...The second method that females attempt to use for constructing their gender identities is related to the biological aspect of their bodies. Females start employing their bodies as a signifier for their female identities by forming their personal awareness of their gender abilities and their sexual orientations. The biological manifestations that are ascribed to body allow human beings to shape their gender identities; they become aware of their gender roles and abilities that their bodies have including their sexualities. Human body in a certain way achieves a coherent unit of human identity. The body can be used as a tool for constructing gender roles and thus gender identities. For example, females at early age reveal their awareness of their...
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...SOW 5629 Lecture 1 Constructing Differences The readings in this text explore how the categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality are socially constructed and transformed into systems of inequality. I. Introduction Your author states that the categories that we use to describe ourselves and those around us are the product of social rather than biological factors. Relative to race, it is unlikely that anyone is “racially pure.” But we have to recognize the social factors, because these are the bases for social interaction in our daily lives. These social factors make them culturally significant in our daily interactions. Question: Just because we are culturally different, does that make difference itself into a negative? No, it is not differences that are necessarily negative. In fact, cultural differences make us more interesting to one another. So differences in and of themselves, do not make us unequal. **It is the meanings and values applied to these differences that make them harmful. So when we apply meanings and values to these differences, we are essentially creating structures of social stratification – a system by which society ranks categories of people in a hierarchy, and how social stratification results in systems of inequality. In this hierarchy, those at the top of it, are deemed to have positive attributes, and are the keepers of the culture and society. Therefore, they are viewed as being more moral, and intelligent...
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...Thursday 13Hrs class Blairgowrie Intro: Fashion has always played a leading role in constructing images and meanings during periods of rapid social, economic and technological change. It can act out gender issues, ideals of beauty, it can stake out the territory of new social and sexual identities. For Evans, fashion is a kind of historical scavenging. In this essay I will convey how Alexandra McQueen uses the design strategy of terror as defined by Caroline Evans in order to represent female sexuality as terror. The power of female display is pictured as terrifying and scary. I will also show how uses the strategy of fear towards a similar effect. Theme: The symbolic production of fashion has taken an almost mystical role, outside temporal or physical dimension. A female’s sexuality can either be extremely feminine or extremely terrifyingly male. Evans mentions that “the representation of female sexuality as terror” (Evans; 2004:6) has been used to display female strength and domination through designer Alexandra McQueen’s designs. For instance female sexuality can be deceptive due to how females use “power to terrify” (Evans; 2004:6). This can be found “precisely in the distance between their purely biological femininity and their transgender actions” (Evans; 2004:6). Therefore a female uses” her sexuality as a sword” (Evans; 2004:6) rather than a way to protect layer. Due to the fact that gender “was unsettled by women” (Evans; 2004:6) it suggested the absence of men in a way...
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...Siobhan Somerville argues that there is a link established that intertwines sexuality with race in her article Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. The journal article is written about the nineteenth century American culture. Homosexuality stems from the debates about the correlation of race and gender. She wants to demonstrate the way that writers formed the concept about the dependence in ideas of race, therefore forming people’s understanding of relationships in the world. Her first idea that she talks about and articulates is the start of sexuality in the U.S. She begins by giving the readers a view of the portrayal of homosexuals and the way they were classified. Any type of sexuality...
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...Privilege, Power, and Oppression Name Institution Privilege, Power, and Oppression I am not merely an individual; I am a product of a system of privilege. This is Tim Wise's position about how the community participates in constructing an individual. His primary concern is social privilege. Maybe the privilege never favored him, and privilege made him work hard. The system of privilege shaped the direction of his life. The hardships caused by lack of privilege and the real life brought by privilege is his construction: a product of the system of privilege. He is conscious about the power and legacy of privilege in the society (Tisdell, 1993). He says that Politicians often talk about issues like housing, poverty, healthcare and education, but they rarely link them to the role that racism plays in the United States. He adds that the media often reports personal crimes while under-reporting organized and traditional discrimination. In the country, Black and Latino males are most prospective to have their cars stopped and searched for drugs. Tim’s argument regarding the color-blind perspective relates completely to the issue of the privilege system. In the system, color-blindness is treated like an inability. Talking about the realities race, oppression and white privilege make people uncomfortable. There are races that feel superior and their position oppresses the minorities. Institutional privilege and inequality exist in every society, including...
