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Marco A Pastrano
Professor Jon Beadle
English 115
3 October 2016

Understanding Gender

What is Gender? How do we know which gender we pertain to? What makes you or
qualifies you to belong to a certain gender? Is he/she male or female? While reading Night to
His Day : The Social Construction of Gender
by Judith Lorber and No Way My Boys Are
Going to Be Like That : Parents Responses to Childrens Gender Nonconformity by Emily
Kane, I identified a major idea that these two articles had in common- as well as many others-,
and this was, that a person is not born with a given gender, but society constructs each persons
gender through a process called gender construction. In our society, we are facing a new
generation of ideas, some of these ideas regard gender and gender norms, which are often
considered as unnatural, eye-opening, dangerous and untraditional. This new wave of ideas, has
caused arguments and divisions among our society, but one thing is certain, we must strive for
tolerance and change of the obsolete.
When we think about gender, we tend to think that we know everything that there is to
know about gender, but in reality it is not that simple. We assume that there are only two
genders, male or female and that you have to choose one and you can not be both. But, what is

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it that makes you a man or a woman? Well, the fact that it is proven that a man or a woman can
perform behaviours that pertain to their correspondent counterparts show that gender is a
fluctuating concept. Today, on the subway, I saw a well-dressed man with a year-old child in a
stroller. Yesterday, on a bus, I saw a man with a tiny baby in a carrier on his chest. Seeing men
taking care of small children in public is increasingly common But both men were quite
obviously stared at As they started to leave the train, the father put a Yankee baseball cap on
the childs head. Ah, a boy I thought. Then I noticed the gleam of tiny earrings in the childs
ears, and as they got off, I saw the little flowered sneakers and lace-trimmed socks. Not a boy
after all. Gender done. (Lorber, 20). In here, we can appreciate how the author presents us with
a glimpse of reality as she is traveling on the subway. Reality was exposed, and the reader
became aware that when a gender norm was being breached, society stared and disapproved.
Also, we are introduced to the concept of labels or indicators in order to know which gender a
person- or a baby in this case- belongs to. People or society seem to have the need to put
labels on things in order to differentiate them. But this can be detrimental to the progression of
our society because as much as we need labels to differentiate between things, it can also have a
subconscious effect on our mind and create an association between certain labels and create
prejudices on other things like ideas, ethnic groups, countries, races etc.
Gender and society are two terms that go together hand by hand. Therefore the theory that
states that, one is not born with a gender, but rather society construct a persons gender by its
established norms that rely on the persons sex, is true. Society has established a process that
works by teaching, learning, emulation and enforcement of the concept of gender, this process
was named Gender Construction. Most parents create a gendered world for their newborn by

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naming, birth announcements, and dress. Children relationships with same-gendered and
different-gendered caretakers structure their self-identifications and personalities. Through
cognitive development, children extract and apply to their own actions the appropriate behavior
for those who belong in their own gender ( Lorber, 25) . We can see how the author explains
in detail how this theory of gender construction works. Nevertheless if we analyze the steps of
this process we start to see that every step must be consequent of its previous one, for example
teaching and learning, learning and emulating, emulation and enforcement and enforcement with
teaching. This process in specific is set up in a way that every step must enforce the next one,
therefore creating a chain of events that influence one another. Therefore we conclude that the
process is highly effective, but the content that we are teaching is mistaken.
Toys play a huge role in the upbringing of a child. They also tell us a lot about gender
roles and society, when we look at boy toys they tend to promote physical and rough actions,
such as super heroes, action figures, cars, etc. While girl toys are distinguishable by promoting a
more sensitive action, such as baby dolls, barbies, kitchen sets, tea sets, make-up dolls, etc.
What this reveals is that according to society something is masculine when it's rough, physical,
simple, and straightforward and something is feminine when it inspires sentimentalism,
caregiving, sweetness, and gentleness.
Now the point is to raise our future generation without this premade assumptions and
expectations that society has placed on each gender, in order to create a society with less
prejudices and stereotypes. One of the ways can be to promote gender nonconformity. When
parents were exposed to the concept of gender nonconformity researchers found some very
interesting responses that exposed our societys fears and prejudices. I would ask him What

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do you want for your birthday?... and he kept saying Barbie So we compromised, we got him
a NASCAR Barbie (Kane, 94) The mistaken assumption that the parent has on the fact that
because its a NASCAR barbie make it less feminine, it's just mind boggling because that
assumption is based on very weak prejudices; its like saying professional car racing its only
for men, this just supports the frequent sentiment of the devaluation of femininity. Hence
creating a false sentiment of superiority towards the female gender. Another recurrent theme
that I have encountered in my readings as well as in my own personal life is the fear from the
parents when their sons do something that is considered from the other gender because of a latent
fear that their sons might be or be perceived as homosexual.
As I entered my teenage years, I decided to let my hair grow, it got pretty long, until one
day I showed it to my great grandparents, they were quite disappointed (especially my great
grandfather), but I understood that as much as I argued I wouldnt persuade them. So I decided to
be tolerant and cut it. I believe Reading these articles has made me look into something that like
the majority of the population thought had it figured it out, and ultimately didnt understand the
new ideas that the coming generation brought along with them. All this new research made me
understand how the established gender rules promoted a devaluation of femininity when in many
cases doing something like a woman meant to be weak. Ultimately, we must strive to break this
stereotypes, labels and prejudices in order to achieve a more tolerant society.

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Works Cited Page

- Lorber, Judith. Night to His Day : The Social Construction of Gender. Composing Gender,
Edited by Rachel Groner and John F OHara, 14th Edition, Bedford Spotlight Reader,
2014,
Pp 19-30.

-Kane, Emily W. No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That : Parents Responses to
Childrens Gender Nonconformity. Composing Gender, Edited by Rachel Groner and
John F
OHara, 14th Edition, Bedford Spotlight Reader, 2014, pp 91-97.

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