Such discoveries should be the death knell for social constructivism. They buttress the possibility that uneven sex ratios in various fields are in part the result of males and females' different average dispositions toward competition, risk, and abstract rather than people-centered work an observation that got computer engineer James Damore fired from Google.
Yet feminist social-justice warriors proceed on several contradictory fronts simultaneously. Even as the director of the Women's Health Research at Yale initiative insists that it's time to "stop treating women as a subgroup of the human population" because women are biologically and psychologically distinct from males , the alumni magazine and its sources carefully follow the conventions of social constructivism. An assistant professor at the medical school suggests asking students how the prognosis of a disease changes "if the patient identifies as a woman or a man.
What matters is the patient's actual biological sex. Perhaps the professor means that a prognosis may change depending on whether the patient really is a woman or a man. The professor is simply honoring constructivist gender conventions by substituting "identify" for the ruthlessly non-constructivist "is," but implicitly acknowledging the irrelevance of such gender conventions to medical diagnosis.
Expect to see millions of taxpayer-derived research dollars directed toward the first reading — that someone's self-declared gender identity should be taken into account in diagnosing disease — even as the evidence piles up that males and females are not a political construction, but a biological one. Given that we are now up to over different gender identities, the diagnostic complications will be enormous — more fallout from academic identity politics.
Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Follow her on Twitter here. Your current web browser is outdated. For best viewing experience, please consider upgrading to the latest version. Contact Send a question or comment using the form below. Femininity is constructed through patriarchal ideas.
This means that femininity is always set up as inferior to men. As a result, women as a group lack the same level of cultural power as men. Women do have agency to resist patriarchal ideals. Women can actively challenge gender norms by refusing to let patriarchy define how they portray and reconstruct their femininity. This can be done by rejecting cultural scripts.
For example:. As women do not have cultural power, there is no version of hegemonic femininity to rival hegemonic masculinity. There are, however, dominant ideals of doing femininity, which favour White, heterosexual, middle-class cis-women who are able-bodied.
Minority women do not enjoy the same social privileges in comparison. The popular idea that women do not get ahead because they lack confidence ignores the intersections of inequality.
Women who want to challenge this masculine logic, even by asking for a pay rise, are impeded from reaching their potential. Indigenous and other women of colour are even more disadvantaged. Cross-national studies show that social policy plays a significant role in minimising gender inequality, especially where publicly funded childcare frees up women to fully participate in paid work. Cultural variations of gender across time and place also demonstrate that gender change is possible.
Nationally representative figures drawing on random samples do not exist for transgender people in Australia. The Sex in Australia Study organised a sub-set of questions to address transgender or intersex issues, but these were not used as no one in their survey specified that they were part of these groups.
The researchers think that transgender and intersex Australians either nominated themselves broadly as woman or men, and as either heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or asexual.
Alternatively, transgender and intersex Australians may have declined to participate in the survey. The researchers note that around one in 1, Australians are transgender or intersex. American and British estimates are no more exact. Smaller or specialised surveys on issues such as surveillance and tobacco estimate that between 0. The research shows that transgender people face various gender inequalities. They lack access to adequate healthcare; they are at a high risk of experiencing mental illness as a result of family rejection, bullying and social exclusion; and they face high rates of sexual harassment.
They also face much discrimination from doctors, police, and other authority groups. Work colleagues discriminate against transgender people through informal channels, by telling them how to dress and how to act. Employers discriminate in tacit ways, which might manifest as gender bias leading managers to question how gender transition may impact on work productivity. Employers also discriminate in overt ways, by promoting and affirming transgender men only when they conform to hegemonic masculinity ideals, and generally holding back or otherwise punishing transgender women.
Feminism has yet to fully embrace transgender inclusion as a feminist cause. Transgender advocacy groups have made great strides to increase visibility and rights of transgender people. Transgender people have always lived in Australia.
