Gender And Gender Identity

Gender derives its formative meaning from culture and societal values, it is not a universal entity as there are various cultures, societal values, beliefs, and preferred ways of organizing collective life across the globe and even within a single culture the meaning of gender varies over time. Chapters three and four of Gendered Lives by Julia T. Wood helps to insightfully look at those views, and rhetorical movements (women and men’s movements) that have overtime influenced, defined and given various meanings to gender (masculinity and femininity).

​​Gender is defined as whatever behaviors and attitudes a group considers proper for its males and females. Unlike sex, gender is something that we learn from the day we are born. “Young children begin to acquire gender role stereotypes at about the same time they develop gender identity and by the age of 3 or 4 most children” (Amanda Youmans). Peers, community, media, religion and our upbringing all play a role in the understanding of our culture and what is considered acceptable for males and females. When the sex of a child is revealed, they are automatically placed into a gender specific role with certain expectations. There are things in this world such as colors, toys, media depiction and taught behaviors that play into these gender roles.

“Gender Trouble is rooted in ‘French Theory,’ which is itself a curious American construction. Only in the United States are so many disparate theories joined together as if they formed some kind of unity.”

The word identity has become the most discussed idea in our society. It is described mostly, to be a word that stands for who we are. Therefore, because of who we are, identity has come to be a word that we use to claim and understand people’s actions in our society. So in this paper I will be analysing how social practices surrounding identity relates to gender in social, personal levels, through the work of three authors; by Ian Hacking on “kind making”, Margaret Somers on “Narrative construction of identity” and finally, Frederick Cooper and Rogers Brubaker on “beyond identity” . However, I will tilt more toward Frederick Cooper and Rogers Bruakers article on identity. This is because I feel that their article contributes better to my

Gender can sometimes be seen as biological characteristics humans have, when in fact it is the social characteristic ones society deems either masculine or feminine. Sex, on the other hand, is the biological differences in humans, for example, hormones and sex organs. People usually play gender roles in society, otherwise known as gender ideology. Gender ideology is when men and women have certain attitudes regarding their ‘fixed’ roles, responsibilities and rights. Throughout history men and women have been socialized to play these expected roles that have been placed on them due to their sex. In my own personal life I have encountered many instances where I have been socialized in relation to sex and gender.

Moreover, Butler’s literature review is based on philosophers and social theorists such as, Foucault and Nietzsche. The author attempts to analyze some of the attributes and variables in the society such as sex variable and the gender identity characteristics. She depicts gender in queer theories in media in a critical manner that makes her work a valuable contribution to the field of gender studies. The book would assist my paper, by providing insights into the idea of gender being negotiated through discourse and performance of gender in everyday interaction, and how identity is a performativity and it is constituted by expression. Butler’s views on gender challenges the cultural norms and gender categories. Therefore, she brought a creative chaos to the people about their sexual instincts and the establishment of the marriage agency. The book lacks empirical studies, quantitative researches. However, as my research relays on the literature review and secondary materials, this book would provide my paper with a deep insight into the queer theories.

When it comes to gender identity, I identify myself as a masculine or a man. As a masculine I’m going to play the role of a female where I would go to a neighborhood close to where I live, wear a wedding dress, and see how people around the block reacting to my kind of behavior. Base of my moral norm, I think it would be shameful, and I expect people to feel disgusting by it because that’s how I would feel if I were the public. As we all know when it comes to the behaviors between men and women, there is a lot of thing women can do but man can’t do because if a man does it, it would look weird or shock the society. For instance, throughout the weekend I was thinking about an experiment to see what exactly a woman can do which would be normal,

Gender identity is the personal conception of being a man or a woman and the society creates standards and comes up with gender roles basing them on existing norms and traditions which will in turn influence gender identity. For instance, most societies associate strength and dominance to be masculine roles while caring and assisting or subordination known to be feminine roles. This clearly makes gender identity be bred within the society. One’s identity is important as it influences his or her life through events like life experiences, how one is being taken or treated, how to do one associate or socialize with others, the type of job one will have to do and also opportunities that may come up favoring a certain type of gender identity. One is also likely to face obstacles or discrimination due to his or her identity.

