Summary Of The Anatomical Distinction Between The Sexes

There is no single or a definite answer in gender study. Different gender scholars have different thoughts about gender process. Some of their theories are related and similar to each other, however, some are totally opposite and against each other. These revision and critique are very important for the gender study students to rethink and explore.
Sigmund Freud is one of the greatest physiologists in the 18th century. His idea of the gender reveals by his famous article, “Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes”. In this article, Freud presents an unusual and peculiar theory of gender and sex, which he calls it “Penis Envy”. Physically, femininity comes from the jealous of men’s sexual characteristic.
She writes: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society” in her article “The Second Sex” at the beginning of the chapter (De Beauvoir, 267). In her eyes, no physical or mental factors can affect femininity, rather than the social practices. De Beauvoir would think Freud’s psychological theory is totally not correct and reject his idea in her article directly. Freud, wrote in her writings, is “profoundly misunderstand the mentality of the child” (De Beauvoir, 276). She points out the “Penis Envy” theory is totally nonsense and misleading. She is completely not understanding of why Freud connect femininity to biological and sexual differences. Imaging if De Beauvoir meets with Freud at a small café, she would be really mad and upset about his writings. Rather than that, De Beauvoir suggests gender process affect by a power structural and organizing process, choosing between norm and the others. For example, men are norm and women are the others, white people are the norm and people with other colors are the others, and heterosexuality is norm and homosexuality is the others, etc. Sometimes, this power organizing process is controlled by the society and it often likes to categorize everything happened in our lives into these two categories. Therefore, men are in a
Lorber suggests that “doing gender” is a process and throughout this process, it can give gender a different meaning (Lorber, 13). Both Fred and De Beauvoir offering a process of gender, but actually, De Beauvoir’s theory is more relate to Lorber’s. Young girls are playing with dolls is kind of a process of repetition of gender. They repeat what their mother is doing and these repetition makes gender and form gender process. When gender being repeats many times, it becomes natural and we do not have to question why. It becomes like a pattern, people follow it without notice. Similar to Lorber said: “everyone is doing gender” (Lorber, 13) and sometimes we do not realize it because it is too normal. People doing gender every day, every time, and everywhere. It is the process of normalization. Lorber talks about the “gender boundaries” and it refers back to what De Beauvoir’s thinking as well. The boundaries of gender let us classify “man is A and woman is Not-A” (Lorber, 32-33). Same as De Beauvoir said, categorize to norm and the others. Gender is the primary way for us to organize our daily life and we become who we are through the gender process. The society, on the outside, leads us to categorize and force us to do