Gender And Sexuality Socially Constructed Essay

Gender is it a concept or is it made apparent by our DNA when you are born or does it change as you grow older? Often gender is something that society defines at birth. According to society certain gender roles are pre established when we are born. The majority of society believes that if you are born to a specific gender you should adhere to the gender roles while other people believe that instead we may be born to a gender but it does not always decide if you are that gender. Science has proven that just because you are born a male or female does not mean that you mentally see yourself as that gender.

There are grey and in-between areas. Sex characteristics do not always define a person’s gender identity. Many people are nonbinary and that’s perfectly okay, just as many people are cisgender and that is fine as well. The best thing about this paper is that it explains that, and that many cultures accept this

The definition of transgender is: denoting or relating to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex. According to Atanda, everyone has a gender identity and can recognize whether they are male or female. Transgender people feel like they don 't fit their physical appearances when most people feel that their gender and anatomy matches. There are a couple reasons why people may become transgender. Most of the time, kids are born with a brain that is more alike to their opposite sex.

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.

Because of their relative invisibility in public life, many people have a poor grasp on what being transgender really is. To be fair, this is a complicated issue, encompassing its own subsection of the LGBT+ community with its own unique groups. To put it simply, a transgender person is somebody who identifies as a gender other than the one written on their birth certificate. This often means identifying as the opposite sex, but some transgender people live in between the gender binary or outside it altogether. Typically, transgender people live express their identity in different ways: dressing as their preferred gender, going through hormone therapy to alter their bodies, undergoing sex reassignment surgery to change their genitals, or a

My one question that I kept coming back to is, “is gender really such a big deal?” I’ve never felt like I completely fit into either of the boxes, and I’m okay with that. I don’t need a permanent label either, I’m a female but I’m also just me. Why does my gender have to define who I love, how I dress, or how I speak?

The film, Growing Up Trans, was a great medium for me to better understand and reflect on gender socialization, gender identities, and countless variations within the transgender communities. Each child and his/her stories give the audience an insight to both the personal troubles of living as transgenders and the systemic errors of the society that intensifies these troubles. Undoubtedly, the children in the film expressed their discomfort of being characterized as the deviants. Deviants are those who are perceived as outsiders and who violate what the society considers true and correct (Charon). In our society, heterosexuality and gender conformity – one’s gender identity matching one’s sexual identity – are considered the norm.

From the very beginning of our lives, a majority of us are told or taught upon by cues on how to act according to our gender. Saying that if one wants to perform gender right, than girls should act a certain way, while boys act another. In,“Night to His Day,” Judith Lorber discuses how the formation of gender begins, “For the individual, gender construction starts with the assignment to a sex category on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth” (Lober 1994:55). Solely based off the genitalia, it will be determined if the child is a boy or a girl; from their parents will dress their child in a certain way to make that gender prevalent to an outsider.

Although some people believe that nature affects the gender identity, others argue that, based on the education an individual receives, it is actually nurture. For example, John Moore, a teacher at a female-only school, says, “My findings suggest that, in some senses, the single-sex school is strongly feminist” (Moore, 2005). On the other hand, many societies teach the children gender stereotypes to try and limit them from becoming against what the society feels is appropriate. Gender roles or stereotypes are “a set of qualities, behaviors, and attitudes that are considered appropriate for males and females based on their biological sex” (Whalen & Maurer-Starks, 2008). Most of the time, these stereotypes are taught and explained to the children in the early stages of learning, since as mentioned above, gender identity is most likely detected after the child is two years old.

What we today see as genders is the norms that follow when born as a girl or as a boy. What is being connected to male norms of masculinity is strength, aggression and dominance, while woman more often than not follow norms such as passivity, nurturing and subordination. We have come to realise in recent years that your gender and your sex is not the same thing. The fact that there is not only two genders but a lot more is also something that has been discovered. Transgender is those who is born as one gender, but identifies as another.

A person appearance do not describe what they feel and really are in the inside letting transgender use the gender restroom they were born to use make them no less than a man or a woman because that is who they were born to be. A man can be dress as a woman but inside he is still a man so he should be able to use the restroom to what he is. Appearance is a big role in society today but everyone is different so the difference in people has to be seen so that there is no discrimination. Everyone have their own flaws and no flaw is greater than the other one so accepting people

The way in which people perceive human sexuality can vary, based on who, what and when the topic is being taken into consideration. When I was just a small, insignificant, 18 week old embryo, my gender and sex was already being determined. By the time I was born, I had a pink filled nursery with lots of flowers and hello kitty. I had dresses and skirts in every shade of pink, magenta, and violet that existed. If you can not tell yet, I am a female. The way that someone is raised has a lot to do with their actions and general role in their gender and sex. For example a girl that has been raised in a self sufficient, small, third world country might be raised to wear very conservative clothes and keep covered at all times, while in America, we

If you went up to a transgender person and asked them what it was like to be transgender the answer you will get would be similar across the board. Being transgender means that you were “born in the wrong body”. “Nonheterosexual adolescents are vulnerable to health risks including addiction, bullying, and familial abuse.” (Himmelstein and Brückner, 2011). Not only will these individuals be subjected to torment in their school, work and personal lives they are also more susceptible to addiction and abuse within their families.

According to sexologists John Money and Anke Ehrhardt, sex and gender are separate categories. “Sex, they argued, refers to physical attributes and is anatomically and physiologically determined. Gender they saw as a psychological transformation - the internal conviction that one is either male or female (gender identity) and the behavioral expressions of that conviction” (Sterling 4). Although there are biological differences between the two sexes, but gender roles are socially constructed. They determine how males and females should think, speak, dress, behave and interact with society.

Gender is becoming a large word of conflict in society, and its use has increased in the past few years as the definition has been debated and discussed. Many people are trying to figure out what gender is, and if it is as simple as male and female, or if gender is different from sex and a much topic. I personally view it as a broad word that means more than it has in the past, but that is due to the environment I have grown up in and people that have been in my life as I have started learning new things about the world . The word gender has such conflict about its definition that I feel it should be open for more discussion, or have multiple definitions to make up for the variations in opinions.