Gender Stereotyping In Elinor Burkett 'What Makes A Woman'

My Biological sex is female, my gender identity is female, but is my gender expression what I am starting to question. It was after I read Janet Mock’s book and I listened to an interview with Joy Ladin that I became aware of the similarities transgender women undertake in their process to come out, and my own process of redefining the expression of the woman that I am. I feel that the coming out of transgender people is encouraging us, especially women, to deeply question our woman expression. Trans-women like Joy Ladin and Janet Mock are raising a new conversation about gender identity and gender expression…..

While some issues are not given the amount of attention needed, others are given no time at all. Also, the movies less than positive relationship with transgender women is unfortunately absent. Even though the film is not as intersectional as it should be, it is still a fairly accurate portrayal of the Women’s Liberation Movement. This documentary is great for anyone who is new to intersectional feminism, as well as the history of the Women’s Liberation Movement. However, there is further research needed if one wants a full understanding of either

In her book “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Woman, and the Rest of us,” Kate Bornstein goes over a lot of the major issues regarding gender awareness and identity politics. She talks about the ideas of labeling ones self, understanding gender differences, how people view laws, behaviors, and the medical and scientific privilege that make transitioning challenging for a lot of people. Bornstein touches on many of the issues today that affect trans people. She includes poetry, pictures, quotes, essays, and a play to raise questions and discuss the idea of gender. This is a great book to introduce and discuss the issues that affect the lives of trans people as they navigate and explore the lines that define gender.

In Octavia Butler’s Dawn the idea of gender is deconstructed and reformed from the typical human’s definition. Often people do not consider the role of gender in society today. Usually the first thing one notices when meeting someone new is their gender or their presumed gender. However, there becomes a problem when the person whose gender we perceived identifies as a different gender. Butler forces the reader to examine how they judge and perceive gender. While the ooloi are actually “its” their personalities seem to imply a certain gender. The transgender community often brings up this issue because these assumptions of gender based on our judgments of what defines a male and what defines a female can skew how a transgender person is treated and addressed. In Chapter One of Gender Through the Prism of Difference by Anne Fausto-Sterling, the idea of expanding the number of genders based on one’s biological differences is examined through the five sexes theory. By now the concept of gender being defined solely by one’s biology has mostly been left in the past but the question remains of how do we truly define gender? How does being outside of the social norms that Michael Warner talks about cause us to feel shame when discussing our gender and our perceptions of gender? In this essay, I will argue that preconceived notions of gender create shame when a person’s own perception of their gender does not fit the social norms. This stigma around the limited and strict definitions

In her essay “ Dispelling The Myth Of Gender Bias In The Family Court System,” Cathy Meyer, a certified marriage educator and divorce coach, tries to prove that courts have no bias and are not the cause of mothers obtaining custody in the majority of divorces. To support her conclusion, Meyer includes quantitative information and her own experience. Although she includes facts, Meyer fails to explain each fact and focuses on mentioning more of her own opinion.

“The “I was born in the wrong body” rhetoric favored by other Tran’s people doesn’t work any better and is just as offensive, reducing us to our collective breasts and vaginas. Imagine the reaction if a young white man suddenly declared that he was trapped in the wrong body and, after using chemicals to change his skin pigmentation and crocheting his hair into twists, expected to be embraced by the black community.” Burkett addresses an issue with the way women are being projected by Tran’s genders by giving an example of an equally offensive stereotype. Stereotypes have been defining women in such a negative light by people everywhere and nowadays, it’s becoming acceptable. “…the prelude to a new photo spread and interview in Vanity Fair that offered us a glimpse into Caitlyn Jenner’s idea of a woman: a cleavage-boosting corset, sultry poses, thick mascara and the prospect of regular “girls’ nights” of banter about hair and makeup. Ms. Jenner was greeted with even more thunderous applause.” Burkett gives countless examples of how women are degraded to their stereotypes that aren’t a fair or equal

Kidd and Witten define the term transgender vaguely, stating it “describe[s] people who transcend the conventional boundaries of gender, irrespective of physical status or sexual orientation” (Kidd & Witten, 2007, p. 36). This term is a reference for the ‘other gender’ that is not particularly male or female. Currently, within the American society, there is a growing awareness of individuals who are transgender. Much of this awareness comes from LGBT movements and

Barr begins her book making the claim, “In some ways, it is an old fashioned insight that gender is about power, but in native worlds, where kinship provided the foundation for every institution of their societies, gender and power were inseparable.” From the beginning, Barr separates herself from other historians who focus on Native-European relationships during the colonial period by placing women and family at the center of the narrative. In doing so, she challenges conventional wisdom that men dominated colonial interactions. Through detailing misinterpretations of the role of women and family in Native cultures she sheds light on how violence and mistrust dominated Native-Spanish relations in the Texas borderlands.

