"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" - Simone De Beauvoir
Lorber explains how Gender is something which is so often overlooked in everyday life even though it something which we 'do' constantly and unwittingly. She uses Foucault and Gramsci's concept of hegemony and power; How hegemons create different social structures which sometimes appear natural and help maintain their power. It was this particular kind of power that Gramsci warned of since it appears to be natural, or doesn’t appear threatening, people can’t identify it and revolt against it as it so happens in the case of gender as well. Had the construction of gender seemed to be a forced one, the subordinate gender (as a whole & not individuals) would have protested against it way before the first wave of feminism in the mid 19th century.
Lorber explains how Gender is something which is so often overlooked in everyday life even though it something which we 'do' constantly and unwittingly. She uses Foucault and Gramsci's concept of hegemony and power; How hegemons create different social structures which sometimes appear natural and help maintain their power. It was this particular kind of power that Gramsci warned of since it appears to be natural, or doesn’t appear threatening, people can’t identify it and revolt against it as it so happens in the case of gender as well. Had the construction of gender seemed to be a forced one, the subordinate gender (as a whole & not individuals) would have protested against it way before the first wave of feminism in the mid 19th century.
Gender has been justified and legitimised through ‘physiological, psychological’ or ‘biological’ differences. “Women had to stay at home as they had to care for the infants while the men used to hunt. That’s why men have evolved to be stronger” – a seemingly ‘historical’ and ‘scientific justification’ of creation of the ‘weaker’ gender, instilled by class 10th biology books and teachers while teaching Darwin. Though now there’s a consensus in anthropology that hunting gathering societies were more or less egalitarian.[1]
Biology is a natural science which states only facts is something that is presumed by most of us but Martin in ‘The Egg and the Sperm’ points out to the descriptive terms used for ‘feminine’ processes like menstruation or the ‘egg’ - ‘dormant’, ‘passive’, ‘dying’ as opposed to ‘marvel’, ‘velocity’, ‘strong’ for the ‘sperm’ and their creation. A woman sheds while a man produces, female processes are looked down upon whereas the male processes are certified as marvels. Biology doesn’t passively state facts about sex but actively creates and reinforces the gender binary. This is precisely how power creates knowledge for the hegemon to stay intact which Lorber referred to.
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