Bourdieu considers that, as race, gender is socially constructed (Bourdieu, 1982). Moreover, gender is also discursively constructed. According to Bucholtz, and Hall (2005), social gender is assigned every time that a speaker assign a social gender to other human being. These authors say: “ It is the constant iteration of such practices that cumulatively produces not only each individual's gender identity, but gender itself as a socially meaningful system” (p. 590). In this vein, Bourdieu (1982) posits that utterances are not just signs to be deciphered; rather, they are symbolic representations of signs of wealth and authority that are “meant to be believed and obeyed” (p. 68). Thus, the construction of the female as gender relies in a set

By outlining the social and racial inflicted prejudice which consumed British ideology, there is a clear identity crisis for the black female characters in The Final Passage, Small Island and Second-Class Citizen. The inexplicable cultural ties to the colonial country indicate an erasable diasporic history which often surfaces within the relationships and liminal spaces which the Black female characters encounter in the mother country. As a result, we can see the character of Leila in severe turmoil due to her hybrid identity and the racial discrimination inflicted upon her. Thus, racial identity is crucial in mapping, re-negotiating and constructing the female diaspora throughout the texts. The positioning of Black women in post-war Britain

Gendered identity seemed to be well defined during the 1950s and this appeared to be reflected in fashion. These clearly defined roles and images however have not, historically, been consistent. At the beginning of the 20th century women’s style and fashion started to change intensely, this changing has helped women to fight for their independence of their style in fashion. Clothing moved to be more practical, a huge change from the narrowed and restricted frills and corsets of the 19th century. Fashion in the 1900s started to see a decline of the train on women’s dresses but soon enough hems began to develop (above the ankle). In the 1910s style began to concentrated more on the female shape, and just after one year later the world saw the beauty of slender silhouette. However, women were still required to keep the

When I first started thinking about gender roles and how they influence us, I wanted to argue for how things have gotten more equal for both sexes in our society. Women and men alike have gradually shifted into roles once believed to be the sole territory of either one sex or the other, making gender equality highly valued by most people now-a-days. We also now acknowledge the differences between gender identity and sexual identity, and the roles that transgender, bisexual, gay/lesbian, and heterosexual individuals bring to our society. However, when I started to really reflect upon the 21st century, I began to realize that many of the culturally defined ways of behaving for men and women today still seem to be from the norm of a time so long past it isn’t funny. Two current examples, in our society today women face caps on how far they can go in the workforce due to a pre-established “glass ceiling” that dominates in a still very male oriented work environment; on the flipside, many people, men and women alike, will snub their nose at the “stay-at-home dad,” because both sexes still see house work and childcare as the women place.

Gender is the intersection of the relationships between sex, gender identity, sexuality and gender expression; an achieved status

My entire life I grew up learning girls wore pink, dresses, loved sparkles, painted their nails, loved to shop, played with babies, played dress up, dreamed of their wedding day, loved the Disney Princess movies, and that boys had cooties. I never knew anything different and honestly I never put much thought into how different I had grown up because the only boy in my house was my dad and he obviously wasn’t playing with boy or girl toys, so I just thought that’s how it was, girls did girl things and boys did boy things. Plain and simple, that’s how I thought everyone grew up until I started working at a daycare. I started realizing that boys were starting to put pretty pink princess dresses on and I thought it was odd, I remember going to my mom and asking what we should do about that and she said it was completely normal and that there was nothing to say or do that that is just how kids play and that it was natural. It’s not that my parents made me only play with girl things either, that’s just all we had. My older sister and I would play day and night with our Littlest Pet Shops, Webkinz, or American Girl Dolls, I think that’s just all we knew that’s all we got for our birthdays and Christmas presents and that’s all we ever asked for. I think growing up with strictly girl toys has made me into an extreme girly girl, I love to get my nails done honestly probably a problem, my entire wedding is already planned for and I don’t even have a

Since its publication in 1990, Gender Trouble has become one of the key works of contemporary feminist theory, and an essential work for anyone interested in the study of gender, queer theory, or the politics of sexuality in culture. This is the text where Judith Butler began to advance the ideas that would go on to take life as "performativity theory," as well as some of the first articulations of the possibility for subversive gender practices, and she writes in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition released in 1999 that one point of Gender Trouble was "not to prescribe a new gendered way of life [...] but to open up the field of possibility for gender [...]" Widely taught, and widely debated, Gender Trouble continues to offer a powerful