The most obvious example is the differentiation of “transsexual” and “transgender.” In the article, “transsexual” is used to refer to someone who has specifically had treatment to physically change their body to match their gender identity; “transgender” is someone whose gender identity does not match the gender they were assigned at birth, regardless of whether they have made physical gender-related changes to their body (155). Today, the term “transsexual” is almost obsolete. Interestingly, however, Halberstam briefly presents conflict between “transsexuals” and “transgenders” that is mirrored somewhat today in informal conflicts between “truscum” and “transtrenders/tucutes” (154-155). In today’s transgender communities, people called “truscum” (generally by other people) feel that people they call “transtrenders” or “tucutes” are not truly transgender; they feel these people are merely pretending to be transgender for the sake of attention. On the other hand, those called “transtrenders” or “tucutes” (generally by other people) feel attacked and policed by “truscum” and insist that they are transgender regardless of whether they meet the standards set by truscum. Halberstam cites some identity politics (154-155) that are reminiscent of this, which suggests that even as terms change, identity policing remains a consistent issue in transgender

Argued in Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003:15), living up to our gender is learning through a life-long process of socialization. Further supported in Kulick and Schieffelin (2006:352), one’s gender emerges over a lifetime through interactive process in which one accepts, rejects, or modifies the cultural and gender norms they are socialized in. These two arguments supported the idea of this essay’s research question in which cultural and social factors do contribute to gendering an individual, and in turn implicating the creation of a boundary that exclude transgenders from the society.

Since the beginning of time, gender has played a big role in how one acts and how one is looked upon in society. From a young age children are taught to be either feminine or masculine. Why is it that gender plays a big role in the characteristics that one beholds? For centuries in many countries it has been installed in individual’s heads that they have to live by certain stereotypes. Women have been taught to be feeble to men and depend on them for social and economical happiness. While men have been taught to be mucho characters that have take care of their homes and be the superior individual to a woman. For the individuals who dare to be different and choose to form their own identity whether man or woman, they are out casted and

Prosser (1998) enters the gender-identity conversation with a rather counter-intuitive project. At a time when poststructuralism is busily deconstructing the sex/gender linkage in ways that transcend the materiality of the subject, Prosser wants to bring the “ontological” trans body back into the dialogue by charting the arc of the changing body within transgender narratives. Only by mapping these transitions in this frame can he describe a complex transsexual experience that breaks free from the political binaries used by essentialists and poststructuralists, such as “literal/deliteralizing, subversive/hegemonic” (16). If the former has been guilty of a dogmatic reliance on a narrow understanding of biology to describe transsexuals, Prosser argues, then the former is equally guilty of deconstructing gender to the point of reducing the material body to an inconvenient concept (13).

In her essay, One is Not Born a Woman, Monique Wittig explains, “‘Women’ is not each one of us, but the political and ideological formation which negates ‘women’ (the product of a relation of exploitation). ‘Women’ is there to confuse us, to hide the reality ‘women’ . . . For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation that we call servitude.” Monique Wittig attacks the concept of naturalizing biology and the ‘woman’ category. She believes that the form of a woman’s identity is a product of normal and intrinsic human facts. Thus, her main point is that one is not born a woman but becomes a woman based upon the social constructs of gender and

This classification is constructed by discourse with the objective of recreating hegemonic paradigms and perpetuating current power relations. Defining Women and Men as universal categories disguises the interests it serves. Therefore, anything that is defined as natural or universal should be studied critically. She writes, “Signification is not a founding act, but rather a regulated process of repetition that both conceals itself and enforces its rules precisely through the production of substantializing effects” (185). The assumption that there is a pre-discursive body with a pre-determined sexuality and gender sustains oppression against subjugated and marginalized subjects. Disconnected from the body, she suggests, gender can include more than two versions. The analysis of these concepts--or deconstruction-- provides tools to the socially oppressed to fight against the existent social

As I walked out of my nine-story apartment complex, I saw an interesting array of faces. Mixed genders, some male, some female, all very different deep down inside. I study their faces, wondering what it'd be like to walk a day in their shoes. Some people are like open books, you can look at their facial expression and instantly guess what their emotions are, yet others are like locked diaries. You can't tell what they're thinking and you'll probably never know. I shake the thought out of my head as I rummage through my pathetic excuse of a handbag, pulling out my most recent bank statement. Thirty-two cents to my name. How do I live like this? My train of thought is lost as my mind ponders elsewhere. Do you think people can tell I'm a broke