West And Zimmerman Gender Performativity?

Gender Performativity

West and Zimmerman see everyone as an actor ‘doing’ or preforming their gender, which is similar to the ideas of Judith Butler. West and Zimmerman differentiate sex as the socially agreed on criteria for fitting into being male or female, typically this being genitalia or chromosomes, at birth. Then there is their definition of gender that is to west and Zimmerman, the degree in which an actor is masculine or feminie, in regard to what the social expectation is for each ‘sex category’ (West & Zimmerman, 1991). The sex category is a system in which the assumed sex of an actor is placed based on their body and behaviours. Another strong point that is made by west and Zimmerman is that as humans there is a large need for us socially to categorise things wether and make an assumption on if that category is positive, negative or neutral. We categorise people in ways of gender, race, age, and sexuality or by social class. Because of this need to categorise, there is also an expectation that one will conform to that category, and not act out on it and if you do then, it would be deemed socially unacceptable (West &

Simone De Beauvoir said in her book Second sex ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ (Beauvoir, 1973, p. 301). This shows the Beauvoir believed that gender was an aspect of ones identity that we discover gradually. She says that gender socially constructed and that it is also a particularly important in constructing our own identity. If gender is a part of somebodies identity that is struggled with this can cause a lot of problems in their social world because of the way we gender our day-to day activities. It is a generalisation to say that ‘all women like shopping’ or ‘all men like watching sport’ but as a society that is something we see as social, and if you cannot partake in those activities you will tend to be marginalised in