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...understanding this rather complex and hard to define concept. First, everyone has a fixed identity. These are the aspects of a person in which he or she has no control over and cannot change, such as gender, sexuality, and race. Then there is natural identity, which is assembled by discourses and experiences throughout life. Natural identity is relational and constructed based on one’s own personal beliefs and values, as opposed to one’s fixed identity, which is based on characteristics and culture. Unfortunately, individuals let the unchangeable aspects of their identity limit them from creating their own unique identity. This can be due to societal views that expect an individual conform to the public image associated with his or her gender, race, and sexuality. “Losing Matt Shepard” by Beth Loffreda explores what she calls “The Limits of Identification”, and how these limits may have impacted the anti-gay murder of Matt Shepard. Similarly, “The Naked Citadel” by Susan Faludi could also be described as a text centrally concerned with the limits of identification, by exposing a connection between the image that men are expected to maintain by the general public and the behavior of the cadets in the Citadel. A community has the power to define an individual’s role based on gender, sexuality, or race, ultimately limiting his or her identity. The structure of every community is different, meaning that an individual’s role will differ and he or she learns this through experiences or traditions...
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...term of “gender” was widely used in the academic literature and public discussion to differentiate the gender identity and biological sex. By definition, the term “biological sex”represents the true meaning of an individual sex status. Gender, on the other hand, has multiple interpretations between men, women and what comes in beetween through social development and “nurture” of cultural adoption. Money and Erhardt (1972) suggest that biological gender is what a person perceives or assumes to expose and reveal that “he” or “she” has the sexual status of being male or female. Gender is more than that. It has more complexity that represents way of thinking, ideas, styles, patterns, habits, and many other aspects beyond biological sex status. One notion argues that gender in an essence is natural, stable and something given by God, which means that gender cannot be changed. Most scholars would perceive such theory as Gender Classification by Nature. Other argue that gender is a result of modification and influence of the shape of social institution that constructs and develops its profile on an individual. Thus, gender is based on social-view perception instead of being given and determined biologically. Gender also is recongnised as being derived from Nurture (Nurture Theory). This essays attempts to discuss the application of the above mentioned theories and ideas related to the writer’s social environment and cultural background in Indonesia, where gender is considered...
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...Jones Sex, Gender and Sexuality Evaluation of the Queer Theory Embedded deep within the psyche of modern society, gender is a persistent feature of everyday life. It creates normalized behaviors and characteristics for each person, holding them accountable for even the most trivial actions. Individuals are not supposed to step outside the binary male-female framework, otherwise they risk backlash as an attempt to force them back into culturally designated roles. This binary is disturbed by the very existence of intersex individuals – as they cannot be placed into 100% male or 100% female on a binary scale. One of the areas where intersex has caused complications is in organized sports, specifically the Olympics. Since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires athletes to be divided into men and women in the various events, the interjection of intersex individuals causes complications with the preexisting system. In societies worldwide, many people are conditioned to believe there are only two genders. However, to many other people this is a misinformed view. In reality there are people who believe that there are hundreds of societies on a world wide level that recognize genders outside the gender binary according to PBS's Independent Lens program. In this essay, I’ll look at how broadly defined groups of family life, the media, work, and politics play in the current gender differences in America, as well as if the Binary Constructions of sex, gender and sexuality...
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...Is asexuality a lack of sexual orientation and analogous to other sexual orientations and identities? One of the most inescapable social assumptions is that all humans possess sexual desire (Cole, 1993; 192). A related assumption is that sexuality is not only something one does, but an identity or something one is (Weeks, 1986; Foucault, 1978, cited in Scherrer, 2008; 621). Most inquiries into asexuality have approached it as either behaviour (lack of sexual acts) or a lack of desire for sexual acts. However, Scherrer argues that the complexity and variability of asexuality also encompasses those who are interested in romantic attachment but with limited or no physical contact, along with others who are simply not interested in sex (Scherrer, 2008: 634), a discourse appears frequently in which self-identified asexuals participate. It is in this context where identity labels such as demisexual, hyposexual, romantic or aromantic asexual, hyporomantic, straight-A, gay-A, bi-A, grey-A, etc. take on meanings, as asexuals attempt to position themselves not only according to the genders of people to whom they experience romantic attraction, but also according to the degrees to which (and the ways in which) they do so (DeLuzio Chasin, 2011; 713). It is already clear from the language of asexuality that it positions itself as an alternative to sexual, instead of as an alternative to straight or queer, with significant variations in both ‘romantic orientation’ and the degree to...
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...Sexual identities that are clearly defined in terms of object choice and/or who people are attracted to, play both an enabling and constraining role in society because there are clear benefits and consequences. With the emergence of new gender identities and sexual fluidities, the traditional thought of sexual and gender binaries are becoming increasingly challenged, remodeled and broken. The effects of growing assimilationist politics, is signaling a change in gay inclusive politics and culture, in which the continued existence of the LGBT movement comes into question. For years our society has constructed identities, especially sexual identities, based solely on object choice and who someone is attracted to. This creates a very interesting...
