Blog1

A new concept I found in the readings was the idea that people actually learn to be women and men. This idea came up within each of the separate readings and really made me stop and think. Lorber’s piece, “Night to His Day” stated the idea that individuals are born sexed but not gendered—they have to be taught to be masculine or feminine. Within this piece the author quoted Sandra Ben as drawing attention to the hard fought battle to keep a child from falling into the “typical gendered attitudes and behaviors”. It’s very interesting to me that from childhood we strive to “do gender appropriately” and should we stray into unknown areas we’re held accountable for it. This also made me realize the immense significance of parenting and how a child can be shaped and influenced within his/her first few developmental years. With pointing out the need for children to do things based on conformance to the sex they appear to be, Green also links many of these learned genderisms back to childhood. In our youngest state we behave according to an assigned gender role. I really liked how Green revealed that we’ve really only been studying sex for over a century, meaning we know much more about plants than we do about ourselves.

We all make assumptions based off of what we observe and these assumptions come from our culture. The problem is that when we’re incorrect we become angry and frustrated, feeling deceived and displacing the blame onto the person who confused us. Not being able to classify a person makes us feel uncomfortable. And as Green mentions this brings us to question our own insecurities if we are so thrown off by someone else’s gender. I liked that Green brought up the amount of exceptions to the binary gender system. Knowing that there are people out there who differ from the standard, clear cut male/female categories really challenges one to think, what is it that makes me either male or female?

According to Moore and Lorber, divisions of society are taken for granted and we rarely break out to explore the process of how we came to create such divisions. From this reading I learned that actions and beliefs are what ultimately construct the gendered social order and that those on top and benefiting from it are the ones maintaining such structure. The appropriate gender norms are reinforced by culture, mass media and religions and through these outlets they reinforce social expectations. I had never viewed the human body as something that is “not natural but instead socially produced under specific cultural circumstances”. This is a very different way of seeing how we groom and present ourselves each day.

I reflected on Wilchins findings about how others devote time and energy to regulate our gender and we spend even more time learning, rehearsing, exploring and perfecting our gender. While we know there is influence all around us it’s disturbing to think that a lot of it is coming from the people we are surrounded by- some even being our parents or older figures who we’ve looked up to. I can find this applying to my own personal experience in that I’ve always greatly admired my grandma and how classy and refined she is as a woman. Since I was little she was a major influence on me and my behavior. I was taught to be polite and fall into a very traditional role, just as she was raised. And for a long time I wanted to be just like her. Until high school I never really realized how this confined me so much and I began to rebel against it. I know there are times now that she would consider my actions crude and inappropriate but I also know that she wouldn’t understand my motives. It’s hard to go against loved ones but at the same time I look back now and see that there’s a lot wrong with the learned gender norms and how they set certain standards and expectations.