"Night to his Day" is a fitting title for Judith Lorber's piece, which draws out the embedded notions of the female gender as secondary, or as Lorber puts it, the "Other" gender. The article focuses on not just the difference and similarities between the two main genders that Western society focuses on, but also the difference between Gender and Sex. Lorber clarifies the difference between the two, and highlights the process of gender formation as well as the difficulty certain individuals might face in acting according to their gender, or discovering what their gender really is, something that may come very naturally to others.
As a society, we are constantly looking to classify things into categories, that make it easier for us to also perceive them in a certain way. Lorber makes us aware of how uncomfortable something as minor as not being able to place someone in a certain gender makes us, which only goes on to show why we need to be able to do it; differential attitudes and outlooks. The stratification of people into genders is important to us as we have prescribed certain characteristics and requirements to each of the genders, that we consciously and subconsciously expect them to fulfil. In a lot of ways, Lorber points out, society does not want the two ‘main’ genders to be similar. This is of course, among other things, to maintain a certain hierarchy.
The article gives us an important overview of the general approach towards the gender and sex dynamic, while drawing our attention to the prevalent practice of divide and discriminate that we as a society engage in everyday of our lives.
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