J. L. Austin: Gender-Identity And Perception Of Women

In the excerpt “Why Do We Make So Much of Gender?”, from his 1997 book The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, Allan Johnson argues gender through identity and culture. Johnson starts out by expressing opposition on how women are looked at through a patriarchal society and not the biology from which they came. He mentions the feminist argument that women in a patriarchal society are “oppressed” and that this comes from social order (545). He goes on to point out, the focus should be on raising children to adulthood rather than worrying about reproduction. Although, I agree with Johnson’s arguments, there are things in this world that cannot and should not be changed.

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.

In the last few years the United States has been an open minded nation as a whole. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of gay-marriage in all states, people are now allowed to go into whatever bathroom of the gender that they identify in (in some states), also most states are pro-choice. It seems that the nation has become more democratic the question is how will that affect Texas. Will Texas in deed become a democratic state? The only way to answer this question is to analyze the new generation of voters, study the latest polls on controversial topics, and review the political culture of Texas.

Speeches are dreaded by many. The fear of public speaking is one that is engraved into most people’s brains at an early age. There are many great speeches known to man; the Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King Jr's “I Have a Dream” and the two that will be contrasted in this essay; Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I Woman” and Florence Kelley's speech on child labor and women's suffrage. Both of these speeches were given at women’s rights conventions, Truth’s in 1851 in Ohio and Kelley’s in 1905 in Philadelphia. Although the two speakers are opposites (Kelley being an educated white woman and Truth being a freed slave who often shows her illiteracy throughout her speech) they both depend on rhetorical questions, exemplification, repetition, pronoun

Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher and critical theorist. Her area of expertise is gender theory. She is most well known for her theory of gender performativity which states that gender is a social construct which is performative in nature. In simple terms what this means is that gender is not a quality that people have, but a pattern of behavior that people perform. The performance of gender, Butler contends, creates and reinforces societal gender norms which are perceived as “natural” and “normal” but are actually a set of learned behaviors which are fluid and constantly changing.

The ability of “he” and “she” presents the major issue in the nature of pronoun use. When a trans person says “I use x pronouns”, they are not the ones who are actually using those pronouns. They are the pronouns others must use in reference to them for an accurate reflection of their identity. If a trans person is going to reference themselves they would be “I”. While one can insist and reiterate their pronouns endlessly- the act of accurate pronoun use falls to the to the person speaking about the trans individual. So this means the ethical responsibility of using the correct pronoun and the pronoun specific effects on a social identity falls on the person speaking about the trans individual.

Gender Matters is a collection of various essays on feminist linguistic texts analysis, by Sara Mills. Mills develops methods of analyzing literary and non-literary texts, in addition to conversational analysis based on a feminist approach. The author draws on data from her collection of essays gathered over the last two decades on feminism during the 1990s. The essays focus on gender issues, the representation of gender in reading, writing, and in public speaking. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of feminists’ analysis of sexism in literature and the relation between gender and politeness. The article is informative for my research paper, as my

While the significance of gender roles has declined in the past fifty years, they still play an integral part in our perception of others based on their gender. Gender roles create gender stereotypes that influence our view of someone and their aptitude in work and child caring. Gender stereotypes depict women as caring, compassionate, and kind; however, gender stereotypes also imply negative qualities for women such as cranky, overly emotional, and submissive. On the other hand, gender stereotypes classify men not only as dominant, assertive, and powerful, but also as aggressive, violent, and uncaring. Many people apply gender roles in how they view other’s aptitudes and responsibilities in a work or home setting, but by doing so they subconsciously discriminate against a person for his gender. Extreme Feminists focus on the discrimination and harassment women face in everyday life due to traditional gender roles and complain that “men have it so good”. However, extreme feminists fail to realize, due to their blind but justified hatred for traditional gender roles that supposedly benefit men, traditional gender roles disadvantage men as well. Similar to how many women fail to climb up the corporate ladder because their superiors view them as too caring and soft to hold a demanding leadership position, many people look down on men when they care for their own children considering them too tough and insensitive to take care of children properly and label their care as

Judith Lorber is able to convey many of her ideals about our contemporary conceptions of gender in her essay, ?The Social Construction of Gender.? Not only does she clearly express her opinions on the roles of physiological differences of the male and female bodies, but she also elaborates on the roles of the mass media and professional sports among other things. It rapidly becomes clear that there are many legitimate arguments that support this movement for near or complete equality in genders and the roles that they perform.

Gender performativity is related to performance and shares elements with it, but it has no subject. She explains, “The action of gender requires a performance that is repeated. This repetition is at once a reenactment and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially established” (178). Performativity creates a fictional reality in which gender and its roles are determined according to a men/women binary distinction. According to her, the category of Women from which the feminist struggle arises is different from this political, hierarchical myth based on

Life in the 1960’s consisted of many deep cultural changes; especially when it came to a change in gender roles and stereotypes. For woman, society was set on a believing that a their overall goal in life was to be married, have lots of children, and devote their life to be 100% dependant on their husbands. On the other hand, men had to be the provider and the rock of the family. This all changed when The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ensured that people of all colors, races, and gender could not be discriminated against in employment thus females were entering the paid workforce head on. Men also started to learn more about being a caregiver and became stay at home dads. Both Walter Mosley and Raymond Chandler help convey this representation of gender roles, gender as a category and gender stereotypes in the 1960s through their written works.

At a young age, we are taught to adhere to norms and are restricted to conform to society’s given rules. We are taught that straying away from stereotypes is anything but good and encouraged to build our lives upon only these social rules. Recently, stereotypes based on genders have been put into the limelight and have become of high interest to a generation that is infamously known for deviating from the established way of life. Millennials have put gender roles under fire, deeming it a form of segregation and discrimination by gender. Researchers have followed suit. Mimicking millennial interests, numerous studies have been published that detail the relationship between gender, stereotypes, and the effects of the relationship between the two. Furthermore, gender roles have been used as a lens to study socialization; tremendous amounts of interest have prompted studies on the inheritance and dissemination of norms, culture, and ideologies based on the stereotypes that cloud gender. For sociologists, determining the extent of the impact of gender stereotypes on socializing our population has become a paramount discussion. Amidst many articles, the work of Karniol, Freeman, and Adler & Kless were standouts and between the three pieces, childhood served as a common thread; more specifically, these researchers studied how gender roles impact socialization from such a young age.

Stereotypes can be seen everywhere. It can be about a certain race, sexuality, gender, age, class, physical ability or disability, etc. They are ideas or beliefs that are oversimplified on the kind of person or thing they are. The reason why there are stereotypes is because we want to categorize and understand the world around us. But it is not that simple to break down things that are very complex and really understand them. Culture plays a part since it what shapes our experience and reality. Gender is not a universal thing. We are not aware how our culture impacts our way of thinking and perception of the world. But like gender, understanding culture depends on one’s perception and interpretation.

West and Zimmerman claim that gender is not something we are but something we do.

In 1990 Judith Butler first published her book Gender Troubles, where she questions gender roles. Butler theorizes that gender, as in male and female, is a type of societal/gender colonialism created to keep people who do not fall within the gender roles from being part of the mainstream society. In her 1999 preface, in which she addresses the impact her book had in the decade since its original publication, Butler expresses the concern she had with the “heterosexual assumption in feminist literary theory (61).” Butler utilizes the works of other feminist philosophers to further demonstrate the inconsistency, and disconnect between fighting for women rights and fighting for human rights. Judith Butler makes an interesting argument on the failure to recognize the spectrum of gender, however, she makes a compelling argument on the use of language perpetuating a patriarchal society.