How is an individual’s anatomy a prime focus on how others view that individual? Are we as human beings able to go beyond a person’s anatomy and truly judge them based on only the content of their character? The way in which we view people based on their genetic makeup conforms us to think that a male or female can only engage in activities based on their gender role in society. By conforming to the gender roles that our society has placed on us, poses a threat to the 21st century. In doing that, we setback our society and prevent it from growing beyond gender roles and the content of an individual’s character. The problem with going beyond judging people by anatomy is how to actually formulize a plan on how to exactly judge a person based on the content of their character. Cultural differences, around the world, in the communication of male and female roles play a huge part in overcoming the 21st century challenge of anatomy and gender makeup.
The speaker, Alice Dreger, believes that a resolution to the 21st century challenge of anatomy and gender is if we think less about each individual’s anatomic makeup and focus more on what that person can do for us. Alice Dreger believes in the odd occurrences of how a person can be a female on the outside but have internal male reproductive organs. She believes that an individual who that happens to has a right to still play his or her external gender role. She believes that just because an individual happened to be born with different internal reproductive organs that the circumstance shouldn’t change how others view them. An individual can still live their lifestyle as what they are externally but they just won’t be able to reproduce that way. The fact that not everyone will know this ...
... middle of paper ...
...ow society that their specific gender can achieve what society said they couldn’t. Individuals shouldn’t per say rebel against any authority but instead slowly change the ideas of divisions they have regarding male and female. As a whole we as human beings need to desensitize the divisions we have amongst male and females so that we can instead help each other rather than compete against each other.
Works Cited
Everett, BG (2013) The Nonlinear Relationship Between Education and Mortality: An Examination of Cohort, Race/Ethnic, and Gender Differences, 32:6, 893-917, DOI: 10.1007/s11113-013-9299-0
Kagari Shibazaki & Nigel A. Marshall (2013) Gender differences in computer and instrumental-based musical composition, Educational Research, 55:4, 347-360, DOI:
10.1080/00131881.2013.844937
Myers, David G. Exploring Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994. Print.
This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...
Gender roles are a major theme in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, in the main ways being what is expected of proper Southern lady, the critcization of women because of their hypocrisy, and the distrust of masculinity as whole. The novel is set in the 1930s during the Depression in the small traditional town of Maycomb, Alabama. Scout is the main female protagonist in the novel and Scout herself faces the gender conformity, as does many others, like Tom Robinson and other men, and the female gender as a whole.
Gender role is a commonly discussed subject in society. Gender role simply defined is a person's inner sense of how a male or female should feel and behave. Society and culture are also very important in relation to this subject. This means different societies and cultures may produce children and later, grown men and women, who have quite different views of a man or a woman's place in the world around them, often determined by their culture's gender stereotypes. These topics will be explained and compared to each other later on. How to implement a gender free childcare environment will also be discussed.
"Today's girl knows she's supposed to fulfill all the traditional "girl" expectations-- look pretty, be nice, get a boyfriend--while excelling at the "girl skills" of empathy cooperation, and relationship building" (257): This is said by Stephen Hinshaw, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkley. This quote shows how some of the things girls are expected to achieve...however it does not show what boys are expected to achieve. Greta Christina wrote the article "5 Stupid, Unfair and Sexist Things Expected of Men", in this article, Greta lists and discusses 5 points: 1. Men are expected to get in physical fights. 2. The contradiction of being a good husband who is caring and supportive but not caring to much about his wife so that he is not "whipped" as his friends would call it. 3. Men are supposed to want sex and be ready for sex all the time. 4. Being tough, showing no emotion. 5. Fear of being gay. The pressure and expectations that society places on men and women are extremely diverse, which causes substantial differences between the two.
The society has a certain expectation of us based on the differences in our characteristics, such as race, gender, or class. We might not be aware of the presence of social construction; however, the society’s expectation dictates on how people supposed to act, think, behave, and response. For example, social construction of gender begins at birth when the doctor tries to decide whether a baby is a boy or a girl based on what the baby’s genitalia and other secondary sex characteristics, such as gonads and sex chromosomes, look like. After the doctor classifies the baby as either a boy or a girl, the parents continue with the social construction process as they dress and provide toys for the baby. The parents of a baby girl tend to dress the baby in a pink–colored dress and provide the baby with dolls or cooking toys, while the parents of a baby boy tend to dress the baby in blue-colored pants and provide the baby with building blocks or car toys. As the children grow, the society expects them to behave according to the assigned genders. The children learn the society’s expectations by observing and imitating others with the same gender as them. Therefore, it is particularly difficult for a person with both sexes like Cheryl Chase to live in a society where the conception of gender is dichotomous, because she does not fit into the either one of the two categories of gender that the society accepts (Weil, 2006).
Since the beginning of time men have played the dominant role in nearly every culture around the world. If the men were not dominant, then the women and men in the culture were equal. Never has a culture been found where women have dominated. In “Society and Sex Roles” by Ernestine Friedl, Friedl supports the previous statement and suggests that “although the degree of masculine authority may vary from one group to the next, males always have more power” (261). Friedl discusses a variety of diverse conditions that determine different degrees of male dominance focusing mainly on the distribution of resources. In The Forest People by Colin Turnbull, Turnbull describes the culture of the BaMbuti while incorporating the evident sex roles among these “people of the forest”. I believe that the sex roles of the BaMbuti depicted by Turnbull definitely follow the pattern that is the basis of Freidl’s arguments about the conditions that determine variations of male dominance. Through examples of different accounts of sex roles of the BaMbuti and by direct quotations made by Turnbull as well as members of the BaMbuti tribe, I intend on describing exactly how the sex roles of the BaMbuti follow the patterns discussed by Freidl. I also aim to depict how although women are a vital part of the BaMbuti culture and attain equality in many areas of the culture, men still obtain a certain degree of dominance.
