The following comment is on the reading “Night to his Day:
The Social construction of Gender” by Judith Lober
Lober’s
piece is authoritative, clear and makes compelling arguments supported by
suitable evidences. Among the many interesting points that she talks about,
several stand out in my opinion, starting with her emphasis to look at gender
through the lens of individual experience but as a social institution. It is
one of the points which I really found illuminating and allowed me to broaden
my way of thinking. And what was even more interesting was the fact that gender
as a social institution is signified most by the fact that gender is marked by
difference, and whenever the differences between different genders start to
even remotely disappear, society and its powerful forces combine to enforce such
differences. This was most aptly clear in the example given by Lober, when she
talked about the treatment of men and women in the U.S. marine Corps where they
created a requirement that men and women could dance together only if the women
wore makeup during events. This highlights the absurdity of society in trying
to enforce gendered relations between people based on artificial constructions which
do not necessarily have a logical basis.
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