From a young age, society classifies us in order to keep our civilization organized and to avoid chaos. However, ambiguity can be necessary at times to question the systematic norms. Gender is a system that categorizes males and females based on their physical appearance, tone of voice, and personality. However, these strict gender roles created by society exclude those who defy classification, such as individuals who are non-gender binary or gender fluid.
Gender is a cultural construct, completely unrelated to one’s sex assigned at birth. Nevertheless, in American culture one is assigned a specific gender the minute they are born. When we enter the world, the doctor immediately exclaims: “it’s a boy!” or “it’s a girl!” and the baby is
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Even the sign on the bathroom door is of a woman wearing a dress, which presumes that all women wear dresses or that everyone who wears a dress is a woman. This limited designation fails to include others who may not fit the traditional stereotype, including men who self-identify as biologically male, but prefer wearing female attire, or individuals who are born biologically male but might identify as women. Nor does this description take into consideration women who were born biologically female, but identify as male, or women who may dress more masculine but consider themselves female.
We are constantly being bombarded by the social constructs of gender. In advertisements women are portrayed as beautiful, fragile and dainty, where as men are seen as powerful, strong and masculine. These subliminal messages, along with the more blatant ones from peers, teachers, media, and parents, serve to reinforce gender stereotypes, roles and labels. In addition, they further alienate those who do not conform to these norms.
There are two opposite ends of the spectrum, male and female, but non- gender binary and gender fluid people do not fit neatly into these two categories. Unlike cisgenders, who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, non-gender binary individuals do not identify with a specific gender. More specifically, if you are non-gender binary, you have
Although gender is a socially constructed idea, it is often suggested to be a natural phenomenon. Society plays an important role in reinforcing gender roles in a way that disguises itself as natural, and is thus accepted without question. The United States’ gender system emphasizes gender hierarchy and a binary system that forces individuals to conform. In order to progress gender equality, it is important to denaturalize these social constructions of gender.
One who claims any gender other than male or female would be considered taboo or highly unusual by our society. Biological sex is often thought to determine one’s gender identity. Though sex and gender align for the mass of our population, there is a minority group that does not feel that they belong to either male or female genders. To understand gender fluidity, one must recognize that sometimes a person’s gender and sex do not align. A person may not feel that their biological sex reflects who they are, they may feel uncomfortable with the expectations and roles placed on them due to their sex. These gender roles are created by social expectations of our western society. Gender roles are merely social constructs, and if one does not want to conform to societies conjectures placed on them due to their biological sex, they should have the freedom to non-conform.
Gender is a complex socially constructed idea. Often people interchangeably use gender to refer to someone’s sex. This is not the case. Sex is the biological characteristics that makes someone a male, female or intersex. Gender however is made up of expression, identity, and sexual orientation. Gender identity is how one views themselves such as a woman, man or transgender. Gender identity does not correspond to the sex of that person. Gender expression is how one expresses their gender identity. This could be through a masculine , feminine or androgynous expression. In Western societies, although there has been a push for change in our gender system, the gender system as been a binary system. This binary system only believes that there are
After the birth of newly born babies, a specific gender is engraved on them based on their sexual dimorphism – male babies are assigned as boys and female babies are assigned as girls, and another category generally involves intersex babies. According to the scholars gender does not have natural existence but instead it is just a concept that is constructed by cultural and
The sex binary is a fundamental value in American society. Even before birth, people are to be either male or female. The article Doing Gender by West and Zimmerman explains how from an early age, children are taught to identify a person’s sex with that
Gender is the state of being masculine or feminine based on the biological characteristics of a person; it depicts the inner identity of an individual. In this context, I will allude to the social practices, exercises, and qualities that a given society considers fitting for men and women.
In today’s media there have been numerous images portray and examples of gender either in movies, television shows and or in commercials. Viewers have their own mind and can think for themselves, but when you have the media constantly portraying a male or a female a certain way, it can be influential or stereotypically. The image is putting on stereotypes and labeling a male figure to only be a certain way, while the women figure is the opposite way. Males are presented as the strong ones, the ones that get things done. The women are presented to be the sexy and only worried about their appearance. I came across a recent article and video that indicated that “media that perpetuates rigid gender roles and stereotypes can affect children’s sense of self, relationship, and career aspirations” In module three, we discussed the media stereotypes. Men are seen as active, adventurous, powerful, sexually aggressive, and uninvolved in human relationships, while women are seen as sex objects, young, thin, beautiful, passive, dependent, sometimes incompetent, and they are either a virgin or they are label as a whore. By reading those labels that media place on women, it is ridiculous, but this is exactly what the media portrays.
