Anne Fausto-Sterling The Five Sexes

Judith Sargent Murray’s On the Equality of the Sexes reveals the struggles women had in the 17th-18th centuries when it came to equal education opportunities. Women were expected to become people of domestication while men had many opportunities to expand their minds and be ambitious, and be leaders. Women were expected to focus on taking care of their family, not to have minds of their own. They wanted change.

Judith Sargent Murray was a revolutionary woman- born into a socially prominent and wealthy family during the start of the American Revolution, Murray was recognized for her intellect at a young age and given an education along with her brother. Later in life, she had her written works widely published and read during a time when women’s voices were seen as fundamentally inferior to those of men. In one of her most influential and strongly opinionated works, ‘On the Equality of the Sexes’, Murray makes a strong case for the spiritual and intellectual equality of men and women, arguing that women and men are born equal, but that men are simply given more education and

This article from “The Real Truth about the Female” by Barbara Ehrenreich targets many beliefs that women were underestimated. The main theory suggested in this document is that, women had to follow the traditional duties. Early theories are being questioned as a result to women proving many things over the years that were often overlooked. Ehrenreich states in his article, “it does strongly suggest that in the Stone Age family, Dad-the-hunter was not the only provider.” There is a great amount of evidence that suggest the theory that women worked as hard as men. Adrienne Zihlman and Nancy Tanner stated “among surviving “hunting” peoples, most of the community’s calories—up to 70%—come from plant food patiently gathered by women.” This fact

1.T.Hall was singled out because he had both qualities of male and female. Because of this fact, he played the roles of female and male. This made people upset, because there was clear guidelines and social rules that must be in place for both genders. The idea that a female can role-play as a male and gain the same rights of males scared many people.

As a country, we have come a long way to reaching equality between women and males. During the 19 centuries women fought for their right to vote. When talking about gender, there are a lot issues that continue to be present until this day. Women had to fight for equality during the 19 century which lead up women in today’s society to have a voice. Despite of all the improvement close to gender equality, society still expect particular things from females and males.

The documentary Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She sheds light on the difficult lives of individuals who identify with the opposite gender. The writer Anthony Thomas uses biology to prove to the audience that intersexual’s didn’t necessarily make that choice for themselves. Thomas says that on in every hundred people is born with unidentifiable genitalia (Thomas). This is referred to as intersex. The beginning of the film focuses on a young boy named Noah who takes interest in the stereotypical “girly or feminine” activities. This movie has lead me to realize that society's perspective on gender and sexuality is heavily influenced by the media. The media strictly portrays what society knows as the norms of human

Dracula can be read as an almost transparent metaphor for the confusion, guilt and anger over what is considered to be the ‘proper’ role of women in Victorian society. The ‘vamping’ of a human female - such as in the case of Lucy - succeeds in adding a sexualised and sexualising element to women, who - according to the time period - are then only ‘purified’ through further sexual and violent acts, such as being penetrated by a wooden stake (Skal, 31).

Gender Matters is a collection of various essays on feminist linguistic texts analysis, by Sara Mills. Mills develops methods of analyzing literary and non-literary texts, in addition to conversational analysis based on a feminist approach. The author draws on data from her collection of essays gathered over the last two decades on feminism during the 1990s. The essays focus on gender issues, the representation of gender in reading, writing, and in public speaking. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of feminists’ analysis of sexism in literature and the relation between gender and politeness. The article is informative for my research paper, as my

Gender: a word society uses far too often without realizing its true complicated meaning. Children are born every day and the golden question becomes “Is it a boy or a girl?” What would a person do if they heard their child was neither or both? According to the National Institutes of Health, “One out of every 2,000 kids is born with genitals that cannot be clearly identified as male or female.” These types of children are called “Intersex”, and they break the boundary of gender identification. Intersex is a broad category for many situations where an individual’s genital or reproductive anatomy, or chromosomal pattern, lies between the normal standards of both male and female. The prefix “inter” stands for between; therefore, the simple definition of intersex is “between the sexes.” Intersex conditions usually result from a genetic

I chose gender criticism this theory to analyze the gender roles and the gender expectations displayed in “Lady Susan”. I chose this theory because “Lady Susan” mainly discussed the relationship between males and females, and the interesting gender roles the characters played. Thus, gender criticism theory can help me to understand and comprehend the underlying meanings of different characters’ conducts and personalities as females.

A common assumption in society is that gender is the same as sex, and that gender is limited to two concrete forms. At birth, children are already pressured into one gender by societal expectations placed on their parents and doctors. This happens even though gender and sex play such large roles in people’s lives, such as finding jobs or behavioral expectations. Recognition of non-binary gender would accommodate both those who feel that their sex does not match their gender, as well as the intersex population. Gender and sex are difficult topics in society right now due to the recent coming out of non-binary individuals who use pronouns outside of our standard

In Dr. Sax’s Book, Why Gender Matters explains the differences between males and females in education and why this is important. The many gender differences between males and females affect their education. Differences such as brain, vision, hearing, and speaking affects the way a student learns.

In the two articles, researchers wanted to study brain structure differences in the transsexuals and how different they are from healthy individuals to understand its potential influence on sexual orientation, gender identity, sex hormones and biological sex. Many confuse the terms transsexual and intersex, whereby transsexual refers to people who are born with typical male or female anatomies but feel that they were born in the wrong body. This results from the mismatch between gender-specific brain development and physiological development. Whereas, intersex are people with a sexual anatomy that is not considered typically male or female. These two conditions show that viewing sex as a binary concept has limitations and the biological spectrum on its own is enough to the dispel this notion of gender being binary.

The book Gender Trouble by Judith Butler required another method of taking a gander at sex and sexual orientation. Instead of the settled manly and ladylike sexual orientation binary, Butler contended that gender ought to be seen as variable, the way we act at various times and in various circumstances as opposed to who we are. Butler proposed that by "deconstructing" the way we consider gender we may move towards another fairness where individuals are not limited by manly or ladylike sex parts. Like women 's activists before her, Butler is worried with achieving more prominent uniformity between men and women, yet her accentuation is distinctive, just like her proposed method of activity. A number of Butler 's contentions and thoughts are fascinating and convincing, however she additionally has pundits who see a few constraints with her work.

What is gender marking according to Judith Butler, (From Undoing Gender) and how can this theory be applied to constructions to racial identity in the Western world?