Read below to learn more about sistergirls , Aboriginal transgender women, and how Christianity attempted to displace their cultural belonging and femininity. Intersex people have been, up until recently, heavily defined in popular culture by largely damaging ideas from medical science. Girls with an enlarged clitoris and boys with a micro-penis are judged by doctors to have an ambiguous sex and might be operated on early in life.
Others do not experience such trauma, and they feel more supported especially when parents and families are more open to discussing intersexuality rather than hiding the condition. Much like transgender people, intersex people have also been largely ignored by mainstream feminism, which only amplifies their experience of gender inequality. Behaviours that come to be understood as masculine and feminine vary across cultures and they change over time. As such, the way in which we understand gender here and now in the city of Melbourne, Australia, is slightly different to the way in which gender is judged in other parts of Australia, such as in rural Victoria, or in Indigenous cultures in remote regions of Australia, or in Lima, Peru, or Victorian era England, and so on.
Still, the notion of difference, of otherness, is central to the social organisation of gender. As Judith Lorber and Susan Farrell argue :. Gender does not look so familiar when we look at other cultures — including our own cultures, back in time.
European nations have not always adhered to the same ideas about feminine and masculine. As I noted a few years ago , aristocratic men in Europe in the 16th and 17th Centuries wore elaborate high-heeled shoes to demonstrate their wealth. The shoes were impractical and difficult to walk in, but they were both a status symbol as well as a sign of masculinity and power.
In Western cultures, women did not begin wearing high-heeled shoes until the midth Century. Their introduction was not about social status or power, but rather it was a symptom of the increasing sexualisation of women with the introduction of cameras. Gender has different norms at different places at different points in time. The Wodaabe nomads from Niger are a case in point. Wodaabe men will dress up during a special ceremony in order to attract a wife.
They wear make-up to show off their features; they wear their best outfits, adorned with jewellery; and they bare their teeth and dance before the single women in their village. To the Western eye, these men may appear feminine, as Western culture associates make up and ornamental body routines with women. The women pick the men according to their costume and dance. This is another custom that is contrary to dominant models of gender in the West, which demand that women be more passive, and wait until a man approaches her for romantic or sexual attention.
They are traditionally considered to be sacred beings embodying both the feminine and masculine traits of all their ancestors and nature. They are chosen by their community to represent this tradition, and once this happens, they live out their lives in the opposite gender, and can also get married to someone of the opposite gender to their adopted gender. These couples have sex together and they may also have sex with other partners of the opposite gender.
If they have children, they are accepted into the Two Spirit household without social stigma. The women do not have sexual relations, it is more of a family and economic arrangement. Human rights activists challenge this saying that because homosexuality is shrouded in secrecy, these women may not want to admit to sexual relationships; however, there is no empirical evidence to this effect.
The Nandi people of Kenya allow this tradition. It is permissible when an older woman has not borne a son, and she will marry a woman to bear her a male heir. The female husband takes on male roles, such as entertaining guests while her wife waits on them. The Abagusii people of Western Kenya allow a female husband to take a wife to bear her children, and the biological father has no rights over them.
The Lovedu of South Africa and the Igbo of Benin and Nigeria also practice a variation of female husband, where an independently wealthy woman will continue to be a wife to her male husband, but she will set up a separate home for her wife, who will bear her children. These arrangements continue in the present-day and can be ideal for young single mothers who need security.
Amongst the Igbo Land in Southeast Nigeria, both women will continue to have sexual relations with men, however, the female husbands must do this discreetly. The children of her wife remain her responsibility and they are not shunned. The female-husband tradition preserves patriarchal structure; without an heir, women cannot inherit land or property from their family, but if her wife bears a son, the female wife is allowed to carry on the family name and pass on inheritance to her sons.
Nigerian historian, Dr Kenneth Chukwuemeka Nwoko calls this arrangement a patri-matriarchy. The female husband would be left without status if she fails to produce a male heir, yet once assuming their role as husband, she receives authority over her family.
While Thailand generally has less punitive laws about homosexuality it is not illegal to be gay , LGBTQIA people do not have the same rights as heterosexual couples, and the Kathoey struggle for social recognition of their gender identity. Kathoey Ladyboys — Documentary from faithjuliana on Vimeo.
