Durlabh Agrawal, Week 1

We all might remember from our childhood how our parents took command when choosing our dresses or how they tease or mock us when we refuse to do any task they asked us to do, or when we went to the doctor for vaccination how he consoled us when injecting the needle. As a male, every time we are reminded that we are supposed to do present ourselves in this manner or complete an objective because that’s what a “man” do.

Judith Lorber and Emily Martin in their paper portrays how the so-called modern society  socially, culturally, religiously, biologically and even from things we do in our day to day life along with conjectures and stereotype are constructing our gender identity while simultaneously, in our conscience we are reminded women has a lower, weaker or “degraded” status in comparison to men.

They, in their paper give examples that ascertain the role and distinguish identity of a male and female. As a baby, it is most likely impossible for one to differentiate whether the youngling’s ‘gender’ is male or female. Here, the colour of our clothing overcome their problem. From childhood it is imprinted in our brain that if male it is supposed to be red or blue, if female its pink. However, this trend in puberty doesn’t support, with the development of secondary sexual characters. There are a certain class of people who are biologically born as a particular gender but as they grow up and mature they act, behave and dress like the other gender. People call them transvestite while people who change their biological sexuality are called transgender.

Now, for a male society creates the stereotype of them being strong, reliable and represent the family in the outside world but, when it comes to women, the stereotype is managing home and kids, support the husband and always associated with procreation. In academic and scientific texts, the women reproductive system in context to menstruation is often termed as “debris” or necrosis or death of tissues and ceasing or losing capability to generate embryo by the age of 50 while for men it is “remarkable” generation of sperms.

It can be seen, historically women not only in society and culture but also in our literature and habitat are diminished while there are numerous and remarkable example of women succeeding in field of science, economics, literature, commerce, battlefield and many more. It is for us to understand that Gender is constructed by the society and every individual is capable to achieve greater deeds and create what they want create of themselves.