According to Professor Heather Paxson (2006) of MIT, gender refers to the characteristics that differentiate men and women’s behaviors and it includes value judgments connected to masculinity and femininity and everything in between. However, as one learns more and more about gender, they question the necessity of gender and even its existence. In the piece X: A Fabulous Child’s Story by Lois Gould (1978 or 2006) gender is portrayed as unimportant in order to have a good life; gender doesn’t matter. It shows that people have a need to categorize everything into groups because if they don’t, the unknown lingers in their minds and they fear it. People fear the unknown and the different, therefore they fear any gender other than the binary. But…
Not knowing the definition of terms has caused the creation of stigmas and stereotypes that reveal more than just the obvious logical fallacy in the mindset of the modern global society. Gender is a simple concept to understand if it is considered without previous influence from respective cultures. Gender is defined by The Gender Book as “Part of a person’s identity. Specific attributes can be gendered like behavior, voice, clothing, haircut, and social roles…We get messages about what it means to be masculine or feminine from our society. These change over…
In today’s society, people tend to group one and an another into different categories according to their own social identity. An individual’s gender identity refers to which group where one belongs to. The attributes assigned to both males and females are different because of gender differences. In “Becoming members of Society: Learning the Social Meanings of Gender” by Aaron Devor, the author argues that factors such as beliefs and behaviors help differentiate the sexual identity of a person. In addition, Devor views sex as an instrument of determining gender. It is believed that there are only two types of sexes that exist. Which are male and female. On the other hand, “Girl”, by Jamaica Kincaid, the mother tries to forces prescribe behavior,…
Sex is the biological identity of a human being, “The criteria for classification can be genitalia at birth or chromosomal typing…” (West and Zimmerman, 2015). Sex category is determined through the sex criteria although, according to west and Zimmerman, a person may classify themselves in a specific sex category even though they do not have the sex criteria for that category. Gender is the agreed upon way one person should present themselves if they identify in a specific category (masculinity and femininity). Hegemonic masculinity is dictated through the three societal standards that are put in our heads as a baby. Whether it is the cars and trucks to the guns and swords little boys get; we see masculinity being something in which is taught at a young…
Throughout the decades, human beings from a small age start learning the characteristics of a male and female. Whether it is from media, clothing and to the way one is brought up, society has similar views of what it means to be a man or a women. Men are envisioned to be strong, aggressive, successful, and someone who avoids feminine characteristics. Women are perceived to be submissive, delicate, passive, dependent, vulnerable, having the ability to care for children and at times worthless. These views of gender identity have been engraved in humanities minds due to the amount of exposure to television, advertisements and the way one is raised in their households.…
As a child, I never really gave any thought to how a toy of some sort was packaged or advertised. The author of this article, Elizabeth Sweet, delves into why the marketing and advertising behind popular toys have become more gender based than they were in the past. She mentions that in her research she found toy advertisements and marketing were primarily gender neutral up until the 1990s where gender-cues were most commonly used. This initially confused me because I was under the impression that over time we as a society became more accepting of people, however the examples Elizabeth provides clearly support the claim she makes in the title. The one thing that was most off-putting about her article though, was that she only used examples…
Despite the fact that Bernstein says that men and ladies utilize tee-ups with meet recurrence (there have been no significant investigations of the issue, she notes), inquire about demonstrates that ladies fence more when all is said in done. That is not really a terrible thing: In her book Gendered Lives: Correspondence, Sexual orientation and Culture, Julia T. Wood clarifies that such "speculative correspondence opens the entryway for others to react and express their sentiments," as opposed to the air-fixed explanations of truth that frequently describe male discourse. Noting the Money Road Diary story in Jezebel, Madeleine Davies watches that she's seen a greater number of ladies teeing up than men—which coordinates my own involvement.…
From the article I have read, this demonstrated the differentiation between the two words “sex” and “gender.” This revealed how many individuals display certain characteristics of what gender they choose to be. Others like to stay in what is considered normal and full of structure because of the ability of being able to reproduce. The article describes how it affects society whether it’s in the personal life and in the work place. We are made to be set in certain gender roles because of culture such as their example of African culture and other cultures who proclaims the ways of how to act, how to dress, and mature and nurtured in the sex they were born with.…
When a new child is born into this world, the first thing that the parents learn is the sex of their new baby. From a very young age, you are either classified as a boy or a girl. However, defining one as a boy or a girl is not actually referring to the sex of a human being. Although they are often considered as the same thing, they are far from the same. Sex is defined as a biological status of a species according to internal and external reproductive organs and sex chromosomes. They are often characterized as male, female or intersex. Gender refers to the behaviour, attitude and feelings that a culture gives to a person’s biological sex. The topic of sex versus gender is an ongoing issue in today’s society because people are becoming more…
So while your sex as male or female is a biological fact that is the same in any culture, what that sex means in terms of your gender role as a 'man' or a 'woman' in society can be quite different cross culturally. These 'gender roles' have an impact on the health of the individual. In sociological terms 'gender role' refers to the characteristics and behaviours that different cultures attribute to the sexes. What it means to be a 'real man' in any culture requires male sex plus what our various cultures define as masculine characteristics and behaviours, likewise a 'real woman' needs female sex and feminine characteristics.…
It is a common practice to assume that gender is biological aspect of human lives, but in social sciences “gender identity [is] not a “thing” that people “have,” but rather a process of construction that develops, comes into crisis, and changes as a person interacts with the social world” (Messner 2009:120). As Messner (2009) explained, gender identity is not static but is rather a dynamic process that all individuals experience through social interactions. When I was young, my parents always referred to me as a “tomboy” because I often played with boys and was comfortable wearing boy’s clothes. Likewise, I knew that I was a girl. However, I preferred to play with boys because their games were more enticing and intriguing. Since I was little,…
“The concept of gender is used by sociologists to describe all the socially given attributes, roles, activities and responsibilities connected to being male or female in a given society. Our gender identity determines how we are perceived and how we are expected to think and act as women and men, because of the way society is organised” (March et al, 1999)…
One of the biggest problems today’s society has is change. Society fears the oncoming storm of liberal ideas as well as the ever changing mass of people who aren’t afraid to speak up about topics like “gender”, which is arguably as broad and debatable as they come. The amount of people educated in this topic, however, is not so extensive. Many people only have knowledge of what a man and woman should be based on their society’s rules. Others understand and accept that “gender only exists as a comparative quality” and choose to not divide “certain types of behaviors … as masculine or feminine” (Scantlebury). The problem of gender stereotyping and normalization has become more recognized over the…
Everybody in today’s society experiences gender throughout his or her life. However, as a female, I have personally always been affected by the social construction of gender in my day-to-day life, whether I was aware of it or not. Gender is such a prominent aspect of life for everyone that we barely recognize the effect it has on us, especially when it’s constructed within our own families.…
Gayle Rubin created the sex/gender system concept in the year 1975. She created this term to offer a new way of thinking about the difference between sex and gender. She defined the sex/gender system as “the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied” (WRWC, 2015). The sex/gender system has many explanations that attempt to address how our sex plays a role in how we learn gender. A few of these theories include: cognitive-developmental theory, social learning theory, gender schema theory, social interactions and gender roles, and lastly, performativity theory. In this essay I will explain how the sex/gender system is created and reinforced from the perspectives of feminist theorists.…