Sex is natural, where gender is more like artificial- done by the society: male and female have to have different appearance and behavior. Lorber claims that, “Individuals are born sexed, but not gendered, and they have to be masculine or feminine” (57). So, for separate persons masculinity or femininity is their individuality. Throughout her writing, she states that, sex is biological characteristics that we have from our birth and gender is are some characteristics that we form to identify our sex and when sex is identified through gender, social stratification is done at that point.
She further states that, “Clothing paradoxically, often hides the sex, but displays gender” (57). Therefore, according to her claim, clothes are one of the gender markers which predetermines what that persons position or status in the society will be. However, for one individual person clothes may be a material to hide his or her sex marker. But, with the stratification of masculinity and femininity, this material of sex identifier became a “gender marker” (Lorbor). These phenomena resulted in some expected characteristics from men and women, where women are expected to behave softly and men are expected to behave vigorously. The more masculine a man is and the more feminine a woman is, the more he or she gets “gendered.” Again, this ultimately results gender stratification.
Finally, Lorber argues, “For
Cited: Lorber, Judith. Nights to His Day The Social Construction of Gender