Dichotomy Of Gender Analysis

Society has a way of splitting up those who are a part of a greater whole. Rather than making the division on matters simple, humans have the tendency to make things complicated. By merely observing the different viewpoints that are held on the matters of race and gender, for example, this complexity can be perceived due to the fact that it is difficult for the general population to come up with an agreed upon consensus. Race and gender are both analyzed by numerous schools of thought. As it would be hard to pick apart all of the various schools of thought associated with these two controversial topics, it is more beneficial to focus on one school of thought and apply the observations seen in one to all. Focusing on its many dimensions and

Clearly, society has been created around two separate classes or genders: men and women. Lorber argues that much of what we consider to be gender has no place in the natural order of the things. She is able

For a long time the people of the world have been divided and identified as either male or female. The differentiation on the basis of a person’s gender has also developed gender roles that are what the society expects the men and women in the community to do. When growing up a child is taught to behave, dress or think according to the expectations the society holds on his gender. The society derives the expectations of gender from everyday norms and acceptable standards that are created by the community. The ethnicity of a person plays a role into creating the behavior expectations of men and women from the culture and traditional beliefs the community holds. In most societies, the men are expected to show masculine behaviors such as dominance, strength, aggression and others. The women on the other hand are expected to exhibit feminine behaviors associated with subordination, nurturing and passivity (Grusec, 2014).

In the Victorian era, men continued to act as the superior gender to their female counterparts. Because men were usually more educated and wrote more works of literature, women were often absent from the bookshelves of the past. In The Stranger Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert

Gender and Sexuality: Can you spot the difference? Sex and gender play a big part in american society today and are often misconstrued. These two topics have become progressive as people are starting to express their gender and sexuality in ways other than what is and has been considered the norm. Many people believe that sexuality and gender are synonymous with one another. Gender is socially constructed while sex is biologically determined. In society’s past, Americans often strayed away from discussing controversial topics, but with the rise of different ways of addressing people, it is deemed more important to understand. Along with the blurred lines of gender and sex comes sexuality, who someone is attracted to sexually. When people stray from society’s heteronormative mindset, they are often faced with many more challenges than the average hetero man or woman. People often have the preconceived notion that if something does not concern them, then they should not be involved in it. A person who could be your neighbor, co worker, or even child, may have to deal with the troubles of people confusing their gender identity with their sex. While also facing challenges that deal with the sex of the person they choose to love. Learning the difference between gender and sexuality will open the eyes of many people and see how the two are different but relate to one another very much.

After analyzing the hit TV show “Leave it To Beaver,” I noticed how different the gender roles, both male and female, are portrayed much differently than our modern-day gender roles. For example, in the YouTube clip: “Beavers Big Contest,” it seemed that the mother was staying home, cleaning the house,

As Lorber explores in her essay “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender, “most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Lorber 1). This article was very intriguing because I thought of my gender as my sex but they are not the same. Lorber has tried to prove that gender has a different meaning that what is usually perceived of through ordinary connotation. Gender is the “role” we are given, or the role we give to ourselves. Throughout the article it is obvious that we are to act appropriately according to the norms and society has power over us to make us conform. As a member of a gender

We live in a society where for decades we have been socialized to believe that there are only two genders: male and female. The idea of gender is socially constructed. Society and culture create gender roles and through those roles we all learn to enact our specific roles. With this

In the excerpt “Why Do We Make So Much of Gender?”, from his 1997 book The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, Allan Johnson argues gender through identity and culture. Johnson starts out by expressing opposition on how women are looked at through a patriarchal society and not the biology from which they came. He mentions the feminist argument that women in a patriarchal society are “oppressed” and that this comes from social order (545). He goes on to point out, the focus should be on raising children to adulthood rather than worrying about reproduction. Although, I agree with Johnson’s arguments, there are things in this world that cannot and should not be changed.

What’s Gender Got to Do With It? Today in society it can be agreed that women have indeed gained many rights that were not accessible to them 100 years before. Although, despite the mentality that men and women are treated equally there are still very many discrepancies between the treatment of genders. Many of which can be attributed to the expectations placed on the genders, gender roles between both genders, and women in the workplace. These issues have caused a great rift to form between the genders, a rift that has caused one gender to claim dominance over the other and this can develop a sense of inferiority by the submissive gender.

While reading “Gender,” an essay by Jack Halberstam, the topic of sexism was brought to the forefront of my mind. It has been brought up more often in conversation in the modern era, issues such as how a few cruel insults pertain to female reproductive anatomy and, in a sense, degrade females and ultimately identify them, as well as femininity, as inherently “bad”. Such a thought stemmed from how Halberstam touches on the “problematic stabilization of the meaning of ‘women’ and ‘female’”: meaning there is no room for argument when it comes to your gender—you’re either a girl or not. You either fit into a strict mold, or you do not.

In order to compare and contrast the different readings from this semester I want to start from the beginning. Gender is an achieved status in which is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social means (West 1987). Instead of solely depending on your biology, which is considered your sex, gender is performed in interactions. Almost every interaction that someone encounters is relevant to his or her gender. Gender can be the degree in which someone can describe himself or herself as masculine or feminine. In Lorber’s “Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender” she explained, “gendered behavior is constantly normalized by processes that minimize or counteract contradiction to the expected” (Lorber

Many people have different understandings of what gender means to them. To some, gender might mean you are either male or female depending on what you are assigned to at birth. To others, gender might mean what you identify as. However, there is one constant definition of what gender really means. Throughout the years, modern scholars have studied what it means to be a man and a woman and have come up with a specific definition. Modern scholars define gender as a socially constructed term of men or women. This socially constructed definition is based on everyday life roles. This could be from how you interact with others and how you expressed yourself physically or emotionally to the rest of the world. An example would be, women wear dresses

Another perspective to consider when exploring the absence of women in Jekyll and Hyde is the curious descriptions regarding Hyde. Doane and Hodges state that “many descriptions of Hyde’s physical characteristics are congruent with cultural descriptions of femininity” (69). As a result, perhaps women are not seen much in the novella because Hyde operates as the sole feminine representative. He is small in stature like women typically are, walks with a quick light step swinging his arms instead of walking with a heavy step, and weeps like a women. Many critics argue that Hyde’s size and even his walking pattern represent outward manifestations of his morality. In regards to size, his small stature references stunted growth in the area of moral

When we look up gender in the dictionary it states “Although it is possible to define gender as “sex,” indicating that the term can be used when differentiating male creatures from female ones biologically, the concept of gender, a word primarily applied to human beings, has additional connotations—more rich and more amorphous—having to do with general behavior, social interactions, and most importantly, one 's fundamental sense of self.” When I define gender I automatically define it as being a boy and girl or male and female. People define gender in so many ways, but it is in the way that we think more outside of the box based on people’s opinions, that make us wonder more.