Velasquez 1

Jazmin Velasquez
Professor Beadle
English 113
September 28, 2015

The Role of Gender

Men and women are two different people who tend to be called genders. Both
genders have specific characteristics they must follow but sometimes this characteristics
make women feel inferior to men but that doesnt mean that they are. Even if people do not
want to admit it, both genders know that women feels inferior to men in some cases but in
the end they tend to be capable of doing the same things especially if we are talking about a
particular topic like finding a job. The article Night to His Day: The Social Construction
of Gender and Becoming Members of Society; The Social Construction of Gender give
us this idea that both genders behave differently and that when someone is born as one of
the genders they are required to behave a certain way and they have to follow those
behaviors. This idea bring us to the conclusion that women and men are behaving
according to their environment.
Both authors wrote these ideas because they were willing to catch our attention and
demonstrate that gender goes far beyond the words males and females and also they
want to open our eyes and make us realize how society tries to change the real meaning of
gender. She explains and everyone does gender without thinking about it.(Lorber, 29)
Society have made me think that I should behave a certain way because I am a girl and I
cant behave like a boy or vice versa. I also need to dress like how girls dress because if I

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dress like boys tend to dress then people might believe that Im trying to act as the opposite
sex. Society changes the real meaning because we believe that gender means female or
male. In Aaron Devour articles, he explains how both genders become members of
society and how it demands them to behave.
First of all gender is not the same as sex. Sex focuses more on our biological system
but gender refers about our behaviors and how we tend to see the world and it is in our
everyday life. When a child is born the nurse refers to the baby as its a boy or its a
girl and basically they are saying the sex of the baby. Gender goes far beyond it because
this is where the word homosexual comes in. When a child is born they dont say hey
look, its a homosexual baby because they identify their babies by sex and they dont
know if they are going to change their gender after they mature. In this world we always
refer to gender as either a female or a male but there are different characteristics that
differentiate them from other types of gender and it means that everything we do is being
influenced by our environment.
Gender roles are socially constructed since the beginning when a baby is born
because thats when parents are going to start dressing them according to their gender. Later
on children are going to start differentiating between a girl and a boy. They are also going
to understand what clothes are for girls and what clothes are for boys. Children begin to
settle into a gender identity between ages of eighteen months and two years (Devor, 35)
says Aaron Devor and this means that naturally we learn to make a difference between men
and women and it is like if we already knew that this is a girl and this is a boy. Also
parents have a lot to do with children behaviors because they are the ones that tell their
child that they are a boy or a girl. We grow up with those beliefs until we get to understand

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more about gender and this is where people dont feel like they are a male or a female
anymore because now they feel like they are not the gender their parents told them they
were and they start acting differently which means that this is where gender exchange
happens.
Furthermore when Judith Lorber says Transvestites and transsexuals carefully
construct their gender status by dressing, speaking, walking, gesturing in the ways
prescribed for women or men whichever they want to be taken for-and so does any
normal person (Lorber, 20) it means that gender takes other genders, who dont refer
themselves as men or women, as part of the gender category. For everyone it is easy to
differentiate their gender by looking at their physical traits like Aaron Devor said others
recognize our sex or gender more on the basis of these characteristics., which are usually
largely covered by clothing in daily life (Devor, 38). For example depending on the colors
we wear and a persons behavior, people and even young children, tend to differentiate each
persons gender. Basically we are more focused on how a person looks from the outside that
many of us dont realize that there are more characteristics that we havent recognize.
In her article Night to His Day: the social construction of gender Judith Lorber
just give us examples on how gender differentiate from each other and how culture plays a
big role in our daily life. She explains gender is such a familiar part of our daily life that it
usually takes a deliberate disruption of our expectations of how women and men are
supposed to act to pay attention to how it is produced. (Lorber, 20) Indeed what she means
by this is that we expect some behaviors from our part and they have to be normal
behaviors that are according to our gender and sometimes we dont care about other things
gender has to offer.

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As Aaron Devor says masculinity as generally concerned with egoistic

dominance and femininity as striving for cooperation or communion (Devor, 39), men
tend to be more aggressive and theyre the ones who dominate their homes while women
are more passive and tend to be more calm and listen carefully to everything they do.
Society wants everyone to follow its meaning of gender because they always tried to put a
difference between men and women. Judith Lorber states women recruits in the U.S
Marine Corps are required to wear makeup- at a minimum, lipstick and eye shadow- and
they have to take classes in makeup, hair care, poise, and etiquette. (Lorber, 27) No matter
how a men or women have tried to dress or act as the opposite sex, society is always going
to find a difference between them.
The way we behave and the way we talk is the way our parents taught us and it is
the way their parents also taught them to behave and this is a pattern that keeps passing
down to all generations. Judith Lorber says many cultures go beyond clothing, gestures,
and demeanor in gendering children (Lorber, 24) and this is true because in some cultures
people tend to do things that define their childrens sexuality. She states In traditional
Chinese society, mothers once bound their daughters feet into three-inch stumps to enhance
their sexual attractiveness. (Lorber, 26) This implies that culture also affect our daily life
and it still means that we are doing gender.
Judith Lorber states that gendered roles change- today fathers are taking care of
little children, girls and boys are wearing unisex clothing and getting the same education,
women and men are working at the same jobs(Lorber, 21) This means that today people
play each other roles and it looks normal for some even if society says that they shouldnt
be doing that or thats not their role they should be playing. Aaron Devor claims that those

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who tend to speak more loudly, use less polite and more assertive forms, and tend to
interrupt conversations of others more often are also communicate masculinity to
others( Devor, 41) this are some characteristics men have and we can all relate to them
because they are this type of person. Femininity, according to this traditional formulation,
would result in warn continued relationships with men, a sense of maternity, interest for
caring for children, and the capacity to work productively and continuously in female
occupations (Devor, 40) These are the characteristics that we as women have and all
women can relate to because I see that mothers pay more attention than fathers tend to do.
As time passes by, many things keep changing and we do not know what the future
is going to be but one thing Im pretty sure of is that the roles of gender have been changing
and we dont know but maybe in the future we are all going to end up accepting that we are
equal and that we just have different roles to play because that is what the environment
have taught us to do. We might think that doing the things that the opposite gender is doing
is wrong but in reality women and men are always competing between each other to see
whose better but that doesnt mean that one is better than the other. We are the same we just
need to get used to our environment and accept what role we have to play.

Works Cited
Devor, Aaron. Becoming Members of Society: The Social Construction of Gender, Print

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Lorber, Judith. Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, Print