In Wood’s Introduction and Chapter 1, she is setting the stage for discussions about our gendered lives. We begin with the basic premise that sex is a biological classification and gender is a social and symbolic system. In other words, gender is learned. Wood disrupts the notion that the characteristics we label masculine and/or feminine and that we attach great significance to belong to either male or female. Discuss the differences between sex and gender, and comment on how comfortable you are with your own views of “masculinity” and “femininity.” Think about the ways in which such labels are restrictive – to all sexes!
Friday, January 22, 2010
Blog Prompt #1 for Jan 27, 2010
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Some differences between sex and gender are that sex is what a human posesses biologically and physically, and gender is how they identify. For example, a person's sex could be female and heterosexual, but thier gender be masculine. This person may identify as being gay. Sex is something that a person is born with, gender is learned and discovered. My views have been the same as society's views about "masculinity and femininity", however, as I have matured and learned more about this subject, I find that everyone (male or female, transgender...etc) exhibits characteristics of both genders. Everyone needs to be assertive to obtain what they want or need, and almost everyone react in a nurturing way towards children and animals. I believe that these behaviors are fit for everyone, but some cultures supress actions and behaviors that are deemed as "wrong" for that sex.
ReplyDeleteToday’s society portrays a very twisted and incorrect definition of sex and gender, as well as an incorrect difference between the two. According to Wood’s definition sex is a designation based on biology, whereas gender is socially constructed and expressed. Sex is denoted by one’s chromosomes and external and internal sex organs. While gender can change over time, varies across cultures, and is defined by more than just male or female. Gender is learned over a course of a lifetime, unlike sex, which is your biological make-up.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up I have never thought about my views on masculinity and femininity. My family is a traditional middle-class Caucasian family, living in a patriarchal culture. My father the “bread-winner” and my mother the “home-maker, and care-giver.” My views of masculinity and femininity come from my views I developed as a child from my mother and father. My father a strong, athletic, successful, loving, caring and supportive male. My mother a strong, athletic, beautiful, caring, smart, honest, and loving woman. Being that I grew up with a stay at home mom, I’ve always felt that was the job woman were supposed to do, and men were supposed to support the family. Yet, as I’ve grown I’ve realized that my mother had the liberty of staying home and taking care of her four children, unlike some women. Plus, that my father did not force her into that job, she had to opportunity to do whatever she pleased.
Overall, my views of masculinity and femininity have been constructed through my culture and up bringing. But have also been strongly influenced by our society. I view masculinity as strong, athletic, professional, and successful men. And femininity as strong, beautiful, mothers, whom are caring, smart and loving. These views are much like many other of my friends and family, what’s curious to me is whether my views and the views of others around me are related to our culture or what society promotes as what is right and wrong.
One of my professors has the following quotation by Stephen Jay Gould on the tagline of her email, "I am somehow less interested in ...Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops". This quote encapsulates the tragic fact that, while “keeping people in their place” (whether the limiting factor is race, sex, socio-economic status, or gender roles) is certainly damaging to the individual, far greater harm is visited on society.
ReplyDeleteImagine a world where loving, nurturing, creative men are welcomed in the classroom instead of viewed as vaguely creepy (read pedophile); where women who thrive in high pressure situations and are effective commanders are thought of as great leaders, instead of “ball-busting bitches”; where a dark skinned (read Hispanic, Black, African, Caribbean, Indian, etc.) child is greeted with limitless expectations and opportunities to contribute his or her unique gifts and talents. Instead, tragically, the world has lost countless life-changing teachers, leaders, scientific discoveries, and the list continues beyond imagination. We have been unable to avert untold tragedies and have lost multitude achievements because we have (largely) limited the people allowed to contribute to Western society to those who are middle to upper class, white, male, and masculine. My heart aches and my mind reels when I consider what has been lost.
I failed to address one aspect of the question . . .
