Gender Troubles

Secondly, gender norms nowadays prevails that it creates gender roles and assist the society order. When new concepts that would disturb the original order start to emerge and go into people’s mind, people will be frustrated and difficult to react. In that sense, people of gender nonconfromity cannot be fit in the traditional binary gender system and the society has difficulties to handle a spectrum of sex and gender identities. Therefore, people and

Mead, an anthropologist with research in women’s sexuality and socialization, dissects the temperaments of each gender. She specifically focuses on the “cultural assumptions that certain temperamental attitudes are ‘naturally’ masculine and others ‘naturally’ feminine,” (241). Mead considers that society may eventually learn to tolerate and accept the natural diversity, “It is a two-edged sword that can be used to hew a more flexible, more varied society than the human race has ever built, or merely to cut a narrow path down which one sex or both sexes will be forced to march, regimented, looking neither to the right nor to the left,” (242). Today, gender molds are slowly being broken with the increasing use of gender-neutral bathrooms, toys, and clothes. This can be an issue for some, manipulating families who recently had a baby boy or girl into thinking it is not okay for them to have gender-segregated items in fear of ruining the baby’s upbringing, or those who do not feel comfortable conforming to these gender-neutral spaces feel they are now unwelcomed. Mead stressed the need to overcome the idea that, “Men and women are socially differentiated, and each sex, as a sex, forced to conform to the role assigned to it,” in order to get past this barrier that segregates us as genders

Gender is something that is brought to the attention of people well before people are even brought into the world. Take for instance, when a woman finds out that she is pregnant and is about to have a child. The first question that that women is asked is “What are you having?” In doing this we are automatically emphasizing the importance of being able to identify whether or not to buy “boy” things or “girl” things. As a society we deem it important for each sex to practice a set of “norms” of how to behave via that sex. As a man, you are supposed to be dominant, strong, hardworking, provider, and the bread winner. As a woman, you are supposed to be submissive, weak, docile, and nurture. But where and when do these norms on how to behave

The American society expects different attitudes and behaviors from boys and girls through culture tradition. As the children grow up, parents, media, and education all effect how they perceive their own gender rather than having it based on biological gender.

Alcohol consumption is a common practice across the United States of America and several other countries in the world. Despite it being a shared practice in most parts of the world, heterogeneity in alcohol consumption among demographic subpopulations (gender and race) exists. Such heterogeneity is also true for health burdens and complications associated with alcohol consumption. This is especially true when the groups are segmented into gender and race. Gender is a very distinctive state with little to no middle ground. Gender is often segmented into male or female. This is attributed to it being defined more in terms of cultural and social differences as opposed to biological differences. In the same breathe the male and female genders have

The second level of gender is interaction. Over time, men and women have been taught how to act in accordance with gender conformed behaviours, and looked upon as “abnormal” if they deviant from what is expected. Gender is evolving within each generation as the individual partakes in a gender identity daily by either reinforcing instilled norms, or with an attempt to normalize deviant

Gender, defined by Sara Arber refers to the social, economical and cultural expectations and norms given to men and women. Gender is an important socially constructed idea that differentiates the roles and responsibilities given to the sexes, deeming what is appropriate and acceptable for men and women as well as the way in which they are treated by their social groups. Social construction is a specific concept based on space and time, thus gender being a social construction, is continuously changing throughout time and varies amongst societies. The socialization of gender has increased the thoughts that males and females acquire certain traits in order to become masculine or feminine, creating gender differences and deeming them as ‘natural’,

On the contrary, Judith Butler emphasizes gender as social norms. As a philosopher, Butler draws from psychoanalysis and literature. She claims we all detach ourselves from our attributes and explains what the trouble with gender is: it is a social construct; looks at what we put importance on, and it has strict binaries. Butler presents the idea of gender as performance or gender performative; to say gender is performative, means it produces a series of effects. The phenomenon produces and reproduces all the time; she makes a controversial claim that nobody is born one gender or the other. For Butler, this perception assumes a connection of male/female sex, gender identity, and the object of sexual want. The perception disguises itself as

When asked which gender one belongs to, most people are certain of their answer. They know whether they are a man or a woman. Even though the recognition that one may not identify with being a ‘man’ or ‘woman’ despite having the sexual organs that define them as such now exists, gender tends to still be thought of in terms of two opposite categories. In addition, gender is still seen as an aspect of one’s ‘true’ identity—as an unchangeable part of who an individual is—by many mainstream channels. How immutable, however, is gender? Societal norms tend to enforce the ideas of a gender binary, but is it possible to confine an individual to one of these two categories? What criteria is the categorization based on? This essay seeks to respond to

West and Zimmerman (1987) contend that gender is a socially constructed accomplishment that actively surfaces in every day human interaction, in which the ultimate goal is to ensure that one’s gender identity coincides with their biological sex. Due to this, it is argued that gender is both a social outcome and rationale for legitimizing one of the most important societal binaries: man and woman. Therefore, any behaviors that do not fall under predetermined gendered routines are seen as abnormal and unnatural. Nevertheless, West and Zimmerman (1987) argue that an understanding of the “cultural level of sex category and the interactional level of gender” (p. 147) is essential not only for reconceptualising gender, but also for significant social

Considering that the individual simply imitates the existing ideals, gender performance, therefore, is not characterized by choice or voluntarism (Butler, 1990). As Butler puts it, every act by the individual is performed “within a highly rigid regulatory frame… set by the various forces that police the social appearance of gender (1990, p. 43-44).” People, when behaving and performing acts, are expected to adhere to the existing norms of gender; males should perform masculine acts while females, feminine. Highlighting the restrictiveness of such norms, Butler, in the interview with Kotz (1992) shared: “Performativity has to do with repetition, very often with the repetition of oppressive and painful gender norms to force them to resignify. This is not freedom, but a question of how to work the trap that one is inevitably in (p.

The concept of gender and gender roles has been sewn into the very fabric of society. The stereotypes associated with them shape the habits, thought and lifestyle of an individual and influence their actions. Gender is a routine influence in life, whether in a subtle or forthright manner. This “dailiness” of gender is seen in Joan Scott’s essay “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” and in Imtiaz Dharker’s collections of poems “The Terrorist at my Table” and “Postcards from God”. The relationship between gender and dailiness enables us to examine its the very foundation.

Sex categories and gender, according to West and Zimmerman, are different and interconnected. “A sex category is achieved through application of the sex criteria, but in everyday life, categorization is established and sustained by the socially required identificatory displays that proclaim one’s membership

Gender roles in society are evident at every aspect in the world nowadays. According to Judith Butler, humans are typically divided into two distinct categories: men and women. More popularly called as the binary fashion in feminist view. She states that gender should be seen as a human attribute that shifts and changes rather than remaining fixed. She argues that women have been lumped together in a group with shared characteristics and interests, and this limits their ability to choose their own unique identities. Therefore, literature has evolved into these discourses against women, mainly through gender stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination.

M-F scales used in item response tests routinely equated males with masculinity and females with femininity.