The Socialization and Medicalization of Gender: A Biocultural View

Culture often thrives off of polar opposites—hot and cold, bitter and sweet, male and female. By setting up these opposing constructs, one can easily find a set definition for each. A hot surface could scorch someone or a cold temperature could cause them to shiver. In the same way, a bitter substance would be less enjoyable to eat than a sweet one. These terms are often defined by mentioning their antitheses. Because it’s comfortable to embrace specificity and certainty, topics such as gender and gender expression often get simplified into binary existences—however, they don’t quite operate under the same parameters. In an essay entitled “Bad Feminist”, Dr. Roxane Gay explores and warns against the dangers of binary thinking. Throughout

Although men and women have significant biological differences, the question whether gender-specific labels stems from these biological differences or are gender constructed remains a polarised nature versus nurture debate. Whether it is through the process of socialisation or genetic make-up, “gender identity” is given from a person’s birth, determining how a person culturally interacts and the expectations society places on them. Along with a “gender identity” comes a whole set of “norms”, “values” and so-called “gender characteristics”, which are supposed to define the differences between a male and a female. According to the World Health Organisation (n.d.), the term “sex” is often used to define the biological and physiological

Butler’s overarching idea throughout her essay is that becoming a gender is not done through linguistics but rather action – specific focus to the body. From the beginning of the essay, Butler makes the distinction between gender and sex very clear. Gender is plainly a social construct and the gender you choose to associate with is developed through repeated actions. Sex rather, is anatomic; your internal bodily organs and reproductive systems define it.

Glenn Burger attempts to bring attention to the plight of those who identify themselves on a gender fluid spectrum. Like many chanpions of gender fluidity, he deconstructs the heterosexual body to gain equality for the androgynous body. Burger uses the kiss as a neutering device on the heterosexual Host. He accuses the Host of "fostering his own desires to establish his virility and material success under the pretense of being the true and eternal gender" (1146). The article embraces the dangerous notion that to correct the imbalance between dominant gender expressions and subordinate gender expressions is to redefine symbiotic meaning of gender. Instead of achieving equality, the dominant group is vilified for identifying as either strictly

Judith Butler’s essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” calls for a new way to view sex and gender. Butler argues that “gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo”. In this case, gender is not constituted by what one is, but rather what one does; the performative acts constitute gender. In other words, gender is not the starting place; it is an identity repeatedly constructed throughout time. Butler is trying to show us a feminist perspective of sex and gender. She attempts to follow Beauvoir’s path in a fight against society norms.

Throughout centuries numerous individuals used sex, gender, and sexuality interchangeably unaware of the dramatic differences. According to Serena Nanda, the author of Culture Counts, “A basic anthropological concepts is the distinction between the biological and cultural aspect of being a male or female” (Nanda 239). In other words, sex, gender, and sexuality constructs a different denotation from a biological perspective to a cultural perspective. These differences layout a fine line on what makes a male a male and a female a female. Moreover, Nanda also states in Culture Counts that “sex refers to the biological differences between a male and a female, particularly the visible differences in external genitalia and the related differences

Within the current dominant framework on how sex and gender are viewed, certain factors are deemed “natural”. Often, natural means biological – that which is genetic is unchangeable and invariable. Through the emphasis on natural, certain ideologies are promoted as being correct and validated and concepts that vary from the natural are therefore wrong and should be corrected. By deconstructing what is accepted as natural, and what natural even means in this context, it is possible to determine the legitimacy “natural” and “unnatural” and the ethical implications of these terms. The importance placed on the natural over the unnatural has given importance and credence to one constructed class of people over another, and has therefore

In answering the critiques and critical misinterpretations of her work in ‘Gender Trouble’, Butler here further illuminates the nuanced formation of the gendered (and sexed?) self and subject as act of power within powerful repeated acts. This critical observation – that “(t)here is no power that acts but only a reiterated acting that is power in its persistence and instability” is important in thinking through gender identity formations for both transgender and cisgender populations. For if performativity is an enacted/embodied constructionism in service of cultural intelligibility and recognizability then there is no identity or body inside of culture/society that escapes this dynamic. (That trans* and non-normative bodies are held up as perfect if not sole exemplars of this dynamic by a cisgender society speaks to the Foucauldian insidiousness of discursive power.) That the same rewards and punishments (and internalized Panopticon influences) that shape transsexual identities would also concurrently shape cisgender ones is an aspect of social control that is notably absent in arguments

Judith Butler questions the belief that behaviors of either sex are natural. She proposes a rather radical theory that gender is performative and that sex is constructed. When gender is being performed, it means that someone would take on a role, acting in such a way that gives society the idea of their gender and constructs part of their identity. To be performative means that we produce a series of effects.Gender is constructed and is not in any way connected ‘naturally’ to sex.

Sex is usually defined biologically, and even its definition can be based on different criteria such as the genetic sequence of a person, their gonads, their hormones, or their external genitalia(Poston et al, 231) . Gender, however, is a social role which can be fluid. Gender and gender roles can change over time and influence individuals. For example, Conley 286) in the 17th century, women who were obese were considered beautiful and desirable, the ideal feminine shape, whereas today obese women are generally considered undesirable and non-feminine. This shows how the female figure and idea of an ideal feminine form changes over time. Also, the gender roles ascribed according to society can influence individual actions. For example, (Conley, 275) Donald McCloskey was an economist who underwent sexual reassignment surgery to become Deirdre McCloskey. Donald changed his gender to become a female, and in the process noticed that her female self differed from her previous male self. After the surgery, McCloskey lost weight easily, felt duty bound to wash the dishes, and thought less about sex. This shows how despite the brain being the same before and after surgery, McCloskeys’s behaviors after surgery reflect social constructs of

In Kessler’s “The Medical Construction of Gender”, she analyzes gender from the macro-social level to express how intersex infants are addressed in the medical field, or at an institutional level. One element that the author chose to investigate was the use of genetic testing to determine biological sex. Many of the physicians the author discussed believed that genetic testing was enough to determine which way to go forward with treatment, except in cases with non-normative chromosome combinations (Kessler 1998: 54-55). In this way, doctors made their determinations entirely based on biological makeup, without any consideration of how social

To begin with, we will look at how, in early feminist anthropology, the binary pair ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ was used to account for the apparent universality of gender hierarchies. Then, we will analyse how feminist anthropologists moved from an anthropology of ‘women’ to an anthropology of gender that looks at cultural ideas about the difference between men and women. It implies a reworking of our taken-for-granted ideas about gender difference and its relation to the apparently ‘natural’ difference between women´s and men´s bodies. We will examine how the sex-gender distinction, as a reflection of the nature-culture dichotomy, has been used and deconstructed. Focusing on how different societies envision gender and its relation to the body through ethnographic cases like transgendered prostitutes, we will look at how bodies can escape from universal dichotomies and compromise their

This essay will navigate the differences between sex and gender through definition and discourse. First I will discuss sex with reference to biology, what it means to possess the "parts" of a man and of a woman. Within this context I will address intersex people and will examine transgenderism. I will then explore and identify gender through a discussion of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) associated with transgenderism touching briefly on the construction of gender roles. The paper will critically discuss the relationship between sex and gender, and why these concepts of identity can be fluid rather than constant.

It will argue this through, firstly, establishing that a patriarchal societal regime with a mind towards procreation has the expectation of conformity to binary gender roles in place. From this, it can be drawn that sexual preference is inherently linked to gender construction, which needs to be challenged. And then from these first two premises it guides us to question what the binaries of ‘male’ or

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