ReplyDeleteI grew up in the South, and my parents regularly told my sister, "You are pretty and sweet, you'll always have a man to take care of you." Me they told, "You are too smart for your own good, you speak your mind, and don't take care of your looks. You'll never get a man, but at least you'll be able to take care of yourself." I was a tom-boy (and still am - I kill all the spiders for my fraidy-cat husband). I still speak my mind and rarely wear enough make-up or dress nicely enough to satisfy my mother-in-law. Yet, I married at 23, have been a stay-at-home mom for 17 years, love gardening, baking, babies, and decorating my home. I am left in confusion - would I have made different choices had society sent me different messages? Am I simply a product of outside influences? Have been fooling myself all these years that I have been directing my own life?
Sex is the “classification that society makes based on genetics and biological factors”. You are born with these characteristics and for most people this stays unchanged throughout their lives. Gender on the other hand can change over time. You express your gender through your interaction with others by acting in a masculine or feminine way. Gender can also be expressed in many ways, for example, the clothes you wear, the way you speak and even your hairstyle.
ReplyDeleteMy perspective on “masculinity” and “femininity” seem to contradict each other. I was raised in a home were my father supported our family and were my mom stayed at home to raise me. It never crossed my mind that their roles could be reversed. That was just always the way things were. (I remember thinking how strange it was the first time that I met a stay at home dad.)
I cannot recall being told by my parents that certain things are expected of me, because I am a girl. Most of my life I have worn my hair short and I hardly ever wear make-up or dresses. I do like to dress up at times, but most of the time I just dress comfortable. I love being outdoors and during warmer weather I’m always working in the garden.
I am the handy person in our household and I am usually responsible for fixing everything. (My husband is a bit accident prone.) I believe that this is also due to the way I was raised. Both my parents are very handy. I have found that some people aren’t always comfortable when a woman is responsible for a job that is seen as more masculine. I remember the day that my husband and I bought a iron filter for our house from the Home Depot . The salesperson was giving my husband some installation tips. The more my husband told him that he should talk to me because I was the “installer”, the harder the sales person tried to ignore me. Even when I asked questions, he directed his answers towards my husband.
I believe that these masculine and feminine labels can restrict individuals from reaching their full potential.
Many people may interpret sex and gender in different ways. Wood’s describes sex as “A personal quality determined by biological and genetic characteristics.” To many people their sex is just putting another label on them, and adding them to another group in society. Even thou someone’s sex is how they identify, that might not be how they want to identify. For example society will identify a male as a male, but that male might not identify as a male. They might identify as a female, or a more feminine person.
ReplyDeleteGender as Wood’s refers to it as a “social symbolic construction that expresses the meanings a society confers on biological sex”. People can have different interpretations on what gender means, and the role it plays in society. Some cultures and religions view gender as interchangeable. If someone’s gender is interchangeable they are able to identify not only as a male, but also as a female in certain ways. For example, a male identifies as a male because he is a male and identifies as a female because he has some feminist characteristics.
I never really had views on masculinity and femininity until recent events have opened my eyes and being involved in the women’s studies program has really helped me to realize that there are different ways to see things. It’s not about how masculine you are for a male or how feminine you are as a female. It’s about how you express yourself as a person. Even if society expresses disproval of your expressions, you’re still entitled to express your self as you like. Media has got an image in peoples head about sex and gender and how people should live their lives, which isn’t helpful because then it makes it harder for individuals to live their life the way they want and are happy.
I have been reading the first edition of our text Gendered Lives (published in 1994) while I wait for delivery of the most current (9th) edition published this year. I am interested in comparing the two versions to see how Dr. Wood has incorporated recent scientific research about sex and gender into the new edition. For example, she uses the term “hermaphrodite” in the 1994 edition to identify “people whose internal and external genitalia are inconsistent…” (p. 20). The term now used is A.I.S., or androgen-insensitivity syndrome. A related term is intersexuality, which is estimated to affect about 1.7% of the population. Intersexuality is more common than Down syndrome, for example.
ReplyDeleteThis information, and much more, is in a fascinating and heartbreaking article titled Either/Or by Ariel Levy, published in the November 30, 2009 issue of The New Yorker magazine. It profiles Caster Semenya, the world champion runner in the eight hundred meter track and field event. As ProQuest’s abstract states about the story, “the controversy and investigation over Semenya’s intergender status stems in part from a lack of consensus among medical experts on what actually makes one male or female.”
