Gender, Folklore, Inequality - Essay Example

Gender, Folklore and Inequality Anthropologist define sex and gender separately. According to Lavender and Schultz (365), sex exists as a dimorphic categorization of the human being. They base the concept of sex upon the biological differences perceived in human beings. However, in today’s society, it is increasingly difficult to divide sex in just two categories, as we will later see. Anthropologist s have defined gender as the niche that a person occupies in society based on their sex. This therefore means that they are the social roles an individual plays which, usually are culturally learned or a learned through personal identification based on internal awareness. They further define human sexuality as the expressions of behavioural patterns of an individual based on a number of factors including their biology and psychology. Anthropologists’ definition of gender has created a belief that the behavioural differences between the male and female is based entirely on culture and not genes. However, Peoples and Bailey (233) explain the concept of gender being a cultural construction as the cultural diversity that exists between different societies on the definition of gender roles. The emergence of ethnography as a discipline is further proof that cultural diversity exist in the definition of gender, sex and sexuality. Malinowski in his study emphasized how social rules governed the sexuality among the Trobriand Islanders giving further proof of cultural importance in sexuality (Bolin and Wheleland 6). Blackwood (223-238) also conducts a study on women’s sexuality in Europe and America to illustrate the impact of socio cultural factors in determining the sexual practices of women. As stated earlier modern society has diversified in the categorization of human sexual orientations. The matter has affected gravely the state of law, politics and even religion. Initially the only recognized group to emerge was homosexuals. These are the gay and the lesbians. However, some groups chose to sort of break away from the mainstream stereotype by including a more inclusive abbreviation like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. this category includes the homosexuals for lesbian and gay, the bisexual, the transgender, the queer, the intersex and the asexual. The term transgender in definition means a person who does not identify with the normal sexual orientations of male or female. In the USA, many cases exist of people who were born male identifying themselves as females and the same applies to females. The matter has bred such controversy and discussions to the extent of affecting the law. One such example was in a case in Colorado. The child Coy Mathis was born a boy but wore pink dresses and wished people to refer to her as a girl. While in kindergarten the school’s administration prohibited her from using the girl’s bathroom and instead to use a gender-neutral bathroom. The parents pulled her out of the school soon after. This case has been at the heart of a legal issue. Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws protect transgender people and this is why this case received much public attention. Southern Comfort was a compelling story that focused on the discrimination people of different sexual orientations from the norm suffer. It focuses on transgender love where Robert Eads a female-to-male transgender falls in love with Lola a male-to-female transgender. The documentary is set in such a time where different sexual orientation were not readily accepted by the society. For example, Robert’s parents upon visiting their sin still refer to him as their daughter. Secondly, the most moving part of the film is when Robert develops ovarian cancer and his friends take him to hospitals where he is denied treatment by close to two dozen doctors. The reason why the doctors would not treat him was fear that they might lose their licence or risk the reputation of their practice. Despite all these turmoil, Robert final wish was to attend the Southern Comfort Conference to address a transgender gathering. The entire film focuses on internal turmoil that exists within transgender people. They feel alienated from humanity and eventually form their own community of people just like them in order to feel some kind of comfort. Roma also known as Romani are people of Indian descent living across different countries in Europe and the Americas. Their populations are dispersed across mostly Europe and America and some can be found in South America. The Portuguese colonial government is belied to be responsible of deporting some of them to Brazil. Due to their separation from their families, many Roma people have composed songs depicting the pain of separation from the loved ones. One such example is the song by the Macedonian singer Ramko who wrote a song about a father’s dying bitterness due to his son’s departure to work abroad. Similarly, in another song, “To Phunaro Bunari” talks of how separated families suffer in loneliness to the point of even contemplating death like the persona in the song. Many Kalderash Roma women in America sell items such as clothes, kitchen utensils and shoes and other products. Some even sheer sheep for them to manage to feed their families. Due to the limited number of job opportunities for people who the world vies as uneducated, we see the gender roles are reversed. The women do men jobs such as shearing sheepskin. They also sell the products made by their husbands. This challenges the norm of the role of women being the Homemaker and men being the Provider in a family. Kalderash women like other of their Romani counterparts also engage in fortune telling as a means to earn a living. This is an illegal activity. In relation to this, Kalderash women have become more aggressive in their pursuit for wealth and thus they have developed personalities that are more outspoken. It is clear that Roma women are the income earners among the Roma community. However, they lack political representation and legitimacy in their “ad hoc” jury. Sutherland (106) therefore begs the question as to why this is the case if the Roma women are the ones that possess economic independence. In addition, their power to tell fortune accords them some sort of mystical prowess which if they wished they could use illegitimately. Despite all this they still remain voiceless and their male counterpart view them as lesser being whose only work is to protect the purity of men. However because the family unit relies on women to bring in wealth through economic activities such as fortune telling, the most successful territories of the Romani people have been the territories where men protect the fortune-telling business of their wives. The wedding ceremonies among the Roma communities are particularly important. They are a way to bring family members that distance has separated together. In most Romani wedding ceremonies, a lot of money goes into planning and holding the wedding. The bride is the most important symbol in a wedding ceremony. As she is married into the groom’s family, her role becomes to foster patriarchal relations. She serves to unite the two families and more often most songs composed in wedding are about brides. Women have the most obligations in a wedding setting. Ritual enactments, food preparation, dancing and taking care children are among those roles. Men dancing is optional in weddings. Both the men and women participate in food preparation but they do it separately. In the book by (Reddy and Nanda 279-284), they explore the Hijras as an alternative sex role among the people of India. This is where individuals identified phenotypically as men wear female clothing and denounce the desire for sexual relations and undergo an emasculation procedure or a rebirth operation. Besides, they also adopt female mannerisms and often change their names to more feminine ones. These individuals become servants of the goddess Bedhraj Mata and their tasks involve a lot of fertility and infertility issues. To that effect, we can see a clear association of religion and sexuality. This practice denotes that one needs to get rid of bodily desires in order to effectively serve a superior being according to them. Also we see here a form of asexual gender. This gender is widely accepted in India as a third gender. In March of 2012, Stephen Ira, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video on We Happy Trans, a website that encourages people to showcases the upside of being transgender. We see Stephen in a six-and-a-half-minute monologue Stephen cheerfully declared himself “a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut,” and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and “any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters”) to his toy zebra. In this video, it is clear that Stephen is trying to break away from the mainstream popular gay culture by identifying himself as queer. This is an ongoing issue in our society today hence the emergence of the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A characterization of genders. Works Cited Blackwood, Evelyn. "Culture and Womens Sexualities." Journal of Social Issues 56.2 (2000): 223-238. Print. Bolin, Anne and Patricia Whelehan. Human Sexuality: Biological, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives. Chicago: Routledge , 2009. Print. Lavenda, Robert and Emily Schultz. Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropolgy. McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Science, 2012. online. Peoples, James and Garrick Bailey. Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Cengage Learning, 2011. Print. Reddy, Gayatri and Serena Nanda. "Hijras: An "Alternative" Sex/Gender in India." project. 2013. Print. Read More