masculinity and femininity, allowing us to link to a certain gender. In addition, as stated by Wade and Ferree, the gender binary “refers to the idea that there are only two types of people- male-bodied people who are masculine and female-bodied people who are

    Read More

  • One Hundred Years Of Solitude Gender Analysis

    1685 Words  | 4 Pages

    Traditional gender roles exist in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, but traditional distribution of power between the genders does not. In analyzing each character and their life, it’s easy to see how Marquez presented each in terms of his own view on gender constructs. Marquez portrays femininity and masculinity very differently. But why would Marquez choose to make such a clear distinction between the roles of each gender? Marquez sees women as spiritual and overpowered by traditional standards, and men doomed by their own obsessions. Men are wily and therefore vulnerable, whereas women are dignified and durable, and survive for much longer.

    Read More

  • Gender Identity: A Child's Identity

    1898 Words  | 4 Pages

    According to research by Marissa McClure Volrath, an elementary art teacher, her findings allowed us to realize and understand that gender identity can been seen through a child’s artwork and how it is presented. “Although many young girls’ drawings do seem to adults’ perception to convey the sweetness, innocence, and themes of girlhood, they are also the kinds of drawings often hung up and ignored or referred to as “sweet” or “cute.” They are unlikely to solicit the attention of a young boys’ drawing of a gun or a superhero fist fight. They seem pleasant and innocent. However, these drawings reveal and conceal girls’ desires to see themselves not how they are but how they wish they might be or think they should be—a complicated matter operating on multiple levels of pleasure, desire, and sociality oppressed (McClure-Vollrath, 2006, p. 68).” Socially the world expects girls to be interested in princesses and the color pink, that’s the social norma and looked to as socially acceptable. The study performed by McClure Volrath allows a way to see beyond the social norms and understand that through a child’s art we are able to see a difference in a child’s gender identity. The media often has an influence on a child’s gender identity. Drawings a boy may draw of a gun might be seen in a cartoon that they religiously watch, and this is looked to as being a social norm. Boys often watch violent or action packed cartoons or television shows, whereas girls might draw a pony seen in their favorite cartoon. Girls are often expected as a norm to watch cartoons and shows that might involve drama and romance. “Again, identity is a social concept. When we engage any media, no matter what form it may take, we are in essence receiving the ideas from those authors. Simply, it is a different format by which we now exchange ideas (Worsham, 2011).” As we grow we take in information we see, as stated before, our surroundings mold us.

    Read More

  • Gender In Judith Butler's Performative Acts And Gender Constitution

    813 Words  | 2 Pages

    Simone de Beauvoir brought about the idea that one is not born a woman, but becomes one. Other thinkers of phenomenology such as Merleau-Ponty frame the body as an historical idea rather than a natural species. In viewing the conception of the body body as different from its physiological form, the social construction of gender can be understood. This social construction is what Judith Butler discusses in her essay: “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution”

    Read More

More about Gender In Judith Lorber's Night To His Day

Open Document