Gender Roles and its Effect - Essay Example

Gender Roles and its Effects While an individual’s sex is a concept determined biologically, gender refers to a social construct that determines and influences one’s actions, values, attitudes and behaviors considered appropriate for the male or female. It is this concept that informs gender roles: a set of behaviors, which are accepted as ‘desirable’ and expected of a particular sex category. On the other hand, there are individuals who do not identify as male or female while others describe themselves as completely out of the male/female dichotomy. The gender roles as defined by society therefore fail to pay attention to such groups who identify themselves as intersexual and transgender. Intersexual are individuals having male/female anatomical characteristics that deviate from the normal while transgender are those that identify with or express their gender identity through a gender that does not correspond to the sex at birth. In a society where a lot focus is placed on this gender binary, these individuals with characteristics that do not neatly fit the clear-cut male/female dichotomy face similar problems as socially constructed gender roles fail to accommodate them. Perceptions and judgments people hold about others are generally informed by social norms, which consequently leads to them gravitating to individuals that are least hostile to a society’s norms. To perceive and understand reality, people rely on senses, intellect and generally, held social constructs which makes them able to label certain objects and concepts. For example, a man is differentiated from a woman according to gender roles and behaviors that have been assigned to genders and are expected of them. Individuals who posses’ characteristics and behaviors regarded as ‘masculine’ by the society are identified as man, and vice versa. There is a complexity when individuals who do not identify themselves within the constraints of this gender binary fail to fit into the male/female duality. In her article, Judith Butler explains that through intelligibility, humans are able to recognize other humans based on “normal” human social and physical characteristics that are defined by the society. Due to societal expectations that a definable gender is necessary for understanding someone to be human, people hold dominant gender perceptions, which dictate that intersexed persons must conform to either male or female gender roles. Butler rather subverts gender roles, as she asserts that “justice is not only or exclusively a matter of how persons are treated or how societies are constituted. It also concerns consequential decisions about what a person is, and what social norms must be honored and expressed for ‘personhood’ to become allocated” (Butler, 58). She goes out of the norm to define justice not in terms of law but as the capacity to overlook the social norms that define an individual’s self-worth. According to her, justice is defined by the decisions held by a particular society in defining what it considers ‘human’. These include the accepted appearance, characteristics and behaviors of an individual. Individuals who portray characteristics and behaviors that deviate from what the society considers as the ‘normal’, their identity is questioned. A quandary arises since perceptions held by a society are not flexible to change for accommodation of such individuals, rather it is expected of the individuals to readjust and conform to the predefined gender roles. Gender roles are acquired through socialization whereby a society trains individuals to conform and practice certain values and behaviors. Judith Lorber states that, “gender construction start with assignment to a sex category on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth……..a sex category becomes a gender status through naming dress and the use of other gender markers” when a child is born as sex is assigned to the child depending on the anatomical characteristics in particular the sex organs. As they grow up, the children learn behaviors that are socially considered fitting for males and females. They develop gender-based notions that are largely informed by these gender stereotypes, which are later on mirrored in the gender roles allocated to them. Lorber further explains that children adopt gender preferences early in life and throughout their lives, they are unconsciously taught by the society to conclude that their self-worth and identity is informed by their anatomical characteristics at birth. When the society has attained the gender of the child, gender roles are reinforced through strategies that instill certain expectations to the individuals. This social construction brings harm to those who are not able to conform to the laid down norms and uphold social expectations, or entirely reject the given gender roles. For example, some cultures believe that a woman’s femininity is best performed by covering the hair to put off attention. Therefore, those who refuse to abide by this expectation are scorned at by the society and in instances, punished by social isolation. From birth, since gender is assumed to be the core of an individual’s identity and denotation of self-worth, anything that is considered hostile to a society’s expectations can affect negatively on an individual’s reputation. These inflexible gender roles that are determined by social stereotypes, therefore, bind people to become slaves of societal expectations and limit a person’s freedom to do as they wish and make decisions. Since an individual’s gender is determined by their sex at birth, their identities and self-worth are largely impacted by various evolved societal expectations and influences. Individuals who reject their gender along with the roles that come with it face scorn from the society, and therefore seek alternative avenues such as sex reassignment in order to be accepted by the society. For example, transgender have depended on medical operations for sex realignment to achieve the socially accepted gender status. This affirms the argument that the importance to conform to socially accepted gender roles is engrained in a person, which unconsciously traps them into the male/female gender dichotomy. These trappings of gender-role socialization oppress more those who cannot conform to the set of values and behaviors that the society expects of them. Maureen T Redding explains (156) “whiteness and heterosexuality seem invisible, transparent, to those are white/or heterosexual; much as heterosexuality forces itself upon the consciousness of gays and lesbians” that just like whiteness seems invisible to those who are white, heterosexuality seem invisible or transparent to those who are heterosexual. Conversely, whiteness is hyper visible to non-whites as much as heterosexuality imposes itself on homosexuals. She states that certain values and norms become more transparent in a society when they appear to be hostile or threatening while some norms are invisible to those who benefit from them when they are widely accepted. Because heterosexuality is normal and considered accepted, having a different sexuality makes the individual become hypervisible as they are constantly reminded that they are not ‘normal’ but different from societal norms. Redding’s argument is well illustrated in the famous case of David Reimer as revealed in Butler’s article. David Reimer was born with the male genitalia but his penis was severed by a doctor during circumcision. After an operation that reassigned his sex to a female, David had trouble and a feeling of isolation as he always felt not ‘normal’, that is femininity (Butler, 69). Girls and women born with the female sex organs are invisible to femininity while for David, being an acquired trait, it was hyper visible for him as he could not perform certain values and behaviors that were expected of him as a ‘woman’. This affirms the argument that a person’s identity should be influenced by the anatomical characteristics they were born with. Relating an individual’s genitalia to their expected behavior brings enormous pressure and effects to the individual to which slowly alienates them from society. Gender, unlike sex, is a social construct that consists of a set of values and norms developed around an individual’s sex. Defining gender roles along this dichotomy devalues differences and embodies being ‘normal’ as a desirable trait. This categorization of gender in terms of biological sexual organs at birth limits an individual’s mobility and freedom to do as they wish. Evidences have shown that societies need to be more accommodative by embracing a wider definition of gender that goes beyond the male/female binary. Read More