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...Look at Gender in Kabhi Khushi Khabie Gham It opens with a dialogue from Amitabh and Jeya Bachchan – “Why is it that a father is never able to tell his son how much he loves him? / But the mother? She keeps repeating it, whether her son listens to it or not.” This is the first words we hear from the movie Kabhi Khushi Khabie Gham (KKKG), a Bollywood blockbuster marketed to the masses as “all about the family”. Released in 2001, following the path of director Karan Johar’s first movie, KKKG tells a multi-faceted story that is depicted over a long time period. The film centers around a family-driven drama where we track the storyline across 3 different generations. Amitabh Bachchan plays a wealthy businessman and the patriarch of the Raichand family with 2 sons – the elder Rahul, who is revealed early on to be adopted, and the younger Rohan. The crux of the film’s drama is drawn from the eldest son’s marriage to a woman from a lower socio-economic background, against the wishes of his father. Following the marriage, the father disowns Rahul and he leaves with his bride to London. The latter half of the movie is centered on Rohan’s storyline with his love interest, Pooja, and his attempts to bring Rahul and his family back into the family home in India. On the surface it seems we have entered yet another Bollywood film on family drama but KKKG goes beyond that. From the first few lines we can already witness the beginnings of a gender discourse – why is one gender like this...
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...I had to explain how socio norms, representation and language are represented in scientific inquiry. 1. Language, Representation and socio-cultural norms in scientific inquiry. It has been made clear that, in the evolution of scientific thought, language is playing a more active role than is implied by a passive vehicle which merely conveys information. In the context of communication theory, linguists themselves have also pointed to the inadequacies of this traditional viewpoint, for it is clear that the listener is as active as the speaker in elaborating the content of the message ( http://www.ejmste.com/012005/m2.pdf). We could argue that there are strong parallels to be drawn between the way in which the visual world is created and the way in which language is used to create our mental spaces. We therefore see that language can play a particularly subtle and active role in the way scientists communicate with each other and the ways in which new ideas are developed, or can be blocked (http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/thread/16055.aspx). It is also important to understand the relationship between vision and language in great depth over the years of scientific inquiry it has grown in context and the thoughts that have been constructed from (ihttp://www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/lang.htmt) . These ideas can be seen and viewed through the eyes of three different author’s, Laquer’s work on historical tales told by representations of women’s bodies...
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...suburbanisation and the reality behind the nuclear family. This in turn brings up many issues regarding patriarchal society and the gender roles that are performed within this system. As the title suggests, the show centres around housewives, each with a different set of problems but ones that essentially culminate into the major problems of suppression, lack of identity, financial entrapment, sexuality in relation to men and the family, as well as the role of the woman in the home. The show has a serio-comic take on the issues mentioned above which allows the characters to publicly reveal their deepest secrets and have them criticised, satirized and related to by the other characters as well as the audience. This breaks with the normative ideology that is a result of the consistent repetition of (most times negative) images surrounding these gender roles. Instead of promoting the problematic behaviour and psychology that is depicted on the show, Desperate Housewives means to show audiences what is wrong with society through its characters and use of humour contrasted with disturbing elements. The character of Bree in the series is an example of how the postfeminist world is attempting to negotiate the role of women in society. Her psychology gives reason as to why her life is secretly crumbling and can shed light on how society is constructing gender roles for women like Bree to perform. Looking at the episode Next (2:1) specifically gives evidence of Bree’s behaviour and place...
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...During the 15th-19th centuries, art was considered to be a subject of superiority and was generally created by men. Because of this, stereotypes and social norms in regards to women were inferred and asserted. The art created during this period was affected by a phenomenon known as the ‘male gaze’, which is paramount in constructing ideal portrayals of women. With reference to the male gaze, women are depicted through these paintings as entirely existing to be viewed by men. On the topic of the male gaze, John Berger (cited in Ways of Seeing, p. 64) states that ’the "ideal" spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him’. Not only was art in this time primarily created by men, it was also created...
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...The influence of media on gender roles Over the last forty years, the gender roles for male and female have changed quite a bit. In the past, women were often viewed as having to assume the duties of the housewife, while the men are the breadwinner in the family. However, these stereotypical views of men and women alike have changed over time to shape the present. Firstly, in attempt to define the meaning of a stereotype Wikipedia (2009) notes that: “Stereotype is a preconceived, oversimplified, exaggerated, and often demeaning assumption of the characteristics possessed by an individual due to his or her membership in a specific group. [It] usually functions to deny individuals respect or legitimacy based on their membership in that group. They are the hardest to dislodge in situations where a dominant group desires to keep another group subordinate”. The purpose of this essay is to generate an understanding of how gender roles are shaped and defined in society due to an overwhelming amount of stereotyping and the influence of the mass media that has left an undeniable impact on our everyday life. When talking about gender, we are referring to “culturally learned notions of masculinity and femininity” (Tepperman et al., 2007, p. 187). As noted by Tepperman (2007), “From a social standpoint, gender is the social enactment of a biological difference.” The result of this is males are treated as men because they play masculine roles, and females are treated as women because...
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