Gender Interpretation
Today, people decide the gender of a baby even before they are born. When we ask what gender is to people, there will be the same answer of either of two sexes, male and female. But is it true? What is the gender of a person who likes both pink and blue, or the one who loves both Barbie dolls and toy guns? Binary gender is a classification of two distinct genders, male and female. It has been the most significant issue, especially now when people deny following the social construct and move on to find themselves.
I was born into a huge family. With five sisters, including me and only one brother, anyone can imagine the importance of him, the only male bloodline after my father. Son or male bloodline was very important in my country; a son was someone who can send their parents to heaven; someone who runs the home. In our culture we burn the body of dead ones and according to the “holy book” you can only have a peaceful afterlife if your son is the one who carries out the ritual of your funeral, including burning, or if you don’t have a son any male member of the family can do and woman are not allowed to take part in any of this rituals. We can see the cultural aspects of gender as a social construct, you will need to have a son for a peaceful afterlife. Not long-ago women were also considered as an underprivileged group in our society, which brings out the social aspect of gender construct. The only thing a woman could do was grow up well and get married and leave their house so the male member or son was the future of the family, someone who will support you in your old age and someone who runs the household. We can see how the roles of two genders have been clearly divided in the name of culture and social factors of the society, most of which have ignored or have shown female deficient in comparison to males. Even in the family when our brother is not around we often have to listen to people’s questions like, “so all sisters no brother?”, “you have many daughters, it must be hard without a son”, “after all daughters are gone(married) it would have been very lonely, thankfully you have a son”. Although my family did not make us feel like we are any less important than him, our society has a clear idea of where male and females stand. With all these divisions in roles and how clearly it has been taught since childhood, we can clearly see the birth of my only brother was important.
Among all the other sisters, I was always considered a different one—someone who does not like to follow the social construct. The social construct, in this case, was gender. The social construct of gender is the theory of the cultural origin of masculine and feminine character in people. Mostly girls are expected to have feminine nature, good at cooking, cleaning, crying, or having too many emotions. I never fell into those categories. At a young age, I started living in a city with my brother; he was the only guardian I had. I do not know if it was the influence of my brother, but I was “tomboy” during my schooling years. I loved basketball, so skirts were not my thing, had more male friends than female, and was not good at expressing my emotions. I was always someone who wanted to take the lead and show myself as a strong person, which usually falls under being masculine. Even after I came to the United States of America, there was a phase in my life where I had short hair. One of the most asked questions to me at that time was whether I was into girls. I was not offended by them for asking if I like girls but annoyed by the prejudice because of my appearance. Now when I think of it nothing has changed in me except that now I wear more skirts and play less basketball, have long hair, and without any doubt, I am a woman now.
I am a woman now just by the fact that I am wearing a more feminine dress. I liked the fact that men had so much power and control. I had always seen my dad solving problems for my mom or my dad taking the lead. I wanted to be someone who can take the lead for my family, especially for my mother. And for me, as a child, it was only possible if you were a man, strong. The fact that our society is built so deeply with the concept of binary gender, that me someone who likes taking the lead and wearing pants was always thought of as being a semi-boy.
We people concentrate so much on creating categories for people who do not fall under the construct, the constructs of masculine and feminine. The gender you have been classified as during your birth also, by default, has a specific role in society. Like my father brings food, and my mom cooks. My sisters get married right after they finish their studies, but my brother looks for jobs and opportunities for self- development. Socially taught gender lines to have much influence and power over who we think we are and our gender.
A gender role, gender identity never stopped me from self-identifying myself. I was someone who decided for myself instead of falling under the social construct of gender. As a girl, I was expected to stay at home until I finished my studies and then get married. But instead, I challenged myself and applied for the United States without telling my family. It was one of my many steps to challenge the gender construct within my family. I got into a good college and started my studies. Slowly without knowing, I became the so-called “male” of my family. I began to take responsibility for my family, and I did that, sometimes wearing pants to my work and sometimes wearing a skirt, sometimes writing with my pink pen, and sometimes carrying my blue coffee cup. Gender is a social construct that will take a very long time to change, but what we all can do is identify yourself and march towards a genderless society challenging the binary gender concept.
