When I started this class I had no idea, how much there was to learn when it came to the development and people in the world. I used to think everything was black and white when in reality it wasn’t. One thing that I learned plenty about was sex, gender, and sexuality. When I first began the class, I thought there were only two genders. Those genders being female and male. I also knew about the LGBTQ community, but there was so much I didn’t know. For example, there are so many more sexualities and genders than just those, and there’s so much more depth to sexuality and emotional support than what comes to the eye. I also thought that gender and sex meant the same thing, but little did I know there was so much more depth to these topics than meets the eyes.
The first thing that I learned in depth about what sex. According to Liz’s moodle lesson, “sex” alludes to the biological and physiological differences between men and women. This means the sex-specific hormones, physical attributions, and reproductive organs (Cherlin). As most would believe there are only two sexes, which is what I believed. To my surprise, I had never considered what happens when people are born with both biological parts. This is called intersexual. So in reality, there are
more than two sexes. Most would consider this to be the definition of Gender, but what we learned in this class was that sexes and genders two different things. Sex is the biological aspect, while a gender is socially constructed. Gender was the next thing I learned in great depth about. Just like mostly everyone else, before I took this class, I thought Gender meant sex. According to Cherlin, gender is the social and cultural attributions that aid in distinguishing women and men in society.
Gender is fairly complicated and hard to understand. There are so many approaches to trying to understand a gender. An example of this would be the Biosocial approach. Here Sociologist believe that behavior is both biological, predisposition, and social experiences influence gender based behavior. Another approach we learned about was the socialization approach. This approach is basically saying that as children grow up, their parents help confirm gender behavior roles by rewarding them for
behavior that is considered appropriate for their “gender”. After taking this course, I would say that gender is fluid, and I agree with the socialization approach. To my understanding, gender or our understanding is constantly changing and adapting as society progresses. Like I said before, I thought gender and sex were the same thing and interchangeable. After broadening my knowledge about gender I learned that it’s so much more complex than I had understood. (Cherlin)
When I started out the class I didn’t realize it but I believed in the Binary System of Gender. According to the textbook and Liz, this system is where someone's biological identity affects their sexuality and personality. Also, that there are only two gender expressions. The problem with this concept is that they forget that some people are born with both biological features and hormones. Another problem with this idea is that it also leaves out queers. Queer is someone who doesn’t agree with normal gender roles and doesn’t identify with either gender roles. After taking this class, I believe that gender is based on how you are raised. I also believe this because of the one article I read where the child was raised in a gender neutral household, and they got to pick how they identified. This was an interesting concept to read about, which also helped me understand gender nonconformity and gender bias even more (Ritschel).
Next, we have sexuality. According to Liz’s online lesson, “sexuality refers to the sum of a person’s sexual behaviors and tendencies, and the strength of such tendencies.” When I first begun the class I though sexuality meant how you expressed yourself sexually. What I mean by this is like if your homosexual or heterosexual. This would consider the LGBTQ community. Just like gender, I would agree that sexuality is fluid. As time goes on, sexuality changes as does society. Based on the information we learned from class, this has been proven throughout history so far. I would agree that we are currently in a sexual revolution. I never really paid attention to sexualities and how it correlated to dating. Not only that, but as women become more independent it also has an effect our sexualaties.
Going more into depth about sexuality, I learned that in the 21st century people are looking past sexuality. Now people are looking at romantic orientation. There are five romantic orientations, keep in mind that I didn’t even know romantic orientation was a thing. Not only that, but just like gender there are different approaches to sexuality because it’s such a complicated concept to understand and fully define. I personally think we are moving more towards the queer theory as society progresses.
I think that as time and society progress we are going to move away from someone's biology affecting what they choose their sexuality or romantic orientation to be. Although I would agree that there is a cultural lag, millennials are becoming more accepting and adaptive as time goes on. At some point I believe we will as society get closer to in not catching up with sexual identities.
Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I went into this class not really expecting to learn anything, besides, families and how families affect the economy; Instead, I ended up leaving the class with a much more open mind as two what kinds of factor go into a private vs public family. I also learned plenty about how most gender roles, race, social status, etc… are socially constructed. The one thing that stuck to me the most, besides, how much more there is to gender identities and sexualities, was the
article about social difference. When Allan Johnson said, “If you got to an african american country, a women there would not consider herself a black women. She would consider herself just a women,” it had really stuck with me because it’s awfully true (Johnson, Allan). This doesn’t just apply to race. The same thing can be said about gender and sexuality. When a baby is born they don’t know if they’re female or male. Society plays a huge role in giving into those Gender roles. All in all, this class
was a great experience and I wish all my friends could take it so they could understand more in depth that not everything is black and white.