West And Zimmerman Doing Gender Analysis

Gender derives its formative meaning from culture and societal values, it is not a universal entity as there are various cultures, societal values, beliefs, and preferred ways of organizing collective life across the globe and even within a single culture the meaning of gender varies over time. Chapters three and four of Gendered Lives by Julia T. Wood helps to insightfully look at those views, and rhetorical movements (women and men’s movements) that have overtime influenced, defined and given various meanings to gender (masculinity and femininity).

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.

Gender has been described as masculine or feminine characteristics that encompass gender identity sex as well as social roles (Nobelius 2004). According to sexologist John Money, there is a difference between gender as a role and the biologically of differences in sex (Udry 1994). Within scholarly disciplines, cultures and contexts, gender frequently has its own mean, contextual frame of reference and the manner in which it is used to describe a variety of issues and characteristics. The sociocultural codes, conventions and the suggested and literal rules that accompany the notion of gender are vast and diverse. There has been and continues to be much scholarly debate regarding the idea of gender and how it has been viewed historically; as well as changes in the grammatical use of the

Candance West and Don Zimmerman are the authors of “Doing Gneder” that was published in ‘Gender Society; on 1987. The point that the authors were trying to get accros in “Doing Gender” was that people fullfille their ‘gender’ just like any other rutine that people do in their life. It is hard for people to avoind ‘doing gneder’ becae it is almost a never ending activity. We do gender each and everyday to where we are onlivion to it. We step into our gender unknowingly while we are interacting and socializing. Children learn frm a ver yound age how to do gender. From a young age girls care about things like lip glass. The little girls associate wearing lip gloss with looking prettier. We make sure that they know how to be a ‘boy’ and ‘girl’. Gender is not at all who we are and it is not our identity. Gender is a mask that we put on when we face others. We don’t act in public like we act when we are alone. Just as stated in “Doing Gender” by Creative Sociololy, “It Is a product of social interaction… production…..A social construction. “ We do gender to avoind being judged by others. A man takin on the characteristics of a femal and vise versa is risky. As stated in the article “Doing Gender”, “…behave outside the boundres…risk…judge harshly…” Society treats the individuals who break the statues quote unfairly becase they are challenginf the system. There is a raise of unequal distribution of power by every person who participates in doing gender. Whne you compare men and

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.

Prior to reading the article Doing Gender, I have never paid attention to the concept of doing gender. I found it interesting how these roles go so unnoticed because they are so enforced in our society. We never stop to think or questions if an individual’s actions are masculine or feminine. For example, some of us are just so use to having our mothers cook and our dad’s do all the heavy lifting but we never stop to think why is it like this or what does this represent.

Throughout many studies, researchers have said that gender develops from families, which is part of the social construction in children. According to Coltrane and Adams, Gender is defined as “To what it means to be a man or a woman in a specific time and place” (Coltrane and Adams). People in this world think that gender is automatically part of biological sex, but according to Coltrane and Adams, it is not a direct result of biological sex. The term is defined as “to refer relatively distinct biological differences between male and females such as genitals, hormones, and chromosomes” (Coltrane and Adams). For gender it is also social and it refers to how a person thinks that someone should look, act and feel (Coltrane and Adams). On the daily life, people will usually assume that a person “is” the gender that corresponds to his or her sex: females are feminine and males are masculine (Coltrane and Adams). In addition, gender also describes how the typical man and woman are supposed to present themselves. A man presenting himself as masculine and a woman presenting herself as feminine in particular cultures (Coltrane and Adams). In other words how women should act and how men should act.

Chapter 22 of Ross’ Handbook focused on gender and what exactly it means to by the words “male” and “female.” Further, from this chapter a statement that I found remarkably compelling by Judith Butler is that gender is simply a performance that we do and act out on a day-to-day basis. Why I found this statement to be so compelling is for a number of reasons. First and foremost is that this idea could not be more accurate, but because more people identify with their biological gender it is not something that is readily discussed. Secondly, it is also moving as it is especially relevant with all that is going on in politics regarding the individuals who do not identify to the biological sex/gender they were born with.

People learn to “do” gender is almost another way of expressing that gender is our everyday life. Doing gender can be seen as a way people all believe in their own religion. While reading throughout chapter 3 “The social Construction of gender” Judith Lorber (1994) taught me that gender construction starts with assignment to a sex category. This highlights the understanding that gender can be displayed through variations of trade marks such as the way a parent may dress or name their new born baby to keep people from asking whether it is a boy or girl. Most importantly what I found interesting while engaging in this week’s article “Toys are more divided by gender now than they were 50 years ago”. Elizabeth sweet expressed doing gender behind

Firstly, this essay will examine the fundamental concept of gender. According to West and Zimmerman (1987), the concept of doing gender is all about the routine people accomplish in their everyday lives. However, gender is not about what a person is, but it is something a person does in the process of interacting with others. West and Zimmerman (1987) argue that gender is something we do everyday, all the time, and it is an ongoing activity, so we cannot stop doing it. However, people do gender knowing that they will judge by other. By this they have been held accountable for their gender performances. Deutsch (2007) mentioned that doing gender has had an impact on the study of gender relations. However, this concept has social interactions

Although still problematic, gender roles constructed by society and cultures have progressed throughout the years, not as much as hoped but in small ways. The social and cultural construction of gender in definition means the construction of gender roles created by others that determine their behaviors and develop standards based on their sex. In the article Social Construction of Gender by Lorber the author demonstrates the social and cultural construction of gender stating, “Yet in Western societies, we see two discrete sexes and two distinguishable genders because our society is built on two classes of people, ‘women’ and ‘men’. Once the gender category is given the attributes of the person are also gendered….”(Lorber, 11). In the poem

Gender is set so thoroughly in our actions, beliefs, and desires, so that to us it appears to be completely natural (Eckert and McConnell, year/pg. unknown). A major part of gender identity is understanding the difference between sex and gender. Sociology shows and explains the major differences between sex and gender (Tischler, 2011, p. 247). While sex refers to the physical and biological differences between men and women, gender refers to the attributes of masculinity and femininity that are based on biological distinctions (Tischler, 2011, p. 247).

According to the textbook doing gender is, “the second level of the gender system,” and that, “gender is created, performed, and perpetuated in social interaction” (p. xix). The concept of doing gender is not only creating and performing contrasts,

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

When considering gender and sex, a layman’s idea of these terms might be very different than a sociologist’s. There is an important distinction: sex, in terms of being “male” or “female,” is purely the physical biological characteristic differences – primarily anatomical differences. (There are also rare cases of “intersexual” individuals as outlined in the Navarro article, “When Gender Isn’t a Given”.) Gender, on the other hand, is an often misconstrued concept that is commonly mistaken as synonymous with sex. A non-sociologist might surmise the following, “men act masculine and women act feminine, therefore, it must follow that gender is inherent to sex,” however, this is not necessarily the case.