Jane Pilcher is the first guest of the Thinking Allowed podcast. She is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Leicester and she's the author of an article in the journal sociology entitled “Names Bodies and Identities”. She endeavors at showing the link between names and their perception by people. The first point she makes is in establishing that society expects names to be faithful indicators of a person’s gender. Typically male names are expect to be attributed to males and the same for women. This preconceived idea of names is common belief and thus it is extremely unsettling for people when they encounter someone who does not follow this tacit rule. Jane Pilcher illustrates her argument using the anchorman’s anecdote
Richard Crasta, a professional writer from Mangalore, India, began a journey of cultural exploration when he immigrated to the United States in 1980. He holds an MFA degree from Columbia University. In his essay "What's in a Name?" Richard Crasta explores the cultural influences that shape our concept of identity based on our names. He argues that names, often perceived as simple combinations of letters, carry immense significance in unveiling not only individual identities but also broader cultural contexts.
This semester, I am taking Intro to Sociology and we have been looking at different perspectives of our society. One thing we are studying is how from at such a young age, we are taught to assign gender roles. In Patricia J. Williams’ magazine article, “Are We Worried about Storm’s Identity- or Our Own”, an essay taken out of the Nation magazine (June 2011), she tells a story about Storm, whose parents choose not to reveal the sex of their baby. She is a legal scholar and examines issues related to law and culture. Williams focuses on all the stereotypes that we associate with gender, how we as a society find social order in assigning gender roles, and the need to have the proper pronouns so that we know how/what to label a person. The author’s use of ethos and logos really brings the point home that we need to be more open about all the possibilities associated with gender and pronouns.
Maxine Hong Kingston has many unanswered questions about her father’s sister. Kingston explores all the possibilities of her aunt’s life and personality through her essay, “No Name Woman.” Her aunt profoundly disgraced her family by becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Although the aunt is punished by the family’s refusing to remember her, this punishment is entirely unwarranted because not only was the aunt clearly raped, she was raped by her husband’s father.
• Boyle shows how two people used fake names, and that they should be honest with their names because it gives a stronger connection with them
Even Eve does not want to be under the supremacy of Adam, so she also unnamed herself because for her, it is of no use and act of unnaming also shows the act of rebellion towards Adam, towards the man who is unaware that through names, everyone was divided. In other words, names given by Adam is a permanent mark of inferiority towards the people named. The primary representation in the story reinforce its main theme: names are nothing but names that portrays the “inferiority” of the person. Black people observed as people who are bullied and deprived by their right to live a good peaceful life and woman perceived as weak and incapable of doing things that man can do. The themes in Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” and Ursula Le Guin’s “She Unnames Them” reveals that racism and feminism having different sort (one short story is about feminism and one is about racism) when it comes to short stories, are recognized to have similar themes because these two are perceived as themes that shows inferiority and inequality of the person or the
Here McFadden has exhibited, in her own comical way, how tiresome it can be for an audience to listen to a speaker who has enacted gender neutral identifiers. Again, I find myself in agreement with our author, there must be more thought put into these changes. McFadden has done a very good job of demonstrating her claim in a way that almost puts you in the audience for a speech that has furnished these gender neutral changes. I don't want to have to listen to that and I wouldn't fault anyone else who had no desire to sit through a similar presentation.
As I read the book, The Handmaid’s Tale, I also thought of our previous lecture on “The Problem with No Name.” Friedan states that women in the past valued their life as being a good wife and mother, sharing power with her husband at home. According to her, most women had ignored the problem that had no name other than one’s wife or one’s mother, but became no longer possible to ignore their desire to find their true self outside of their house. The ignorance of their “name” and the desire to find their identities are aligned with the life of Offred and other handmaids. The Handmaid cannot have their real name which they were given from their parents. Instead, they should take their husband’s name. Because the name of Offred’s commander Fred,
At birth everyone is given a name by their parents. Your name is part of your identity and how you are addressed and recognized by the world. The different verities among the population created other names given to different races. These names are offensive, demeaning and are only used to refer to a person in a disrespectful manner. They can also cause a segregation among a nations people, these names are forced upon people weather they are rich or poor, old or young, male or female and are used to describe the same race of people. In the class reading "What 's in a Name? “by Henry Louis Gates he reminisces about a personal experience of his that he had with his father. In the story he describes his father was a hard worker and, because of this he was in high financial standings and, he was well respected and given privileges that at the time was rare for people of his race but he was still black and his name, his individual identity was not important instead he was given a racial identity, this is the only thing he was known as, this type of negative recognition is something many black Americans can relate to. One’s race is a predominant part of our identity and is what causes discrimination.
