Final Essay – Gender as a Social Construct
Throughout all of history, most societies have enforced and continued to enable a gender binary that entails identifying with the gender given at birth and following the characteristics that have been assigned to that identity. As societies have evolved over the course of history, so have the traits and ideas that have been attached to the two standard genders of male and female. Although these concepts of gender have continued to last even until today’s society, the idea that the gender system is entirely a social construct has gained momentum and many individuals are realizing they do not have to just accept the system and fit in with it. As people continue to become more open-minded on various social issues, many are beginning to learn the idea that the concept of gender is made-up and harmful to society, and also understanding the implications of this realization.
PARAGRAPH TWO – HISTORY OF GENDER
Before realizing that gender is constructed by society, it is important to understand what gender truly is. While many commonly associate sex and gender or believe that they are the same thing, a person’s sex and their gender are two entirely different parts of someone. According to
While the concept of gender has been continually perpetuated through most societies all of history, the characteristics given to the common two genders have evolved over time. However, the process of gender construction as a whole has not changed too much along the way. In the article The Social Construction of Gender, Judith Lorber explains how society pushes the gender construct on individuals from birth in the following quote:
“For the individual, gender construction starts with assignment to a sex category on the basic of what the genitalia looks like at birth. Then babies are dressed or adorned in a way that displays the category because parents don’t want to be constantly asked whether their baby is a girl or a boy. A sex category becomes a gender status through naming, dress, and the use of other gender markers. Once a child’s gender is evident, others treat those in one gender different from those in the other, and the children respond to the different treatment by feeling different and behaving differently” (Lorber 141).
From the beginning of a person’s life until the end, almost everything an individual does or is expected to do is dictated by the gender they are assigned at birth. As long as the majority of the world continues to support and enable this construct of gender, people will continue to be pressured to fit into the rigid roles that match the gender given to them.
PARAGRAPH FOUR – WHY GENDER IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
“In addition, the relationship between biology and culture is more complicated than the assertion that sex is a biological fact and gender is the societal interpretation of that fact” (Shaw, Lee 117).
Although recognizing gender as being constructed by society gets rid of the pressure to follow rigid gender roles, many people believe that certain issues arise from the realization of this social construct. An example of this is pointed out by Judith Butler in the following quote from her book Undoing Gender: “One tension that arises between queer theory and both intersex and transsexual activism centers on the question of sex assignment and the desirability of identity categories. If queer theory is understood, by definition, to oppose all identity claims, including stable sex assignment, then the tension seems strong indeed” (Butler). Because of the way the idea of gender being a social construct goes against the idea of there being a binary to identify with, some believe problems arise with the idea of being transgender. If there is truly not any sort of gender system to follow, then how does this concept apply to the idea of identifying as transgender? However, Butler disputes this when she states, “…the transsexual desire to become a man or a woman is not to be dismissed as a simple desire to conform to established identity categories…It seems crucial to realize that a livable life does require various degrees of stability. In the same way that a life for which no categories of recognition exist is not a livable life…”