(De)Constructing Gender: Unit 2, Prelim 2 Every person deserves the freedom to express themselves in whichever way that corresponds to what they feel, as long as it poses no danger on the well-being of another. As a result, they require safe and comfortable spaces to express themselves without worrying about physical and verbal attacks from those who are terrified by their lack of knowledge of who these people in question identify as. This illustrates what several LGBTQ people face on a daily basis. Therefore, we need to undo this injustice.…
Gender effect in the Sierra Leone War Through Ishmael Beah and Mariatu Kamara’s autobiographies, the world learned about the devastating war in Sierra Leone through the eyes of a boy and a girl. The civil war stripped children from their families and killed many innocent civilians. In A Long Way Gone by Beah Beah he says, “One of the main aims of the rebels was to force the civilians to stay with them, especially women and children” (Beah 37). The rebels used the civilians as either bait for the army or as servants. They took girls to cook or exploit and recruited boys as soldiers.…
“While the standard polarization of human being in a crime story is normally dividing by the law abiding citizens from the criminal, the characters here are soon divided on the basis of sex differences.” (Alkalay) In Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” Glaspell uses a murder investigation of a woman’s husband to demonstrate the different roles of men and women in the early 1900’s. Glaspell shows the reader, through small significant objects that the men think are inessential to illustrate the greater value women have other than merely taking care of a household. She illustrates through important evidence the importance of individuality, and freedom between men and women.…
Transgender Being transgender is when a person’s gender identity does not conform with their biological sex. Speculating on how people are identifying as a transgender individual is a difficult and very controversial topic to discuss due to the fact that nobody knows what is morally correct. One author, Ruth Padawer, has brought the topic to light, presenting us with examples from one of the most prestigious women’s colleges in the United States. In her 2014 piece, “Sisterhood is Complicated”, she ponders on the idea of if people who identify as transgender should be permitted to attend an all women’s college. In her piece, she states that, “Some two dozen other matriculating students at Wellesley don’t identify as women.…
Transgender. This word is being heard more and more in America but what does it mean? According to the Webster Dictionary, the word transgender means “of, relating to or being a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person 's sex at birth” ("Transgender"). Transgender and gender nonconforming people have in recent years earned recognition as being legitimate genders.…
Aaron Devor, the author of the essay “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes”, states that gender is a social construct that has very little to do with biology. On the other hand, Deborah Blum, in her essay “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End And Society Take Over”, claims that while society has an effect on gender, so does biology. In this essay, I plan to present the argument that biology and society both have an effect on gender. I, like Blum, noticed biological gender differences in my children (two boys and a girl). As a father who has raised his children to believe that, men and women both do the housework, I noticed that my boys were much more aggressive than my daughter ever was even before pre-school.…
Rhetorical Analysis of an Argument Imagine a world where your gender defines who you are and who exactly you could become. Stereotypes about gender could be as simple as a person born male would become a construction worker or police officer and a person born female would become a school teacher or hair dresser. People are to fit into their gender stereotypes, and that was that. But, it is not the 1950s anymore.…
Therefore, some people don’t practice either a male or female gender, and instead they practice something in between. Transgender people are part of this continuum. Avery experiences challenges with his gender identity everyday due to the outside world and societies views on transgender individuals. Our society has an overwhelming number of people who believe that gender is unable to change and if someone does get a sex change then they are considered to be disturbed. (CG 36).…
While recognition and acceptance of non-binary genders is the right way forward, more needs to be done. Ideally, the rules and boundaries of gender need to be loosened; the idyllic portrayal of what a man and woman are stripped away. A society that operates on newborn babies to mold them into a two gender system and uses language as a means of keeping the two genders distant, is both ignoring the millions of people who do not fit into the system and actively fighting against biology which tells us that the genders are not so different. A person who does not fit their gender should not have to choose between the gender they were assigned and the gender they were not. The spectrum of gender is not a venn diagram with distinct boundaries, but rather a boundaryless space for individuals to determine who they are for…
Pershai explains this complication through in her article, “The Language Puzzle,” by recognizing how transgender individuals are lacking terms to identify within society. She describes how “trans communities coin new terms such as hir and s/he to identify and define transgender” (Pershai, 56). These additions to the heterosexual-favored language are a way for transgender individuals to obtain equal opportunity to identify within the heteronormative social structure. Pershai rationalizes these inclusions by clarifying how transgender communities cannot be categorized through the heterosexual language and “goes beyond the limits of socially and culturally constructed spaces and categories” (Pershai, 56). These aspects of discourse confine the expression of gender categories other than “man” and “woman.”…
Ever since I was a little girl, I have been taught about what a girl should and shouldn’t do, what a girl should or shouldn’t wear, and even what a girl should or shouldn’t be. And as I got older my identity has slowly conformed to these gender ideas. But, what if when I was younger I hadn’t been taught about gender and what if gender ideals wouldn’t have been pushed onto us by the media? Would I be the same person that I am today, or would I be someone completely different? I would hope that I would be the same person now, but I do not believe that that would be the case.…
Non-Binary and Transgender People When a child is born the first thing their parents hear is, “Congratulations it’s a girl,” or “Congratulations it’s a boy”. Already trying to enforce the idea that there are only two genders the moment they take their first breath. JAC Stringer of the Heartland Trans* Wellness Group defined, gender binary as the cultural belief of only two genders existing and they have to correspond to the appropriate sex. This social construct is iterated on a daily basis whether it is through medical institutions, language or applications. As a result of its dominance in society, the gender binary system is highly exclusive towards non-binary and transgender people.…
On one episode of MTV’s True Life: I’m Genderqueer, they follow two genderqueer people as they cope with their decision and construct a way to successfully explain their identities and personal feelings to their parents. Most of the time we only hear the genders that exist within the binary, like transgender, that is why it is such a huge step in surfacing their identities as genderqueer. MTV’s episode played a major role in making this group that has generally been invisible to the public, now visible to the world. Over the course of the episode we watch as the individuals struggle with not only being accepted by their parents but also accepting themselves. Jacob Tobia, 24, uses the pronouns as they/them to describe oneself, whereas Brennen Beckwith, 17, uses the pronouns he/his.…
Katherine Allison WS 300 Nov. 26, 2014 The theory of exclusively masculine identity forms a collectively accepted belief or idea of how males are supposed to go about their daily lives. Masculinity is an institutionally and socially prescribed role; however, males play an active part in defining and altering masculinity. For this reason, what is considered masculine varies geographically, culturally, as well as over time. Time and again, the majority of males tend to use language, work, sports, crime, sex, etc. to construct and reconstruct gender and masculinity.…
I was surprised to learn that most people who do not identify with their biological gender, do not feel they are that gender. If someone is born with female reproductive organs and hormones, but don’t feel they fit the role of a female, they will live their lives believing they are male. This was a strange concept for me before this course. I was naive to think that if one is born a female, they play the part of a female and if one is born a male, they play the part of a male. After reading the chapters of the textbook, and reviewing the PowerPoint provided on this topic, I strongly believe I have applied what I have learned from this topic in my everyday life.…