Firstly, In the article “Girl fights to use unapproved name “language is visible as a name is a huge part of language and for each religion it differently spelled, pronounced and the way its given to a child. Name is a main part of language and it is main part of a person’s identity. However, in the article, “Girl fights to use unapproved name” Baler’s right of her identity is being taken away from her. Baler’s mom Eidsdottir is supporting language and identity for her daughter
At the most basic level, a name is a primitive representation of one’s identity. Lonnie’s name was predetermined before he even had individual, unprecedented characteristics. Changing Lonnie’s name to Aaron is effective in homogenizing him into the general public and in disconnecting and segregating him from his paternal, biological family. The name Lonnie is what makes him who he is, and in removing that, Sister Ignacia is able to forcibly cause Lonnie to question his personal identity. By removing his name and sense of belonging, connection, family, intimacy, and inclusion, his self-actualization has no fundamental basis on which to expand and evolve.
The concept of naming as a tool to shape relationships is a time-tested literary tool, which in addition to being employed in Jane Eyre, also features as a major discourse in Uglies. “Uglies’ slang is…ugly. It’s all about giving people nicknames that highlights their ugliness-Skinny, Squint,” the difference between Uglies’ use of naming and Jane Eyre’s use of naming is that in Uglies the young adults impress upon each other these oppressive names rather than a more privileged individual bestowing the names, which lower their own self esteems(Wilkinson 10). This tactic of encouraging self-depreciating names is a practice which internalizes the need in the young citizens to live for the day in which they turn sixteen and can be “reprieved” of their undesirable traits, their skinny frames and squinty eyes.
In her revolutionary book, ‘Bodies that Matter’, Judith Butler posits that identity lacks a social constitution outside of its social recognizability and iterability, that “the discursive condition of social recognition precedes and conditions the formation of the subject (171)”. Furthering this theory in application to gender, Butler claims that prior to an individual’s gender being recognized, there must be a discursive consensus on what male/female/deviant gender entails- what set of norms said gender involves and what ritualized actions must be performed to render these norms intelligible. Drawing upon Althusser’s theory of interpellation, Butler postulates that the individual is constructed, and thus gendered, on the basis of social
For many of us, name and gender are the two foremost criterions we judge a person by. It may be true that these two criteria complement each other most of the time. We do assume one’s gender based on their given name; being given a female name directly attributes the person to the female gender, vice versa if someone we to be given a male name. It is definitely not surprising since gender policing or gender segregation has occurred for many years such that it seems natural for us to practice it. I identify myself as a female because it felt natural, in addition to my biology. My name also supports my gender identity socially such that people could address me correctly in most public settings. Overall, it just feels right to me. However, based on personal experience I observe certain flaws in the two-gender nomenclature where people overgeneralize particular features a certain gender should or should not posses. In this paper, I will be arguing against this normalized viewpoint about what being a female is or is not. This widely universalized view on gender could be the result of the lack of flexibility in society’s viewpoint of a certain gender.
In the 1970s, science fiction writer James Tiptree Jr. became exceptionally popular with his vivid tales of space and aliens. His stories included dark topics such as death and questions of gender roles. Avid fans had little doubt that the author was indeed a male. However, in 1976 James Tiptree Jr. was revealed to be someone other than he claimed to be. His real name turned out to be Alice Bradley Sheldon, a woman. This discovery shocked everyone as her stories were considered highly masculine, but there she was leading the male dominated genre as a woman masquerading as a man. Her choice to use a pseudonym was not entirely planned. She knew she couldn’t publish with her own name because of her previously published documents as a psychologist. Sheldon and her husband came up with the name “James Tiptree Jr.” as a joke based upon the name of a jar of Tiptree jam and she ended up liking it so much that a new persona was born (Phillips 211). However, Tiptree was not just a name to Sheldon. She saw him as an identity separate from her own, who had his own thoughts and personality (Phillips 213).
According to Penelope Eckert, and Sally McConnel-Ginet, who are scholars in the field of linguistics, and co-authors of the essay “Learning to be Gendered,” the development of a humans gender is a process that begins before birth and continues throughout the Childs life. Various areas have lists of names a parent must use before naming their child, author elaborates more on that, “Finland, for example, has lists of legitimate female and legitimate male names that must be consulted before the baby’s name becomes official (737).” Looking deeper into the quote Associating names to genders happens all over the world and many don't realize. At times people, myself included, hear a name and associate it with a specific gender, for example a majority of the time Daniel is associated with a male. Gender roles and identifications are learned and are passed down from generation to generation, the author states, “…adults will do the child’s gender work, treating it as a boy or as a girl, and…the child will learn to take over its part of the process…(737).” In other words As children we grow up learning and believing all males and females should be different and have different interests. As a kid if I wanted to wear a dress I would probably get in big trouble, many people would get it worse with a physical punishment. Whether I like it or not I will be the same to my kids because I've learned it my whole life, just as my parents did. Gender roles have developed so much in society it