The article The Opposite Sex: with Lisa May Stevens excerpted from the book Lousy Sex, by Gerald N. Callahan dives deep into the concept of gender that we humans have deemed a taboo subject. This article sought to question what gender is and why humans feel the need to have it. Callahan explores other species that ignore our strict rules regarding gender and thrive just the same. This article was extremely fascinating and helped me to open up my perception as to what gender truly is. It was also surprising to me that so many other people are confused as to what gender really is. Humans have tried so hard to make gender black and white, but it is often more flowing and unique to each person. Gender is an amazingly interesting topic that seeks …show more content…
This women is extremely interesting due to the way her gender was expressed at her birth. Having been raised as a boy (Steven) she soon realized she was different and due to this has lived an incredibly interesting life trying figure out where she lands on the gender scale. May is commonly called a hermaphrodite which is described as a person with the characteristics of both sexes. Lisa May began life as two zygotes, one a boy and the other a girl, with some of her cells having two X chromosomes while others had an X and a Y. She is what doctors refer to as a “true” hermaphrodite, as both of these zygotes fused together. The article pointed out that this zygote fusion, referred to as tetragametic fusion, is incredibly rare. Even more interesting is the fact that she has the reproductive tissues of both sexes and a combination of ovarian and testicular tissue. While it would make sense that the world would respect and even admire her, many people are frightened by the lack of social norms that Lisa May shows. As such, it was hard for Lisa to navigate this world at times and she switched her gender identity a few occasions before she settled on being a women. The article quotes Lisa May as saying “It's not an easy thing to do, move between sexes. I find I did some of this (opt for Steven or Lisa) as a habit rather than thinking about it”(Lisa May Stevens). This is what many people searching for gender identity go …show more content…
This gender nonconformity that Lisa May has, was obviously not something that Lisa May chose, but is something that she has to live with and hopefully can love. I was surprised to hear that Lisa May lives in Fort Collins, as a lot of the people here are what most would classify as hegemonic America. I am so appreciative of people who dare to identify as something different and people like Lisa May, who wear these differences on the outside. I appreciated this article's description of Lisa May and the way it showed her humanness and I can now understand that we have more similarities than differences. One of the quotes in the article that really stuck with me was when Lisa May said, “I'd rather people see me as sexy than as a dog dressed up.” Not only is this very strong language with a lot of imagery, but it really makes others think about their actions. To think of any women calling herself a dog is heartbreaking and is something that should never go through their minds. What is even more unsettling is that in the case of Lisa May people feel as though they have the right to see her differences as ugly. It then makes sense that May would feel as though she would have to do extra. People like Lisa May will probably always be noticed first in a room, but that doesn't necessarily have to be a
Gender is a topic that not many people are educated on. When people think of gender, they think of boy and girl, people usually think of a girl having a vagina, and a boy having a penis. Many people have their thoughts on how each sex should behave which would be giving people gender roles, girls should play with Barbie dolls, and boys should play with trucks. There is more to gender than just the vagina and penis, In “Understanding The Complexities of Gender”, Sam Killermann talks about the distinct pieces that also comes with gender, like gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex. When people think of gender, the only part people think of is the biological sex.
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.
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
Gender is actually a set of rules, customs and traditions assigned to people of a particular sex. Gender is not biological but sex is. Rather, according to Lorber, it is influenced by our society and our culture. By proving this claim, Judith Lorber has put forth the example of the man and this example is efficient in distinguishing “gender” as a practice than as an innate attribute.
Whether we consciously notice or not, doing gender is occurring everyday within our society. Every interaction we have with another individual is doing gender. Doing gender has become a part of our every day lives the same way without realizing it the same way we breathe air without really paying attention that we are breathing. The meaning behind this is that it is occurring unconsciously. Candace West and Don Zimmerman coined the term doing gender in an article they composed. West and Zimmerman argued that gender is something that humans created. As humans, we have the urge to categorize and define everything. If someone was not in favor of their gender role or did something that was not deemed correct for that gender, this person would be committing an act of social deviance. This paper will discuss what doing gender means along with other attributes of doing gender. These attributes includes what pushes us to do gender, why we do gender, the results of doing gender along with discussing what the boys in C.J. Pascoe’s article of Dude you’re a fag accomplished. This essay will discuss what doing gender is along with what causes us to do it and finally what doing it accomplishes.