While the Kathoey are tied to older gender traditions, Peter Jackson, Professor of Thai culture and history at the Australian National University, argues that present-day identities and activism amongst Kathoey are informed by both modern and global sensibilities that arose after World War II.
Kathoey women have become a large tourism attraction which stands at odd with their own legal struggles as well as those of other LGBTQIA people in Thailand. Jackson writes:. Celebrity Kathoey, Nok, is fighting for legal and medical support of poor and rural transgender women in Thailand. She has a Masters degree and is a successful business woman.
She now runs a charity helping underprivileged transgender women gain access to medical treatment to support their gender transition. If we are interested in understanding how people make sense of their identities, or we want to go in-depth into their gender experiences, we would use other theories or methods, such as qualitative methods, like one-on-one interviews.
If we wanted to study direct measures of gender inequality, we might use quantitative methods such as population surveys to cross-reference how people from different genders are paid at work; or we might get people to carry out time-use diaries to collect data about how much housework they do or how much time they spend doing tasks at work relative to their colleagues; and so on. Mixed methods can be ideal when studying gender inequality. Zevallos, Z. Like Like. Hi Mary. Rather than ask for the answer, how do you understand this question and what sociological concept would you use to help find an answer?
Hi Christopher. I offered to help Mary but she wanted an easy answer for an assignment. My commenting policy is there for a very good reason. It weeds out abusive, tiresome, counter-productive, and repetitive questions.
As well as trolls. I just loved the way you explained how gender is socially constructed. But I wonder, what was the beginning of this social construction. I mean, how did we know and develop the idea that women have to be shy and men should suppress their emotions? These are typical in Western European traditions, but did not always exist.
In Victorian times, even though high-status women were expected to be more demure, women were still seen to be overtly sexual and wild, which is why women were overly medicated and often prescribed barbaric medical interventions. Many cultures around the world encourage men to express their emotions in various ways, especially during special rituals.
So how did these two specific stereotypes rise up? Through Christianity and colonial expansion. Christian tradition has its origins in pagan and other religions. As different Christian traditions gained power, and blended pagan and other cultures with emerging Roman, Greek, British and similar colonial powers over the ages, Christianity took a more strict control of gender as a binary. Christian ideas of gender came to see women as inferior to men. Women were defined by being the opposite of men.
The way gender is organised today is very different to the ways in which gender was organised in the past. Nothing about gender stereotypes are natural, normal or pre-destined.
Gender is constantly changing and it is a product of history, culture and place. Like Liked by 2 people. Hi Namita. I get these at least a couple of times every week, along with other requests. Like Liked by 1 person. Hi Laura. Sorry I missed this! Reference is: Zevallos, Z.
On the topic of gender identity, im very curious as to how experiences of sexual trauma affect the development of gender identity.
Are there any studies that have been done on a possible link between sexual trauma and rejection of femininity? Thanks a ton! Trigger warning: rape. While there a variety of responses to the trauma of sexual violence, the connections made here are highly problematic. A butch identity is an expression of femininity, not a rejection of femininity. Your friend may understand her personal experience in the way you describe but there is no widespread correlation between survivors of sexual violence and butch identities.
Survivors adopt various strategies for healing and making sense of their personal journeys. Survivors also have various gender and sexual identities; there is no one pathway for development.
While many survivors will manage their trauma in diverse ways at different points in their lives it is not correct to presume that survivors reject femininity and sexuality.
Similarly, butch identities are a gender expression and they do not signify a rejection of sexuality. Sexuality and gender are different. Hi, I would like to reference correctly! Did you last work on the page in ? Thank you!
To cite this article: Zevallos, Z. Thank you for writing this. Thanks for your lovely comment. Good luck with these discussions! I am using this article for my paper in sociology! Awesome information by the way. Do you have a date for when you polished this piece? Thank you for everything!! Thanks for your comment. Okay, so I liked you article it was okay. That being said I feel as though you should have pulled much more from biological anthropology, and established neuroscience.
