Gender Is An Act Of Social Deviance

in today's society, we tend to divide ourselves into groups. One of the biggest divisions, seems to be our gender. Gender is something that has been debated, but one thing everyone can agree on is that we tend to shape everything around what is “normal” for our gender. When people find themselves outside these standards, however, is when things can become dangerous. As conformity is part of human nature, these standards can become extreme.

Both Deborah Blum’s The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over? and Aaron Devor’s “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes” challenges the concept of how gender behavior is socially constructed. Blum resides on the idea that gender behavior is developed mainly through adolescence and societal expectations of a gender. Based on reference from personal experiences to back her argument up, Blum explains that each individual develops their expected traits as they grow up, while she also claims that genes and testosterones also play a role into establishing the differentiation of gender behavior. Whereas, Devor focuses mainly on the idea that gender behavior is portrayed mainly among two different categories: masculinity and

From studying Sociology we know that gender roles are prescribed roles that are assigned to each gender. These roles are prescribed by our culture. Sociologists also use the term “doing gender,” which are day-to-day activities that reinforce or demonstrate the commitment to a gender role. For instance, for men doing gender includes the demonstration of masculinity, showing little emotion, the validation of dominance and power, their outward appearance, and ability to always be a “big boy.”

Nobody is born with a set gender, the way we walk, talk, and dress gives off the impression of being a man or woman and therefore, gender is performative, or in other words nobody possesses a gender from the beginning of their life. In our daily lives we build models of a set gender through repetition. From the moment a baby is born, the gender of the child has already been set by society. Growing up, they perform the gender they believe they should be based on how they have observed these genders to be. They do this by watching it be performed by their parents and those around them. Over and over we have seen gender being performed in more or less in the same way. The repetition gives us the idea that this is why we should be acting according to our gender.

Sarah Veslany PLSC 428 Final Exam 4/28/2015 Contemporary social science asserts that there are no gender binaries that exist in nature, but rather that social institutions, history, and public pressure encourages people to conform to and display heteronormative behavior. Gender in this particular issue is referring to how an individual identifies themselves psychologically. Meaning that gender in a social science context alludes to the cultural interpretation of masculine and feminine characteristics rather that the biological foundation of gender. Gender is seen as a recurring performance of gendered behavior. The social science field rejects biological differences in gender and instead puts emphasis on how societal constructs of gender.

Prior to reading the article Doing Gender, I have never paid attention to the concept of doing gender. I found it interesting how these roles go so unnoticed because they are so enforced in our society. We never stop to think or questions if an individual’s actions are masculine or feminine. For example, some of us are just so use to having our mothers cook and our dad’s do all the heavy lifting but we never stop to think why is it like this or what does this represent.

What does it mean to be a woman or man? Whether we a man or a woman, in today’s society it is not determined just by our sex organs. Our gender includes a complex mix of beliefs, behaviors, and characteristics. How do you act, talk, and behave like a woman or man? Are you feminine or masculine, both, or neither? These are questions that help us get to the core of our gender and gender identity. Gender identity is how we feel about and express our gender and gender roles: clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It is a feeling that we have as early as age two or three. In the article, “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meaning of Gender,” the author, Aaron Devor, is trying to persuade his readers that gender shapes how we behave because of the expectation from us and relate to one another. He does this by using an educational approach, describing gender stereotypes, and making cultural references. He gets readers to reflect on how “Children’s developing concepts of themselves as individuals are necessarily bound up …to understand the expectations of the society which they are a part of” (389). Growing up, from being a child to an adult is where most of us try to find ourselves. We tend to struggle during this transition period, people around us tell us what to be and not to be, Jamaica Kincaidt in her short story, “Girl” tells just that, the setting is presented as a set of life instructions to a girl by her mother to live properly. The mother soberly

"You're such a girl!" is something we hear quite often. But we don't exactly analyze its importance. Every man or women act and behave differently, and that is because of gender roles, "instructions for how to behave and appear as a woman or man (Wade and Ferree 2015; 61). We all "do gender", the ways in which we actively obey and break the gender rules of our society." (Wade and Ferree 2015; 61). We don't always obey these rules and regulation, we're all humans, and we all make mistakes, but it's other peoples reaction what's most interesting about breaking them. Once we break these rules, there is something known as gender policing, "responses to the violations of gender rules aimed at promoting conformity. (Wade and Ferree 2015; 71).

In the article, “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meaning of Gender,” the author, Aaron Devor, is trying to convince his audience that gender shapes how we behave and relate to one another. He does this by using an educational approach, describing gender stereotypes, and making cultural references. These rhetorical devices serve his larger goal of getting readers to reflect on how their childhoods formed their genders. “Maleness and femaleness seem “natural,” not the product of socialization.” (Devor 527) Throughout his article, he makes us wonder whether or not gender is recognized through socializing.

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

The present essay will analyze on gender roles playing an important part in everyone’s life. Gender is something that society expects one to habituate. Gender roles have evolved in raising inequality such as in workforces and incomes. Anthropologists distinguish between gender and sex by saying that gender has to do culturally and that the perception of sex is biologically cultural. In most popular cultures, many believe that the idea of gender is binary, where individuals are expected to characterize and behave as a male or a female. However, there has been a recent identity that individuals step out of this binary system and categorize themselves as transgenders. Ultimately, there have been challenges against the binary system of gender norms

Gender, which is “a classification that society makes, and for most people it endures” (Wood, 2015) can be observed through four different, theoretical perspectives. Those theoretical perspectives are biological, interpersonal, cultural, and critical. Although all of these theories differ from one another, they all revolve around gender development. The three theories that I’m going discuss are a part of the interpersonal and critical theoretical approach to gender development. The interpersonal theories that I’m going to discuss are the Psychodynamic and Social Learning theories. The critical theory that I’m going to deliberate on is the Queer theory.

There is significant value in continuing research sex and gender differences in psychology, as substantial differences in particular psychological processes exist. Perhaps the most impactful area that psychologists can continue to study sex and gender differences is in psychopathologies and deviant behavior. This is for two reasons: because significant sex and gender differences exist in the manifestation, diagnosis, and treatment of certain psychopathologies and deviant behavior; and that this category has widespread and significant impacts on society. The study of psychopathologies through a sex differential lens can vastly change the way in which they are understood, diagnosed and treated. As gender and sex differences can be overstated, leading to misconceptions, psychologists must find a balance between searching for differences and recognizing that the wide overlap that exists between men and women, males and females. Investing psychopathologies and deviant behavior without keeping this in mind does a disservice to individuals and society alike.

In hopes to fulfill our purpose, we go on about our days living in the bodies we were given doing the various tasks we are assigned. We don’t stop to think about how those tasks could be assigned to a certain gender. Judith Lober (2013) provides a certain insight that causes one to pause and think about the nuances of gender and how some of the tasks we are assigned to do may or may not fit the mold. She suggests that “…everyone “does gender” without thinking about it (pp. 323).”

According to the textbook doing gender is, “the second level of the gender system,” and that, “gender is created, performed, and perpetuated in social interaction” (p. xix). The concept of doing gender is not only creating and performing contrasts,