Fashioning Selves Throughout this chapter, the author’s focuses heavily gender as a performance. Gender is constructed through one’s set of practices while one is trying to claim and establish an identity in a society. One’s ‘day to day actions’ is what morphs into a certain identity. Most importantly they point in the beginning of the chapter that ‘gender is not part of one’s essence.’ What was also captivating about this reading was the way in which they tied in linguistic and practice styles into gender as a performance. They explained that linguistic practices can be thought of as ‘constituting a conventional toolbox for constructing gender identities and relations’, (speech acts etc).
While sex differences are fixed, gender differences vary between cultures and over time. Sexist attitudes are stereotypical beliefs about gender and culturally constructed and transmitted through socialization. Gender equality will happen with change of society’s socialisation patterns, they seek to promote appropriate role models in education and the family. Over time they believe such actions will produce cultural change and gender equality will become the norm. They can be seen as a critique of the functionalist view of the gender role.
‘Literary approaches to the contestation of hegemonic masculinity continue to possess agency, despite the fact that literature no longer occupies a dominant position in the cultural sphere’ (West, 2000). Discuss how two core texts challenge hegemonic constructions of masculinity? The concept of hegemonic masculinity was first proposed during a field study of social inequality, the project provided empirical evidence of the existence of multiple hierarchies in gender construction. It was understood as a pattern of practice and not just a set of role expectations. It became distinguished from other masculinities, more so the subordinate masculinities of previous studies.
Luce Irigaray takes an essentialist approach to feminism, and uses this essay to discuss ways to address feminist concerns and advance feminist ideals in a male-centered, male-driven society . This essay was challenging to understand (perhaps because, like some of the things we read from Lacan, it has been translated from the French). Its goal is to help women understand how to initiate discourse about gender appropriately and effectively, for only then can society’s construct of a “feminine” ideal be revealed as the inferior, artificial product it is. In discussing how women can begin to establish a voice for themselves, to break through the barriers of a hostile, masculine-oriented construct, she says: “There is, in an initial phase, perhaps only one “path,” the one historically assigned to the feminine: that of mimicry. One must assume the feminine role deliberately.
In Betty Friedan’s excerpt from The Feminine Mystique she identifies the true inhibitor of progress for gender equality: its discourse, the ways humans talk, think and in turn act about it. Friedan uses and expands the concept of discourse in relation to gender by attributing it to the conformity of femininity, acknowledging that the absence of speech and thought is a significant part of discourse, and envisioning a way of using it to change the social construction that it has created in order to both reveal and solve the problem with no name. (Cranny-Francis 93). Friedan introduces the notion of discourse using its most common interpretation: the way a subject is talked about, the subject being the condition of women. It is easy for women to conform to an idea when it is supposed to be a dream come true—everything they could ever want.
Doing gender is the idea whereby gender isn’t a biological feature but rather a social construct that has been built into our natural mindsets; and is conveyed in everyday social interactions. Examples of facilitating the concept of “doing gender” include Public toilets, organized sport and the division of labour in the work place. Another way of defining the concept of ‘doing gender’ is to describe it as the “development of ‘gender identity’” (1). This is the process in which one feels as though they fit into a specified gender class. This review will discuss and investigate the depths of gender and bring to light how much more complex this concept of “doing gender” is compared to previous knowledge.
In this essay I will demonstrate how “A League of Their Own” is a mere contradiction to just that. I will focus of how society views the reversal of the traditional gender roles and the
The researcher considers that it can only be done by more focusing on the method to which Husserl asserted in knowing the essence of things. With this matter, the researcher anticipates that this paper will serve as a gadfly of those people who are already enclosed by the presuppositions, beliefs, judgments, prejudices, and biases that hinders them of being a pure consciousness. It is now our concern to know and follow the ideas of Husserl in knowing the essence of things. Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology: a means to arrive the vista of transcendentally purified phenomena. To begin this paper, it is more appropriate to talk first about the method which Husserl fashioned in order for man to get back to the things in themselves, and this method is what he called phenomenological reduction.
The Sociological Imagination and Common-sense explanations The aim of this essay is to discuss the differences between the Sociological Imagination and common-sense explanations. Firstly I will consider what common-sense actually is, and what the sociological imagination is before going on to discuss their different approaches and explanations in relation to parenting. Common-sense as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is “a good sense and sound judgement in practical matters.”(Oxford English dictionary, p289. Common-sense is seen as the ability to make reasonable decisions, based upon previous personal experiences. Statements that draw on common-sense don’t consider other circumstances such as cultural, political and economic circumstances.
Lorber looks into sports to deconstruct her theory, as will the contents of this paper. This paper will compare and contrast the article by Judith Lorber to Karen McGarry’s article, which specifies the problems of gendered images of sports figures. Using the articles as reference, this paper will explore how male bodies are transformed through social construction in order to fit into what is accepted by society compared to gender representations that are constructed to serve the interests of nationalism. In order to fully understand this paper the terms gender and sex need to be properly defined. Dr. Kannen defines gender as a set of roles, behaviours, attributes, and activities that are completely socially constructed with no real biological component (Kannen,