`` The Genderless Baby? Well Intentioned But Wrong ``

Imagine, you go to work in your dress shoes, black suit, buzz-cut hair, red power tie, and nobody pays you a second look. But, the second you get home, you kick off your shoes, and don high-heels, the suit is replaced with a dress, your short wig is taken off, and you let your long curls fall, and your tie is in the closet, with a necklace in its place. Such hiding of true feelings is not an unheard concept in the transgender world. Millions of transgender people will never express their true feelings in their lifetime. This is similar to The Intruder by Andre Dubus, Kenneth Girard a

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

In the article written by Patricia J. Williams titled, “Are We Worried about Storm’s Identity – or Our Own”; she writes about a baby named Storm who is known to not have a gender identity the outside family and onlookers can call Storm. This has caused uproar in all social media outlets. William writes about how the world does not want to label the baby as an “It” because “It” is normally used to identify an inanimate objects. She writes about how awkward this could make an individual who approaches the baby, however she mentions is it only because it is what we are naturally accustom to doing by calling a baby a him or her and not always by the baby’s name. Though society has their concerns on the reasons they need to know the sex of the baby

We are all living in a society that is filled with social expectations of gender. From our early age, we seem to be able to response to these expectations accordingly. For example, we notice Barbies are for girls while robots and cars are for boys only. In the “Performative Gender”, “Doing Gender”, and “Nerd Box”, authors all indicate gender is learned instead of inherited. They bring out their insightful observation and critical personal experience to illustrate how the social expectations with punitive effects construct our gender unconsciously. These articles provide a great lens for us to understand the mental state and behaviors of the main characters in Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel portrays how living in Beech Creek, Pennsylvania during the 1930s not only repressed both her father, Bruce, and her from coming out as a homosexual and genderqueer, but also trapped her mother, Helen, in her “women box”. Through the graphic memoir, Fun Home is able to present the struggling process that one may need to go through before admitting one’s unusual gender identity and sexual orientation.

This semester, I am taking Intro to Sociology and we have been looking at different perspectives of our society. One thing we are studying is how from at such a young age, we are taught to assign gender roles. In Patricia J. Williams’ magazine article, “Are We Worried about Storm’s Identity- or Our Own”, an essay taken out of the Nation magazine (June 2011), she tells a story about Storm, whose parents choose not to reveal the sex of their baby. She is a legal scholar and examines issues related to law and culture. Williams focuses on all the stereotypes that we associate with gender, how we as a society find social order in assigning gender roles, and the need to have the proper pronouns so that we know how/what to label a person. The author’s use of ethos and logos really brings the point home that we need to be more open about all the possibilities associated with gender and pronouns.

This article, “No Way My Boys Are Going To Be Like That,” converses that young children are becoming aware of gender processing, which means

Gender reveal day. A blue middle is exposed by the slice of a cake. Dad perches on a ladder and lathers the nursery with the same sky-blue paint, Mom standing in the middle, rubbing her belly, “He’ll play football just like you, our little man.” So when the little man grows into a big one, will he play football because of the sports mobile turning above his crib, or because something in himself innately gravitates toward masculine activities? The mechanisms of what creates someone’s gender identity doesn’t have an easy answer. While gender is something that is self-identifiable, most people live their lives being told what it should look like or be. Scholars and scientists debate over the heaviest influences on an individual’s gender;

Hannah Carson, a 16-year-old high school girl, has a secret that only she and her immediate family knows because if the news would to ever be revealed, she would be regarded as a freak in the eyes of society. For as long as Hannah could remember, she has been told by her parents that she should use the female’s bathroom even though she personally identifies herself as a male. Hannah is what society calls a transgender. She and many others like her are starting to emerge into the mainstream society to express their feelings and take their rights. This can be seen in the article “Bathroom Battlegrounds and Penis Panics” which is about should people who have penises be permitted or restricted from using female restrooms. We will analyze this article through several sociological key concepts.

The article “Are We Worried about Storm’s Identity or Our Own?” was written by Patricia J. Williams. This author wrote an article about her son, who goes to daycare and has a friend named Jessie. She's a young lady that stands at the entryway of the childcare every day, and grabs the other little kid’s lunchboxes and takes them to the refrigerator. Williams, points out that “My son started to mimic Jessie, and help her collect the lunch boxes from the other kids” She then remembers a day when the teacher was watching them do this as it was a routine, and describes the both of them in certain ways that are very heavily gender-based, but by it meaning no harm at all “Your son is such a sturdy little security guard! And Jessie, she’s our mini-hostess with the moistest!” This comment gets Williams thinking about a 5-month-old child named Storm. The reason storm is so important to this article, is because the child’s parents did not give out storm’s gender after birth.

From the moment a child is born, the society in which they are born into begins to teach the child what is normal, and what is not. If the aforementioned child has a vagina, they will be labeled a girl and assumed to be heterosexual, and the same principle applies if the child has a penis. Yet the human world is not as simple as this established gender binary. For example, there are people who identify with a gender other than the sex assigned at birth.1 There are also people who are not sexually attracted strictly to the opposite gender, or at all. Such diversions from societal normality are more often than not greeted with opposition, as what is considered normal is also deemed right. The LGBT community has had to deal with fierce societal

An expecting couple awaits to discover the gender of their baby. The nurse announces that it’s a girl. The couple is extremely excited, but do they truly grasp the weight of what this implies? Gender is not simply a physical trait, as it affects nearly every aspect of a person’s life. Stereotypes repress the potential in all men and women. The same stereotypes are found throughout literature such as Medea by Euripides, Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, “Sonnets” by Shakespeare, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Frederick Waterman’s “The Best Man Wins”. A common thread between these pieces is that power can be gained by those who are suppressed by defying gender stereotypes and social hierarchies.

When I was a child, the world was so different to me than how it is now. When I was a child, I believed many things that aren't true anymore. One of these things was baby making. I though that babies were made from G-d. I though that when a women reached a certain age either G-d would giver her a child or would wait. I thought this happened once a woman got married. Than after having the baby for nine months, the child would come out of the mother’s belly button. This is obviously not at all how baby making works, however the real topic does not need to be discussed. The point of the matter is that when I was younger I believed a lot of things that simply weren’t true. This was because I did not know any better. This is like Jim believing

Science is now able to better improve human health and safety thanks to the advanced modern technology and medicine that are available. Yet with today's technology being implemented into science comes the questions of human morality, or bioethics. One of the bioethics debates is on the coined term “Designer babies”; on if or where society should draw the line on genetically altering our children before they are born. With the technology able to stop hereditary diseases, the scientific development’s are able to change the child’s “eye color, hair color, social intelligence, right down to whether or not your child would have a widow’s peak” before the child is born. From the options on choosing whether or not your child will look or act a certain

There is also the surprise of finding out the gender at time of birth. Not only are the parents delighted in the surprise at the moment of birth, but they’re just plain grateful that they’ve been blessed with a healthy child. By being able to determine gender, according to Freeman, we’re cheapening this, and making childbirth into a mere consumer choice. In the end, children are a gift, a gift of nature.