Gender Analysis of an Institutional Artifact
A social institution is a set of norms that are distinct and independent of individuals. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy, according to Seumas Miller, “the term institution and social institution are used to refer to a miscellany of social forms, including conventions, rules, rituals, organizations, and system of organizations.” Institutions are patterns of social orders focused on meeting social needs such as government, education, family, religions. Among various institutions found in all human beings, a family is one of the most important, created by blood, marriage, or adoption. Family is deeply rooted in human nature and exists everywhere. It is essential for the development and maintenance of order. Order here can connote the way things work in society, different rules which are followed, or should follow. Family plays a vital role as they shape our first step into the world.
I recently watched the movie “Little Women,” directed by Greta Gerwig. It was a big screen adoption of the novel by Louisa May Alcott with the same name, “Little Women.” This movie is a story about march sisters- four young women based in the 19th century Massachusetts. When their father is away serving in the civil war, the mother and four daughters Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth are left alone faced with poverty. In this movie, Jo March, played by Saoirse Ronan, is the protagonist, who reflects on her life, telling the story of her family and shows the present scenario of all four sisters. In the movie, Jo struggles to make a name for herself as a writer in a male-dominant New York city. The movie starts with Jo going into a publication office full of men. She introduces her writing as someone else’s to Mr. Dashwood, who sits with his leg up on the desk smoking. He takes her story after she agrees to alter things to which he later suggests that “if the main character is a girl, make sure she is married by the end. Or dead, either way.” Jo is an ambitious tomboy whose primary goal is to support her family until her sister Amy marries, someone wealthy. Amy, one of the youngest, is learning to be a lady to please herself and others around her. She is opposite to Jo, who does not like to fall under the ladyhood. Amy, accompanied by her aunt, is expected to marry someone wealthy to support her family. The oldest March sister Meg shows the character of a stereotypical woman, someone who gives up her liking for the family. She is a traditional wife who is struggling to adjust her life under her husband and children. The youngest daughter Beth, who was severely ill, dies later in the movie. The story shows the struggle of the March sister in converting from a girl to woman while Meg then finds her love and marries a professor. Amy finds her love in Laurie, Jo’s best friend. And Jo herself, who rejected Laurie being a tomboy and ambiguous, married a German professor.
The movie not only shows the character falling under gender stereotypes, but it also shows each of them directly or indirectly coming over it. The stereotype is an over-generalized belief about a category of people. They generally conform to a fixed or general pattern. A gender stereotype is an over-generalized belief of male(masculine) and female (feminine). The protagonist, Jo, is shown as a rebellion to the norms of what women should do. Her name or even the way she dresses challenges the stereotypes. Her full name is Josephine March, which gives a feminine side to her, but she prefers the name Jo which gives a masculine touch. Throughout the movie, Jo wears more of male clothes like vests, button-down shirts, blazers, and neck-scarves — a typical dress for boys in the 19th century. Which goes against the usual dress up girls in the 19th century would do (represented through her sisters). Some of the scenes in the movie show Meg accompanying her sister Jo and asking her to behave in a certain way, do not shake a hand, do not stare, and more. Meg was pretty and enjoyed dancing; her only dream was to get married and have a family that was different from what Jo wanted. Jo explains her feeling of regretting being a woman as she could not accompany her father in the civil war. Throughout the movie, she is someone who does not fall under the stereotype of what women had to do, job, working alone away from the family, and staying away from love and marriage. On the other hand, Theodore Laurence, Jo’s best friend and later Meg’s lover, is more into music, mostly linked with the female profession. He hangs out with all four March sisters and joins their drama club, hanging with females more than his male friends.
