Gender Reflection

Through my experiences with people of many backgrounds, as well as my education, I have learned to separate the idea of sex and gender. I still maintain certain traditional views regarding gender, however I’ve come to the realization that the social constructs of men and women are not, and should not, be as rigid. In my opinion, I have acknowledged that there are differences between ‘men’ and ‘women’, however these differences should be used to uplift one another, rather than to tear the other gender apart. For example, a family unit in which the man decides to take on the responsibilities of the

In the article, “Doing Gender,” West and Zimmerman (1987) argues the concept of gender as a social activity or interaction, as opposed to an intrinsic individual value. These activities and interactions are socially constructed norms of male and female, masculinity and femininity. To further explain gender, the authors define 3 important concepts: sex, sex category, and gender. Sex refers to biological factors (e.g., hormones, genitalia), sex category refers to visual markers (e.g., dress, hairstyle), and gender is the interactive piece. The authors state that doing gender is always certain and ongoing as it is embedded in everyday life (e.g., the way we dress, walk, sit, and communicate) and it is the individual who holds sole responsibility

Society has conditioned us to believe categorizing genders into “gender boxes” is the norm. We have all heard the classic trite sayings, “Men are the head of the house” or “Women should always cook dinner for their families.” Author, Aaron Devor tackle issues like male and female stereotypes in her article, “Gender Roles Behaviors and Attitudes”; and discusses in depth how gender roles and behaviors are not “natural” and more on the lines of “cultural constructs.” Qualities as such are also identified in Deborah Blum’s article, “The Gender Blur” which reinforces the idea that humans are not born with the stereotypical idea of masculinity and femininity but taught. By highlighting how society has a substantial impact on gender identify, Devor

The gender describes how our understandings and perception of differences between masculinity (what society deems appropriate behaviour a “man” and femininity (what society deems appropriate behaviour for a “woman”) are influenced.

Chapter 2 of the textbook describes ideas of gender and the gender binary, as well as the ways we associate objects, people, places, and ideas with gender. The personal exception theory of gender states that we assume that most people are better described by the gender binary than we are. I feel that most everyone experiences this phenomenon, mainly because we are the only ones who know everything about ourselves. Not every single thing about us as individuals will fit into a box of “masculine” or “feminine.” Since I know every detail about myself, I can say that although I am female, I have certain interests and habits that don’t fit within the “feminine” sphere, such as four wheeling and taking up a lot of space when I sit.

The term gender refers to the characteristics of a person despite the person’s biological sex. Gender role, which is the focus of sociologists, is the anticipated attitude and behavior that a certain society connects with each sex. With this definition, gender is placed evenly in the sociocultural context. Events that previously occurred had a vital impact on gender roles. Due to this, the study of gender emerged as one of the significant disciplines in the field of sociology in the twentieth century. The gender issues were studied using various research and theory. The research on gender issues provided a testament that all social interactions that occur, and the institutions where they occur, are gendered in one way or the other. Sociologists explain gender roles with respect to various theoretical perspectives. The perspectives are the ways of perceiving social reality that guide the process of research and provide a method for understanding the data. The sociological perspectives on gender roles include functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interaction, and feminist sociological theory (pearsonhighered.com).

The sociology of gender is one of the largest subfields within sociology; sociological gender studies look at the social construction of gender and how gender interacts with other social structures within society (Crossman, 2016). It Is important that one understands the difference between sex and gender to understand the sociology of gender; unlike gender, sex is biologically determined and relates to the reproductive organs a person has. In order to separate gender and sex sociologists use different pronouns; when discussing gender, sociologists use the terms man/woman and when discussing sex sociologists will use the terms male/female (Crossman, 2016). Although most people fall into wither the category of male or female, some people are born with ‘sex organs’ that do not clearly fit into either of the two specific sex categories, these people are known as intersex (Ashley Crossman, 2016). Gender is described as a social classification based on one’s identity and how one presents themselves to the world; this identity relates to the way one behaves and interacts within society. Many sociologists view gender as a learned behaviour and look at gendered identities as being culturally produced which makes gendered identities socially constructed (Crossman,

