Throughout the beginning of the course students have obtained a wide variety of new vocabulary, including many concepts and theories. Within this paper I will be discussing the following: gender, transgender, transsexual, sexism, four axioms of masculinity, and gender based harassment. I have focused on the following six terms because they all focus on sexuality and gender and how they differ throughout the expression and biology of oneself. All of these terms relate to the freedom of choice and allowing people to be their authentic self while also including some limitations that people have put on them for not conforming to heterosexual norms. I also have focused on the following two feminist theories: Queer Theory and Radical Theory. Both these theories helped to pull all six of my concepts together to be analyzed while also dividing them by allowing people to be themselves both biologically and by expression but also tying in the negativity that these people face every day for choosing to live their lives how they want.
Gender
Working Definition: Gender is a way of describing individuals as either male or female while disregarding their actual biological sex. Gender is a performance of oneself and how one decides to act. This is done on an individual level following the preferences of oneself.
Significance: This concept is important to completely comprehend because it helps to separate the meanings of gender and sex, which are often confused for one another. It is known
Gender is defined as whatever behaviors and attitudes a group considers proper for its males and females. Unlike sex, gender is something that we learn from the day we are born. “Young children begin to acquire gender role stereotypes at about the same time they develop gender identity and by the age of 3 or 4 most children” (Amanda Youmans). Peers, community, media, religion and our upbringing all play a role in the understanding of our culture and what is considered acceptable for males and females. When the sex of a child is revealed, they are automatically placed into a gender specific role with certain expectations. There are things in this world such as colors, toys, media depiction and taught behaviors that play into these gender roles.
Gender is defined as the state of being male or female. In most instances, this state is determined based on the biology of an individual’s genitalia. Those born
Gender is defined as being a male or female and determines the personalities, genetics and body functions of an individual. Nowadays people have taken something so simple and have almost changed it completely. Men now want to be women, and women want to be men. We live in a world where many people feel as if they are born into the wrong body and need to change their physical appearance to Appeal to others and feel comfortable again. Gender identity is not the same as it used to be and has been taken to a level that is almost life changing.
Gender is defined as being male or female as defined by roles, social status, and attitude. The perception of oneself and what characterizes gender identity. Included in gender identity is hormone and behavior interaction, along with the examination of psychological, biological, and environmental influences on sexual separation.
Gender is often described as the state of being ether male or female. In most communities,
Gender as defined by society as a division between biological sex and the roles you must take on in society. In reality gender is a true spectrum that does not follow a simple linear pattern. There are three major aspects that make a person who they are inside. These aspects are Sex, Gender and Gender Identity.
Argument/Conclusion: Gender is a social construction or a process in which human beings are brought up to believe that only two genders (male or female) were normal and that based on your sex you are classified to a specific gender.
Gender Identity became a core aspect of feminism and LGBT politics in recent time and with it freedom for people to express themselves in the way they want. I want to argue that this freedom is a double-edged sword and its negatives could have the potential to outweigh its positives.
The social issue that I chose which affects society today is transgender inequality. These issues are more recently gaining attention and becoming a prevalent topic of inequality within our country. A transgender person is someone whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. As more and more transgender people share their stories in the media, the social problems that arise from these stories are discrimination within their everyday lives. They suffer from scrutiny and judgment from their peers, and thus many hide their gender identity from family and society. This social injustice can be as simple as a glance or staring, or offensive comments and questions to violent hate crimes. Transgender people are prone to violence and harassment, and often not feeling safe in any aspect of society. They are fired from jobs, denied medical insurance, and being murdered left and right solely for being transgender. “A staggering 41% of respondents reported attempting suicide compared to 1.6% of the general population, with rates rising for those who lost a job due to bias (55%), were harassed/bullied in school (51%), had low household income, or were the victim of physical assault (61%) or sexual assault (64%)” (National Center for Transgender Equality). The structure of this paper will consist of adding all the research that was gathered over the semester, news articles and peer
When we look up gender in the dictionary it states “Although it is possible to define gender as “sex,” indicating that the term can be used when differentiating male creatures from female ones biologically, the concept of gender, a word primarily applied to human beings, has additional connotations—more rich and more amorphous—having to do with general behavior, social interactions, and most importantly, one 's fundamental sense of self.” When I define gender I automatically define it as being a boy and girl or male and female. People define gender in so many ways, but it is in the way that we think more outside of the box based on people’s opinions, that make us wonder more.
Gender is a learned social construction on what you do. It is a cultural system based on the binary opposition of men and women but there are also variations
Merriam-Webster provides two definitions for the meaning of gender. The first is simply that gender is a synonym for sex. The second, however, states that gender is “the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex (Merriam-Webster).” This is the definition for gender used in this paper, while sex is defined separately, as the biological differences between males and females.
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, as defined by the United Nations, includes the psychological, social, cultural, and behavioral characteristics associated with being female or male. It further defines acceptable and allowable behavior in for both men and women in a broad cultural sense (United Nations, 2016). Gender identity impacts our development and how we interact with society. Our daily life decisions are impacted by our gender role beliefs.
Gender is not based on physical attributes. Sex is the word that should be used when speaking about biological characteristics. So, based on the definition of gender by LeVay, gender identity is one’s personal attitude towards being more male or female.