Female Masculinity

One of the major themes in Pat barker’s ‘Regeneration’ is gender and masculinity, this is my chosen theme. The novel overall reflects the struggles of World War one soldiers and their attempts to overcome the trauma of war experience. In this essay, I will be exploring ways which Barker represents my chosen themes. By discussing in depth and focusing on homosexuality, parenthood, emasculation, and mutism as a symbol.

John D’Emilio’s “Capitalism and Gay Identity” contracts what life was like for gay men and lesbians throughout the 1970s and 1980s. During the 1970s, gay men and lesbians were able to come out freely, and eventually started to get accepted by everyone in society. They were able to express themselves without any regards, and started to become the person they were destined to be. People within the gay community have always expressed tendencies of liking the same sex, but societal norms did not allow them to express themselves. However, during the 1980s, as more people decided to openly come out, it started to take a toll on their identity. Society then started to question the importance of people who were brave enough to come out to the world.

The present essay aims to analyse and discuss how social actions related to gender and sexuality have given rise to social change. Particular attention will be given to how views and opinions on gender and sexuality have positively evolved throughout the years as a result of decades of social activism led by the members and allies of the LGBT community. In order to do so, the current paper will firstly provide a concise account of how gender and sexuality were seen in the former times, which will be then compared to more current perspectives. Secondly, the paper will present a brief overview of the history of the LGBT movement, and highlight its main milestones. Significant emphasis will be given to how these salient occurrences have significantly affected today’s perception and attitudes towards the LGBT community in the majority of the world countries. In conclusion, the current essay will introduce and explore the recent ongoing activism that has been occurring globally within the LGBT community.

One’s gender identity represents who they are, whether they were born with male or female genitalia. Back in the 1900’s, “for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) folks in America, the efflorescence of sexual expression did not begin until the waning months of that decade in the heart of the nation’s then-largest bohemian enclave and gay ghetto, New York’s Greenwich Village” (Wolf). In the 60’s, being able to express who you were freely was pushed aside much too often. But because of the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, their fight has helped people today be who they want to be without any discrimination. Over “four decades after the Stonewall riots, political leaders are now beginning to recognize the influence of the LGBT community, knocking down barriers to gay and lesbian participation in the military and nominating at least two transgender officials, for the first time in history, to senior posts in the federal government under the Obama administration” (Teal). Whether someone identifies as a man, woman, or neither, they are able to participate in any group regardless. Due to the Stonewall riots, no matter what no one can turn you down based off of your gender identity, which is causing political leaders to now think differently because of this monumental time in history where everyone can be accepted for who they want to

To read Babio without recognizing the gender politics at work in the play would disregard much of how the play itself creates meaning. So much of the play’s plot and character dynamics are related to the way gender functions in this play. One major theme of Babio is the idea of masculinity and how masculinity is defined. Through the portrayal of Babio as an effeminate character, Babio is able to define masculinity through absences in Babio’s Character. Consequently, Babio makes the additional point that lovesickness is not an intrinsic aspect of medieval masculinity, despite the fact that love sickness is often attributed to men.

Queer as Folk: Over the extent of of the United States’ history, we have had a lot of social movements. One of the most notable being the fight for equality for LGBTQI — that is, lesbian, gays, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and inter-sexual. The LGBTQ started its uprise in the ‘50s as homosexuals started to become more well known — not necessarily accepted, however — among society. The LGBTQI community has quickly progressed since the ‘50s and ‘60s, bringing along with it many social changes, transgressions, feelings of hate, misconceptions, and a plethora of stereotypes — changing society’s views on sex, marriage, love, and what it is to be human. It is important to understand the impact the LGBTQI community has had on our society, and which titles have made the greatest impact. Out of all six titles, one has became the most prominent in today’s society: gay men.

The documentary explored the community of transgender and gays and really connected with the matrix of domination. Matrix of domination analyzes race, class, and gender as different but interrelated axes of social structure. In the documentary, society perpetuates marked and unmarked categories of sexual orientation. Marked and unmarked categories connect to power as it is distributed off of various reasons, some identified and some unidentified. The drag queens, gays, and transgender suffer because of these often unspoken social norms. As these sexual orientations are not normal in society, society might call these people “queer.” In the article “Queer” from Keywords for American Cultural Studies, the term queer is used “interchangeably with the terms “gay” and “lesbian” or occasionally “transgender” and “bisexual.” (Somerville 2007) This shows that society uses a term that refers to a range of sexual identities that are not straight and not normal. Also, from the writing “Critically Queer” by Judith Butler, he said that the word "queering" “persists as a defining moment of performativity.” (Butler 1993) The word performativity means the enactment of the spoken word historically of force and consolidation, so this emphasizes how the term “queer” is a performative that has one domain in which power acts as

A woman is marginalized not only because she is a woman, but also because aside from being a woman, she may also be a person of color and/or a person with a physical disability. Both traits coexist with her gender and label her as an inferior being in society. As feminism focuses on bringing equal rights to women in a male-dominated hierarchy, this essay will focus on how intersectional feminism aims to not only prioritize gender classification and prejudice but also expose a system of oppression— heteronormativity, the regiment of heterosexuality— in which gender is skewed and devalued to fit society’s ideologies. The relationship between gender and sexuality is complex as they both compliment and restrict each other.

