Shubham Mishra Week 1

“Night to his Day”: The Social Construction of Gender Judith Lorber

This article primarily focuses on the whole idea of gender and sex used as a synonymous term in everyday society and the article critics on this idea. The author defines various examples of how sex is biological and gender is something that is constructed in society i.e. it is a social construct. The author further observes that many societies have the idea of the third gender which however is seen as taboo. As gender is a social construct, there can be an end number of genders. However due to the prevailing set norms and patriarchy in the society, gender is defined between ‘male’ and ‘female’, and they are assigned superior or inferior roles. The author interestingly talks about the idea of raising a child where there is an environment of promotion of all genders and not associating sex with the norms of the society. This way individuals at an early age can identify them as their preferred gender and sex comes into play only when puberty is reached. Unfortunately due to prevailing wrongs set of ideas in the society, individuals of different sex are seen just to reproduce and anything apart from those lines are looked down upon. Females are treated as the lower gender and males the superior. This prevailing patriarchy and orthodox ideas can only be removed by educating and making children aware of this from a young age.