Let me give you a scenario; It’s 3:00am. Rushing down the halls of a hospital you are on your way to support a person who is doing one of the most beautiful and complex things in life. Giving birth. You are the doctor in the room. Cutting the umbilical cord you hand the mother her child. She smiles up at you with tear rimmed eyes and you wrap the child up in a blanket and hold out to her a beautiful baby _____. Boy or girl? It doesn’t really matter which you say so long as you say one or the other, right? Within a few moments after birth and a quick scan between the legs of the child will enable you to develop a gender label for the child that they will carry for the rest of their life relevant to their sex.
We have all been characterized as either a boy or a girl. But is it because of our anatomy? Or is our society and cultures the ones who build our identity? Well for starters, society has its own image for what is considered as masculine or feminine. This is where gender roles come in; it becomes a limit of your true identity, growing stereotypes that you are supposed to fit into. It all begins from the day you are born. In the hospital, scientifically your sex is determined, meaning you are biologically divided based on your body parts. From that first day society takes its part in giving a pink blanket distinguishing that you are a girl or a blue one for boys. So what does it mean to be a boy or a girl? In our modern days, gender signifies what associates us with what people think, feel and expect of us. It is becoming a problem for humans to decipher their true selves with society always giving them principles to follow. They are constantly being nurtured into these genders, and on that note, if you decide to be different from what is
In his book Work in Progress, Connor Franta claimed, “Girls can be athletic. Guys can have feelings. Girls can be smart. Guys can be creative. And vice-versa. Gender is specific only to your reproductive organs, not your interests, likes, dislikes, goals or ambitions.” Gender stereotypes have existed for as long as anyone can remember, but they continue to pose major problems in our society. Everyday, men and women are being expected to fulfill a set of unrealistic gender-specific ideals that attempt to define the way they should act, what they should like, and what they should aspire to do. These ideals have not only created inter-personal problems for those who are “unable” to live up to them, but greater economic and societal problems for
The roles of males and females in society have significantly changed, as opposed to the predominant roles in our history. In the modern culture of today, women have begun to break out of the mold that which society has placed her in. This much can’t be said when it comes to modern gender representation in mass media advertising. It can be safe to state that woman are seen as sexual, fragile, exotic—whereas men are portrayed as tough, in control, and aggressive. This trend can be one seen as an inhibitor to the advancement of our culture, because especially for women, it is hard to pull away from the stereotypes that are continuously represented. As examples of the given trend, the following
Someone born female can choose to identify their gender as a woman or as a man. Or they can identify as neither, or as a mix. Whatever they consider themselves to be. Gender is just how one chooses to present themselves. Gender can be influenced by a number of factors. If someone is born a female and raised as a female they may just assume they’re a female and live life as a woman with no questions asked. Others may just know that they are female and choose to live as a woman. Some may think they are male despite being raised otherwise. All that matters is that sex is biological and gender is expression.
The problems imposed by gender stereotyping and overly-sexualized messages in society have long been a discussion point amongst activists and critics. On one hand, advertisements in magazines, television, and the Internet have often employed a large number of questionable tactics, pushing subtle and not-so-subtle messages that promote indifference and even violence towards women. On another hand, sexism has been so pervasive in our society that it has even affected the minds of young children, who are not mature enough to question the gender norms imprinted on them from a young age.
Society makes us who we are today. However, Gender strongly impacts our society. It shapes the ideas of an individual. Gender is a social classification based on one's identity, presentation of self, behavior, and interaction with others. The learned behavior is activities, attitudes and norms that society seems appropriate to one. Gender is the masculinity and femininity of an individual. People learn the gender through socialization. Someone may say you “walk like a man” or “throw like a girl”. No one is really taught, it is what they see around them. Basically, this is how we define gender in the world today.
There are distinct differences between Sex and Gender. Sex is divided up into two divisions, male or female, based upon their reproductive system. Gender is the notion set by society on what social behaviours are acceptable for males and females, for example the expectation that females are more caring or nurturing than men. Gender can be further divided into two subcategorise: identity and stereotype. Gender identity is the concept that your sex and gender do not have to be the same but can different, i.e. a male at birth can identify as a female. These notions of acceptable behaviour set by society create gender stereotypes for both male and female, which can cause a person to reject their gender identity if they do not conform these gender stereotypes.