Gender as a Socially Constructed Accomplishment

Gender As A Socially Constructed Accomplishment

Gender is a very strange topic in today's society. Many people don't know what to do with people who are transvestites or transsexuals and they often times hate them because they are different. People always think that there can only be two types of gender: masculine and feminine. People also feel that these genders most always correspond to a person's sex. So if the person is a male, then most people wouldn't accept that person into society if they acted feminine. "For human beings there is no essential femaleness and maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood, or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expectations. Individuals may vary on many of the components of gender any may shift genders temporarily or permanently, but they must fit into the limited number of gender statuses their society recognizes." (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, For Individuals, Gender Means Sameness, Page 463) "Ð'...a defining feature of reality construction is to see our world as being the only possible one." (Kessler & McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, The Primacy of Gender Attribution, Page 475) Many people don't realize that gender is a socially constructed accomplishment. People make up methods in their heads about ways that people should be and if one doesn't act they way the other person deems that one should, then they do not fit into that person's reality. "Every society classifies people as Ð''girl and boy children'Ð'..." (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, Page 460) People always try to guess what gender a person is. If one doesn't know and is unsure of another's gender than they keep on looking at them trying to find clues on about that person's gender. I often times see people, usually children, and I can't decide whether they or male or female, or should I say masculine or feminine. "Then we are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated." (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, Page 460) In other countries this might not even be the case, some countries have more than two genders. These other genders are often called berdaches, hijras, or xaniths. "Some societies have three genders-men, women, and berdaches, or hijras, and xaniths. Berdaches, hijras, and xaniths are biological males who behave, dress, work, and are treated in most respects as social women; they are therefore not men, nor are they female women; they are in our language, Ð''male-women'." (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, Page 461) Societies that also do not do things the way we do also have ways of defining a person's gender although there sex could easily be seen. "Even societies that do not cover women's breasts have gender-identifying clothing, scarification, jewelry, and hairstyles." (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, Page 461) We must accept the fact that gender can be altered because it is only made up from what we think of gender. If we feel that only men should play baseball, then if we see a person wearing a baseball cap, we believe them to be masculine and a male. "Most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life." (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, Page 459) At all times we constantly try to find out a person's sex and gender. We often place the two together and don't even realize that they could be different. Sometimes we even completely misunderstand the two. "You might be right most of the time in guessing that a feminine heterosexual with facial hair, a deep voice, and broad shoulders was someone to whom you would make a Ð''male' gender attribution were you to interact with that person." (Kessler & McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, The Primacy of Gender Attribution, Page 474) When it comes to dealing with transsexuals and transvestites, we often believe that they should not be in our community. Transsexuals and transvestites feel unnatural in the way society treats them so they try to change it by acting differently. They feel that by doing this, society will treat them differently, and often times it does work. "Transvestites and transsexuals carefully construct their gender status by dressing, speaking, walking, gesturing in the ways prescribed for women or men-whichever they want to be taken for-and so does any Ð''normal' person." (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, Page 460) "Gender identity refers to an individual's own feeling of whether she or he is a woman or a manÐ'..." (Kessler & McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, The Primacy of Gender Attribution, Page 470) In the film we saw during class, we saw many men acting like women because of various reasons. The men made the appearance of women to the best of their abilities. They did such a good job portraying women in some cases, that I actually felt disturbed at some point because I found myself accepting the fact that they could be feminine, even if their sex wasn't female. "Ð'...the social construction of gender overrode any possible inborn