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…..
Stories involving transgender people have been in newspapers, magazines, and tabloids for over fifty five years. These stories have captivated and intrigued American culture from the start, but not always in the most positive light. It began in 1955 when Christine Jorgensen, born George, publicly announced her gender confirming surgery and began life as a legally recognized woman. There was a media frenzy with headlines such as “Bronx GI Becomes a Woman!” and “Bronx ‘Boy’ Is Now A Girl”. But instead of “withdraw[ing] from public attention [Christine] turned the notoriety to her advantage with a series of lucrative tours on the lecture and nightclub circuit” (McQuiston 1989). “By cultivating the demeanor of a lady and refusing to call herself
Chapter five dealt with biological sexes and gender. The chapter begins by stating that there are more than two sexes, contrary to popular belief. There are at least three sexes: male, female, and intersex individuals, who have genital ambiguity. Most of this chapter discussed the difficulties of intersex individuals’ face in the society. These individuals are often ignored or forced to live their life ashamed of their bodies. In the United States these individuals are seen as abnormality, or medical accidents, that are to be corrected through surgery. In many instances the surgeries make the individual a female by removing any male anatomy within them. This is performed since many believe that gender identity is solely developed by environmental
In order to compare and contrast the different readings from this semester I want to start from the beginning. Gender is an achieved status in which is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social means (West 1987). Instead of solely depending on your biology, which is considered your sex, gender is performed in interactions. Almost every interaction that someone encounters is relevant to his or her gender. Gender can be the degree in which someone can describe himself or herself as masculine or feminine. In Lorber’s “Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender” she explained, “gendered behavior is constantly normalized by processes that minimize or counteract contradiction to the expected” (Lorber
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
Since the beginning of time, gender has always been divided into two categories, either male or female, with few instances that have stepped in between. As civilization has evolved, it has began to learn that this division is a lie, and that it is disgusting, disgraceful, hurtful and untrue at its rotten core. This is because this “division” has never counted for anything but a label and a set of roles as a stereotype, which was unjustly assigned at birth in a societal attempt to conform each and every unique soul into a shape that they cannot fully fit. There should not exist such standards and expectations that do not account for anything besides what one's body has to say, without asking the mind of the thoughtless vessel known as the body.
In December of 2015 in the small city of Lebanon, Ohio, a girl named Leelah committed suicide. She had been posting her story online for a couple of years, writing about her experience in “therapy”, unsupportive parents, and high levels of anxiety and depression stemming from extreme discomfort with her body. Leelah’s suicide went viral. The note she left online was posted repeatedly with expressions of grief from her online followers and anger from complete strangers. The day she died, Leelah’s mother posted on Facebook, “My sweet sixteen year old son, Joshua Ryan Alcorn went to heaven this morning…please continue to keep us in your prayers” (Fantz). Leelah, a transgender girl, is one of many young trans people
The history of the world is a complex arrangement of happenings and occurrences that have shaped the current state of civilization. At a fundamental level, history is the driving force behind every element of society that exists today. Within history, there are several factors that have and continue to determine the way in which our society functions. One of the most significant of these factors is gender. Today, conceptions, viewpoints and ideas surrounding gender are always changing. It is this fluidity of thought that ultimately allows society to progress forward and create change. However, gender has not always been as openly discussed. Tracing back through history, gender has consistently been a point of identity among humans.
For Judith Butler, sex and gender is an outlandish cultural construction which defines the body. She calls into attention gender as a substance and practicality of man and woman as nouns. Although gender is not a noun, it proves that it is
The words ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are commonly confused with each other in regular, everyday conversations when the two have very different meanings. The term ‘sex’ refers to the biological and physiological characteristics of a person, such as male or female; ‘gender’ is a social construction that refers to masculine or feminine roles in society ( Nordqvist). For