The concept of gender has a strong social impact on me. When I was born, I was immediately assigned to a biological sex as a female with two X chromosomes. I was then socially classified as a girl in the society with feminine gender roles. Gender is defined as a social principle which attribute to the roles and expectations of males and females through the years of different societies (Phillips, 2005). Gender can be considered as behavioural, cultural and psychological traits

Because bodies are gendered, or encouraged to participate in gender conformity, the bodies that we see and interact with on an everyday basis are not natural or innate but, rather, are a product of a lifetime of gendered practices, relations, and ideologies (Berkowitz, 2017, p. 13).” Berkowitz’s statement relates to ideas that are found in chapter 2 of Gender: Ideas, interactions, institutions (Wade & Ferree, 2015) such as the term, binary, that refers to a system that has two, and only two parts to it. Therefore, the phrase gender binary, is the idea that there are only two types of people. These two types of people are male-bodied and female-bodied. These ideas would be considered an ideology, which is a set of ideas that are shared by members in a certain group that guides identities, behaviors, and institutions. Gender binaries or gender conformity are set by ideologies. In other words, the idea that a

“Gender” is a social construct that is developed solely by our society and the early developmental stages of an adolescent’s life. By introducing youths to the roles, behaviors, expectations and activities that correspond with males or females we give a clear guideline of what is accepted from a young male or female. An individual however can identify his or her gender based on their own system of beliefs without corresponding to their natural biological sex. Our lives are shaped by our true biological identities but the influence of the world and society is enough to define what a male and what a female truly is to an individual.

Gender can be defined as “sex roles” which are conditions that one considers to be for men or women. People tends to mistake it with sex or thinks that they are both the same. We discussed about the patterns of gender which how the authors of The Kaleidoscope of Gender describes it as “regularized, prepackaged ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Spade and Valentino,2017). It becomes an identity for us. We believe that there is and can only be two genders, being masculine for men and feminine for women. These roles has been forced onto us since birth: blue for boys, and pink for girls. You can see the roles being push onto a person throughout one’s life, but we don’t notice it since it’s “normal” to us.

The term ‘gender’ was coined by John Money in 1955: “Gender is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself/herself as having the status of a boy or man, girl or woman, respectively” (Coleman and Money, 1991, 13). In

Gender and sex are two different categories that people in this generation often get confused of. Sex is how men and women were physically born to be. Gender refers to the performance of men and women based on the norms given by the society. Without the concept of “men” and “women” or “masculinity” and “femininity,” a man could be seen wearing a dress without being stared at. As gender exists, society is divided up into categories where inequality is an inevitable issue.

One of the most pervasive understandings that we have come to as a class during this semester is that much of our day-to-day lives exists as some kind of social construction. Social construction is the notion that many of the norms and guidelines that we live by are, in fact, realities that we have created without them being a reality on their own. As noted in lecture, “this thing could not have existed had we not built it” (Lecture, Social Construction of Society & Gender). One of these social constructions that we studied extensively is gender. While the reality of sex within human beings is an actual reality, the assigned personalities, roles, and behaviors that we assign to each sex is entirely a construct. The notion of gender is inescapable, and has many negative side effects on the members of a society. There are, as well, social systems that exacerbate and further the agenda of this social construct. The two that I will explore today are the systems of family and education.

Gender is an important and complex part of everyday life that most people do not ever think twice about. Many people believe that the gender they are are assigned at birth is the gender they will “be” and perform for the rest of their life, without ever considering why they are conforming to gender roles and a gender binary system. However, gender is a social construct that has been created by our society to identify and categorize people into easily identifiable and recognizable categories – men and women. As stated by Betsy Lucal, “We assume that we can place each individual into one of two mutually exclusive categories in this binary system” (Lucal 73). Society interprets certain behaviors, appearances, and personality traits to one or the other side gender binary and when we perform gender appropriately and attribute gender to others based on those characteristics we are simultaneously creating the social construct of gender and enforcing it.