Diamond emphasizes in his article on how Scientifics attribute gender identity to the environment. Consequently, given this line of reasoning in the medical field, there is the predicament in raising a male child with a futile penis or a female child with a dysfunctional vagina, as Diamond states. In most of the cases they chose to implant a vagina in these children (1997, p.1). However, the implantations of a vagina in these children will not change the fact embodied by their genes, no matter how much encouragement, psychological therapies or even intake of estrogen would befall, none of these will change what they truly are. Human kind comes to this world with specific characteristics encoded in their chromosomes, these biological factors must be allowed to develop and function as they are in ...
“Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls”: few of our cultural mythologies seem as natural as this one. But in this exploration of the gender signals that traditionally tell what a “boy” or “girl” is supposed to look and act like, Aaron Devor shows how these signals are not “natural” at all but instead are cultural constructs. While the classic cues of masculinity—aggressive posture, self-confidence, a tough appearance—and the traditional signs of femininity—gentleness, passivity, strong nurturing instincts—are often considered “normal,” Devor explains that they are by no means biological or psychological necessities. Indeed, he suggests, they can be richly mixed and varied, or to paraphrase the old Kinks song “Lola,” “Boys can be girls and girls can be boys.” Devor is dean of social sciences at the University of Victoria and author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality (1989), from which this selection is excerpted, and FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society (1997).
Gender role is a set of expectations set forth by society about the ways in which men and women are “supposed” to behave based on their gender. In the Era of which we live, the expectations are closer than ever to being distinct. Many people of my generation, and younger, may not completely understand this question, due to the fact that it is almost the norm to see single parent homes and to have both parents working full time. The stay at home mother is almost a thing of the past. In some situations the “gender role” has been completely switched, with the father being the stay at home parent. This concept is completely foreign to most elderly citizens such as our grandparents. If you look back at history, the father was the breadwinner and the mother stayed home to care for the children, which families back then were much larger. You may be pondering, what events in history lead to such a dramatic change in the family schematics? Well, we are going to delve into this lengthy controversial and revolutionary historic cultivation. First I am going to touch on a few historic events that altered the typical American family, followed by a few waves of the feminist movement, as well as some revolutionizing amendments to the Constitution yielding more rights to females which ultimately altered the workplace as well as the family.
Society places ideas concerning proper behaviors regarding gender roles. Over the years, I noticed that society's rules and expectations for men and women are very different. Men have standards and specific career goals that we must live up to according to how others judge.
Suggested roles of all types set the stage for how human beings perceive their life should be. Gender roles are one of the most dangerous roles that society faces today. With all of the controversy applied to male vs. female dominance in households, and in the workplace, there seems to be an argument either way. In the essay, “Men as Success Objects”, the author Warren Farrell explains this threat of society as a whole. Farrell explains the difference of men and women growing up and how they believe their role in society to be. He justifies that it doesn’t just appear in marriage, but in the earliest stages of life. Similarly, in the essay “Roles of Sexes”, real life applications are explored in two different novels. The synthesis between these two essays proves how prevalent roles are in even the smallest part of a concept and how it is relatively an inevitable subject.
As we discuss the articles of Anne Fausto- Streling, “The Five Sexes, Revisited” and Marjorie Garber, “The Return to Biology” in class we came to see how these two articles could bring up such controversy. As they question our perspective on human nature as we have always known it to be, from “The Five Sexes, Revisited” stating “absolute dimorphism disintegrates even at the level of basic biology” (176), to “The Return of Biology” saying “Society mandates the control of intersexual bodies because they blur and bridge the great divide” (184). We see many different aspects on how human biology or culture is more than what meets the eye. All I can begin to say is everything we, as the human species, do revolves around dimorphism no matter the questions or contradictions that may arise. The idea that only two sexes exist is still firmly maintained in our society as how things are suppose to be aka the “norm”.
Gender identity has been a delicate issue when it comes to determining if a person's gender is set at birth or develops and changes as a person ages. A person’s gender is not as simple as being classified as either male or female. There’s a considerable amount of external factors that can influence someone's identity. Although society has a major role in gender identity, sex assignment at birth is not final; furthermore, a person's gender can be influenced by psychological, physiological differences and undergoing changes to the human body.
In Doing Gender authors West and Zimmerman argue the concept of gender being an outcome of daily life rather than an outcome from a physician with an ultrasound with only two permanent results. The meaning behind the term gender invokes different connotations of either masculine or feminine qualities that lay the groundwork for societies preexisting roles. Society today views gender as being either of masculine or feminine form however the controversy with this is how this is determined in our society today as well as in the past. Both authors fall upon the idea that sex is a disposition of birth whereas gender is a disposition of your actions after your birth. “It is necessary to move beyond the notion of gender display to consider what
... will allow the lesser gender in society the chance to expand and experience growth in many dimensions. This growth and development will allow for equal and various opportunities for those at a disadvantage within society and around the world. For centuries, men and women have had completely different roles in their daily life, but with the advancements made towards gender equality, a shift has been made from a male dominated society to one where both men and women can interact in a manner that prevents a patriarchal society.