In the 19th century, women’s life was limited at home. The only goal in their life would be to get married and form a family, which has been taught in the family since you are small. The March sister had seen their mom living at home taking care of them while their dad was away in the war. They are said to look pretty and attend many parties where they will be able to meet boys from upper-class families and marry them. That is how I relate Little Women with gender stereotypes and with my life. Directly or indirectly, there were a lot of limitations in my life as well. I learned a lot of things through my family. Seeing my mother giving up her needs for the family’s needs has shown me the limitation I have to face being a wife and a mother. I will be expected to marry before 25 or convince my family until 27. All the incidents that I have seen in my family time and again reminds me of the limitation I must face being a woman. Stereotype also welcomes certain inequalities. Having gender stereotypes also welcomes gender inequality. Gender stereotypes like women should be working at home while males go outside to work leads to males having more opportunities in the workplace than women. Even in the movie, we can see Jo struggling to support her family and working, or even Amy struggling to make herself a lady like to marry someone rich instead of working and supporting her family. We can even talk about Meg who is worried about spending money on her clothes and worrying about finance but not working to support her family. My family not supporting my decision to study abroad and getting happy when my brother decided to move abroad shows inequality supported by gender stereotypes. I personally can also relate to the protagonist Jo, as coming from a family having five sisters, I have always been someone who reacts with impatience to the many limitations placed on women. I am ambitious and have a great sense of helping my family. I can easily compare myself to Jo as someone who is always told by my sisters to behave in a certain way.
The movie Little Women shows the struggle of gender stereotypes that remained in the 19th century but still in today’s 21st century. Through different characters, the movie shows the struggle and inequalities women face due to the stereotype of various institutions and families, which every woman can relate to. The way of how a woman is seen and what women should do always comes from the family. I was told not to wear shorts or show skin, speak softly, and help my mother in the kitchen while my brother will help my father with his work and laugh with his friend. Although I have seen most of my sister and other women falling under this institution and following the so-called rules of being women, I have always tried to challenge myself. I have helped my mother in the kitchen but also my dad with his work, looking after finance. I am outspoken and confident about myself but also have my values within me. It is up to us whether we want to follow the stereotype and forget our actual dream-like Meg or Amy or to do what you wish to and devote your time to yourself like Jo.
Informal Writing
Society has always been divided whether it is by race, gender, or class. These divisions are promoted in society and exist to show the superiority of a group of people. It has been a long-existing social construct, a division based on sex. When we say gender, everyone has the same answer, “male and female” but is it just this binary gender? Binary gender is one of the most promoted social constructs. For people to believe it and implicate it in their day to day life social institutions have created certain stereotypes and rules. The concept of “binary gender” is taught even before the baby is born. Having a gender revelation party and using specifically two colors (pink and blue) is the start of creating the loophole of binary gender. It starts from family then you go to school learning certain characteristics of what your gender should be and like and with adulthood you see and learn it in your work, which ultimately is taught to our babies later. We can see how social instructions create a loop, connected to the beginning.
Today gender has been a controversial topic. Many movements have challenged the binary concept of gender and stereotypes. Females are fighting for
equal rights and are creating their individuality in the men’s supremacy world. As mentioned in the reading Feminist Philosophy of Language, even sentences like, “Man breastfeeds his young.” claims to be gender-neutral sentences when using “man” and “his” does not make sense in the sentence. The term like “he”, “man” makes females invisible as we think of males as females when used in a sentence. Even now it is very normal to use him or he or man in a gender-neutral sentence we make rather than using her, she, or woman. You need to know the gender
of an individual to call them or talk with them, she, or he, but what about the ones who do not fall under the category?
The controversy of gender is not only created because of binary gender and its stereotype but also how that has affected the people who do not fall under this social construct. People who do not identify themselves as men or females or who do not fall under the “normal gender” category has always been suffering to know their identity in society. As stated in the reading Why Intercultural Communication Needs Transgender Studies, the term male and female are so common that trans* are always looked as an outsider. Within the binary gender female are seen less than males, but when it comes to someone who does not feel comfortable with the sex (male) they were assigned by birth are seen less than females ( who are supposedly less powerful than men ). Here we can see how the divisions in the society are created to feel supremacy and misuse the privilege of falling under the majority. Identification of yourself is more important than falling under the loop of social constructs, it is the only way someone can challenge the social construct and institutions. People were, are, and will always fight against the long-existing gender system and other constructs which is not going to abolish anytime soon, but we also cannot forget the fact that we have come a long way from it being illegal to vote by a woman or raced people to them fighting for the presidency and winning it or tans* being a disease to them having their rights and identity. The long fight of race, gender, or class will always exist, but we will always achieve something good with every step we take.
Works Cited
Miller, Seumas. “Social Institutions.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 9 Apr. 2019, plato.stanford.edu/entries/social institutions.
Saul, Jennifer, and Esa Diaz-Leon. “Feminist Philosophy of Language.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 21 Aug. 2017, plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-language/.