Over the years the queer community has made leaps and bounds towards the goal of simple equality, with various anti-discrimination bills, and most recently the legalisation of same sex marriage in all of the states of the United States of America, but that is not to say that the fight is over. An estimate of over 2 billion people still live in countries where homosexuality is illegal , the defence of “Trans Panic” still exists in almost all American states , and “corrective” surgery is still used on intersex individuals against their consent and in some cases their parents as well . The fight is nowhere

How is gender and gender roles socially constructed? Soulliere states that gender is a cultural creation that is frequently developed by and represented through popular cultural media such as advertisements, music, sports, and entertainment television (Soulliere 2006). The article “Wrestling with Masculinity: Messages about Manhood in the WWE” by Danielle M. Soulliere (2006), examines messages about manhood revealed by televised professional wrestling (Soulliere 1). Messages concerning masculinity and manhood were investigated and compared to the cultural version of masculinity (Soulliere 2006). Soulliere’s research proves that the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) depicts messages, which supports the dominant hegemonic form of masculinity (Soulliere 2006). To further grasp and understand Soulliere’s hypothesis, we must first examine her research methods and outcomes.

Womanhood is often associated with femininity while manhood with masculinity. Masculinity is the idea that men are tough both physically and mentally. Femininity, a term associated with being women is used to describe a women’s comportment and attitude. A gentle individual male or female, who wears dresses, skirts, high heels, makeup, and has long hair would be identified as feminine. Unfortunately, society judges and criticizes a women who do not depict feminine characteristics. Such women are regarded as either homosexual or queer. I chose two pictures of Grace Jones to compare in this essay since she happens to be a gender bender and victim of alike persecutions. Additionally, Grace Jones is a supermodel and singer from Jamaica, who’s renowned for cross-dressing and artistic fashion styles (Williams). The picture titled, “Grace Jones/Nightclubbing,”was derived from the National Portrait Gallery,while the other from, “Essense” website, Jones demonstrates that women can be feminine or soft in one picture and masculine or hard in the other picture through her appearance.

Queer theory questions creations of normal and divergent, insider, and outsider.2 Queer theorists analyse a situation or a text to determine the relationship between sexuality, power and gender. Queer theory challenges basic tropes used to organize our society and our language: even words are gendered, and through that gendering an elliptical view of the hierarchy of society, and presumption of what is male and what is female, shines through. Queer theory rejects such binary distinctions as arbitrarily determined and defined by those with social power. It works to deconstruct these binaries, particularly the homosexual/heterosexual binary.4

Female misogyny in the workplace is the phenomenon of intra-gender misogyny amongst women. These negative relationships within the female gender have been found to exist empirically and anecdotally between women on the same level, directed upwards within and organization and directed downwards from management to junior levels or potential employees (Mavin, 2006a; Sheppard & Aquino, 2014; Ely, 1994).

In “Queer Theory Gender Theory: An instant Primer,” Riki Wilchins describes the history for queer theory by describing the women’s rights in Chapter 1. The chapter begins with Wilchins describing the large connection with queer theory Is politics. From the black civil rights, women rights, and gay rights, these topics revolve around the amount of power a specific group of individuals wanted in society. Especially in the 1950s and 1960s, the black civil rights prove to be successful in showing the movement is successful into gaining equality for an underrepresented group of individuals. This chapter will outline the connection between the history of women rights and the early beginnings of queer theory.

Gender and sexual orientation is a topic that has been and still today is not talked about in such a way it should be because of how society has chosen to structure and control it. Social stratification is a system in which groups of people are divided up into layers according to their relative privileges (power, property, and prestige). It’s a way of ranking large groups of people into a hierarchy according to their relative privileges (Vela-McConnell 2016). People, who deviate from the norm of the “accepted” gender and sexual orientation that society has placed upon us, are stratified below the norm of a dominating binary gender and sexual orientation. People who are queer face the struggle of mistreatment and an unaccepting society that has been socialized to see and act on gender and sexual orientation to being a dualistic system.