Human Beings Face Gender Experiences from the Time They Are Very Small - Essay Example

Ethni Human beings face gender experiences from the time they are very small. Issues are gender is always present in conversations, conflicts, and humor and it is used to explain various aspects of human behavior ranging from food preferences to driving styles. The issue of gender is stuck strongly in human actions, desires, beliefs, and institutions, which make it, appear to us completely natural. The world is full of ideas regarding gender, and the majority of people believe that those are a true reflection of gender. For this reason, scholars and researchers have a responsibility to look beyond what seems to be common sense regarding gender, but search for the truth and how it came to be the general sense. This is necessary because gender appears natural, and beliefs regarding gender appear to be obvious truths. Therefore, there is a need to hold back and study gender from a new approach. To achieve this, there is the need to forget what is already known about gender and start questioning some of the fundamental beliefs. The central challenge is that gender is extremely central to understanding of us and the world at large, which makes it difficult to step back and reexamine if from a new approach. The study of gender offers a challenge of uncovering the process of construction, which creates what we have for a long time thought to be natural and inexorable. Some argue that we are not born with gender, and we do not have it, but it is something we perform. This is explained from an example of a boy making every effort to be like the father. In this example, the father may not be boastful, but the boy is making a personality that holds what he admires from his father. This is also true to a small girl who copies the actions of her mother in dressing and applying makeup. Chances are that in their adult life, behaviors in their childhood are likely to surface (Fausto-Sterling 2). Gender, racial, and sexual variations Gender related behaviors are common to everyone, but the main challenge is who to perform them. This fact brings in the concept of gender and sex as people try to link ways of behaving with biologically related sex responsibilities. Sex is a biological grouping primarily on reproductive ability while gender is the social explanation of biological sex. Gender develops on biological sex, but it over expresses biological variations and carries biological variations into domains that are completely irrelevant. Human beings take gender to be a result of nurture and sex as a result of nature, which means sex is simply a product of biology. However, nurture and nature intertwine, which it difficult to point out a clear point where sex leaves and gender take over (Fausto-Sterling 3). The concept of sex is mainly based on a combination of chromosomal, endocrinal, and anatomical features. Other than having these features, assigning sex is mainly based on cultural beliefs regarding what makes someone a male or a female. Therefore, categorizing someone as either a male or a female, and peoples understanding as either male or female is purely a social affair. Anne Fausto-Sterling argues that labeling someone a male or a female is a social decision. She adds that people may apply scientific knowledge to assist in making the decision, but it is only beliefs about gender rather than science that can define sex. In addition, people’s beliefs regarding gender affect what type of knowledge scientists generate regarding sex in the first place (Fausto-Sterling 3). It is a general argument that biological variations between males and females determine gender through enduring variations in abilities and dispositions. An example is the high level of testosterone that is said to cause men to be more aggressive compared to women. Further comparison is on the left brain dominance, which is said to make men more rational while the lack of brain lateralization in women makes women to be more emotional. Fausto-Sterling notes that research on sex differences in the brain is in its initial stages, and far from conclusion. The other topic that could be useful in understanding how discourse and structures of racial, gender, and sexual difference both shape and are shaped by scientific knowledge and production is homosexuality. Today, one of the fundamental development in the field of homosexuality is the belief that homosexuality is a recent invention from Western culture rather than natural grouping of human beings. For many decades, sexual acts between people of the same sex remained illegal, and people of such nature were not defined as homosexuals. In the late 19th century, a new understanding of sexuality emerged whereby sexual acts and desires became part of identity. Much of the discussions on homosexuality from the late 19th century have borrowed heavily from theories and histories of gender (Siobhan 246). One key argument is that paradigms of sexuality have changed according to changing ideologies of gender in the 19th century. The fact that gender mutiny provides a strong explanation for the emergence of homosexuality, ideologies of gender further shaped and was shaped by prevailing constructions of race. It is interesting to note that the classification homosexuals and heterosexuals came at a time when the United States was creating boundaries between black and white people. A lot has been done in an attempt to offer a scientific standpoint as to why homosexuality should be taken to be a congenital physiological abnormality instead of a crime. Early sexologists had an assumption that homosexuals might have visible variations in the form of anatomical markers (Fausto-Sterling 4). The study of sexual differences was not the only approach in the understanding of homosexuality, but early sexologists also investigated on race. The term race was used to refer to a division of humans based on their physical differences. This definition formed the basis for obtaining anthropometry measurements (Glen 2). The obtained measurements gave an assumption that the body was a legible text, with a number of keys to help in reading its symbolic codes. Despite the fact that there was much debate as to which anatomical features contained racial meanings, the theory of anatomy continued to predict intelligence and behavior. On the other hand, ideologies on race shaped and provided a clear scientific understanding of gender (Fausto-Sterling 7). The popular racist mythology of the 19th century focused more on the difference between the size of African-American and white men’s genitalia. However, the use of the male body was not the primary point for medical differences on racial variations. A number of medical journals of the 19th century point out that comparative anatomist on various occasions studied racial variations using sexual characteristics on the female body. In investigating the influence of scientific research of race on the developing discourse of sexuality, comparative anatomy comes in handy (Siobhan 248). The use of comparative anatomy has played a key role in locating boundaries of race using the sexual and reproductive anatomy of the African woman body. Two particular areas of variation were on the protuberance of the buttocks characteristic of the bushman race and the significant growth of the labia minora. The latter appeared to be well elaborated to differentiate it from those present in ordinary human species. Racial variation of the African body appeared in its literal excess, which was a sexual excess that placed the African woman’s body outside the limits of a typical female. Although there were variations regarding the particular sites of anatomical study, one fact remained constant; female genitalia and reproductive system had a valuable and somehow a vital essential in ranking bodies according to traditions of sexuality (Siobhan 252). Conclusion Apart from providing methodologies on comparative anatomy of race, sexologists also provided its iconography. The most consistent medical classification of the anatomy of lesbian and African-American women was the belief of an unusually large clitoris. Medical journals of as late as 1921 had articles supporting that physical examinations on female homosexuals were likely to show an abnormally prominent clitoris. This was most likely to occur in colored women. This characterization of the female anatomy generated immense literature regarding the sexual and racial knowledge of the 19th century. However, this understanding privileged white women’s sexual purity and at the same time portrayed African-American women’s sexual accessibility. Works Cited Fausto-Sterling, Anne. "Dueling Dualism". Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, 2000. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. http://libcom.org/files/Fausto-Sterling%20-%20Sexing%20the%20Body.pdf Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Race, Gender, and Nation: The Comparative Anatomy of "Hottentot" Women in Europe, 1815-1817, 2013. Web. 6 Oct. 2013. https://www.google.co.ke/search?q=Race,+Gender,+and+Nation:+The+Comparative+Anatomy+of+%22Hottentot%22+Women+in+Europe&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&gws_rd=cr&ei=Gy56UtSmJOXF7AbiyoGADA Glenn, Evelyn N. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002. Print.. Siobhan, Somerville. “Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual Body.” Journal of the history of sexuality 5.2 (1994): 243-266. Print. Read More