While neuroscience has somewhat avoided the topic that I am going to mention right now and that is, there are way too many different labels. GLBT covers it all, it really does. I am going to tell a really simple story.
Once upon a time people lived in groups did whatever they wanted and had sex with everyone like all of the time. No one really cared about gender roles or this and that etc.
Then people started practicing agriculture and property became and issue, and the amount of children within a family became an issue, and subsequently the ownership of female sexuality became an issue. From there it is all really basic history.
The moral of that story is one that is often recited. Gender is socially constructed. Its not a gradient its not a spectrum, it is completely made up entirely. And that there is no such thing as an Asexual male every male will get a boner in their sleep no matter what, every time, guarantee. Instead of trying to create additional layers of specificity to try and fit all of the nuance of each individual as this process can continue ad infinitum the most effective approach is to realize that everybody defines themselves within gender as we know it today meaning that they pick and choose within the modern discourse which particular label to ascribe to themselves in different situations.
This is not unique to gender identity but is a plague to the entire realm of the social sciences and psychology. More research needs to be done by neurologists before we begin classifying people as this or that, as creating a label for a person will cause them to direct their behavior within those limited constraints.
Human beings evolved to embrace a wide variety of sexual acts to encompass the community and build relationships. Definitions like this are very modern and creating too many labels is just unscientific nonsense. The fact of the matter is that while the grouping is useful for smaller scale analysis of particular subjects, when creating a broad conversation you have to stick with the all encompassing labels Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender covers pretty much everything some may make a case for pansexual but that is a bit dismissive of transgender people as it implies that they are not really their identified gender or their physiological sex.
With this refinement of labels it is easy to make a constitutional case, without the need for an amendment for perfect equality for the GLBT community.
All it needs is a few good court cases where Sex a protected category is used as a defense for protection. For example, if someone is trying to discriminate against a gay man, that would fall under the sex category because they are discriminating him because he likes to have sex with men, all else being the same if he were a woman this would not be an issue.
That argument is the most solid, but it falls apart if we recognize anything beyond GLBT under the legal framework and focus on this such as gender identity and gender fluidity. Protection under the law should be priority 1 compared to nuanced identity, that kind of talk is really for college dorm rooms rather than on a broad political scale, as it focuses on intangible philosophy not particularly medically relevant. We have to remember that gender is much less biological than sexual orientation and it relies incredibly heavily on social influences.
Thus trying to direct labels at people based on this, particularly children, and minimalizing the negative toll of things such as hormone therapy and sex change operations they are quite taxing and associated with many health problems on the long term really just creates more of a problem than anything else.
You have your understandings of neuroscience, biology and sociology all mixed up, as with your narrow understanding of gender and sexuality. Both gender and sexuality are social constructs — that means that categories, behaviours, identities and social expressions of both gender and sexuality have varied across time, place and culture.
As for your confused take on the law — Australian, American and other nation states recognise it is unlawful to discriminate on the basis of gender AND sexuality and other protected characteristics. Identities give meaning to individuals as they tie us to communities; they may help us express our personal values; and identities also tie us to other social experiences. Social constructionism seeks to blur the binary and muddle these two categories, which are so frequently presumed to be essential.
Judith Butler is one of the most prominent social theorists currently working on issues pertaining to the social construction of gender. Butler is a trained philosopher and has oriented her work towards feminism and queer theory. This means that gender is not an essential category. Doing gender is not just about acting in a particular way. It is about embodying and believing certain gender norms and engaging in practices that map on to those norms.
These performances normalize the essentialism of gender categories. In other words, by doing gender, we reinforce the notion that there are only two mutually exclusive categories of gender. The internalized belief that men and women are essentially different is what makes men and women behave in ways that appear essentially different.
Gender is maintained as a category through socially constructed displays of gender. Doing gender is fundamentally a social relationship. One does gender in order to be perceived by others in a particular way, either as male, female, or as troubling those categories. Certainly, gender is internalized and acquires significance for the individual; some individuals want to feel feminine or masculine.
0コメント