So, how does sex as a biological classification inform our ideas of gender? To what extent is gender learned? I have been thinking about these questions in light of Either/Or and my experiences as a parent. Teaching our children about themselves, even at the most fundamental level, involves identification and differentiation. We start with the notion that you are you and I am I, separate and unique human beings. I have a name or names (Mommy, Julie) and you have names (Baby, Grace). The need to impart this seems to come from the deepest level, to make sure our child knows that she is known and loved.
Next comes teaching and learning that we are alike and we are different. Girls learn they are like Mommy and different from Daddy. Somehow a child extends this concept to classify others, so that she knows before age two who is a girl (grandmother, the lady on television, baby sister, her friend at school) and who is not a girl. This is separate from and yet intertwined with what girls do. We teach and learn that people do all kinds of things – Mommies and Daddies go to work, Mommies and Daddies cook, etc., but some Daddies work at home and some Mommies don’t cook. The ability and willingness to understand and accept ambiguity seems to me to be a lifelong process.
It is true that labels and categories can be restrictive, yet we use them all the time to make sense and order of our world. Sometimes our classification systems are not understood by others. I remember a pictorial identification tool that was administered to one of my daughters in preschool to assess her vocabulary. Many of the pictures she was shown did not match her experiences, so her responses were unexpected and scored as incorrect. One picture was a cartoon of a boy wearing a stethoscope and carrying a medical bag. He bore no resemblance to my daughter’s pediatrician, an older African-American woman. Instead of saying “doctor” when shown this picture, my daughter said “little boy wearing a necklace and carrying a purse.” She doesn’t recall this event, but it is a clear memory for me after twenty-five years, a perfect example of the rightness of different thinking.
Gender and sex are often represented as being similar within society. Yet, the differences are that sex is “a designation based on biology” and gender is “socially constructed and expressed.” Sex is based on external genitals and internal sex organs. Which in turn are determined by chromosomes. Gender is more difficult. “It is defined by society and expressed by individuals as they interact with others and media in society…outward expressions of what society considers masculine and feminine (23).” When I took sociology last year I wasn’t really sure how I thought about expressions of masculinity and femininity. At birth children are taught what role they are supposed to fit into and how they are supposed to express themselves based on their sex. Femininity is viewed as a sense of weakness or to possess the qualities that are described within the chapter “physically attractive, deferential, emotionally expressive, nurturing…(23)” Masculinity is strength, power, have ambition, and be emotionally controlled. At times it’s difficult because these roles have been so engrained. I often interchange the definitions of masculine and feminine. I feel those descriptions could be applied to any sex.
ReplyDeleteI'm Sydney by the way if there is any confusion by the user name.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, Sydney! I was monumentally confused! :)
ReplyDeletePrior to reading Gendered Lives, I had never understood that there was a very clear distinction between sex and gender. This was a very eye opening reading for me and I think it is a great way to introduce the subject to students. Particularly to students like myself that have no prior knowledge on the subject of gender studies. Growing up I had always felt that there was clearly a difference in the biology that made up men and women as well as a difference in how society and culture expected men and women to act. I had never made the distinction, which now seems obvious to me, between sex and gender. I was not familiar with the term “essentializing”, but I know that I had always understood it’s meaning and had seen it all around me throughout my life. Generalizations made about men and women are incredibly evident in our Western culture, specifically in the media. The examples Wood used such as television commercials or video games jumped out at me because those are things I experience nearly every day. I had always felt disturbed by these generalizations because I don’t think men or women should have to adjust to society’s norms or expectations. The words male or female are evident throughout our culture as having a set of predetermined notions. I have always felt that femininity and masculinity should not be attributed solely according to sex. I think both males and females can have both traits according to many things such as their gender, personality, heredity, experiences, race, etc… I personally consider having a lot of femininity and masculinity regardless of my gender or sexual orientation. I think the labels are very restrictive in our society. I notice how a lot of men are terrified of the word feminine and women that would never consider themselves masculine for fear of embarrassment. However I do see that there are many opportunities for people to move around those labels and live according to their own beliefs and feelings. Although a lot of discrimination still occurs, I think men and women today have more opportunities in our society than they used to relating to choosing and openly experiencing their own gender regardless of society’s expectations.
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