I found all of the reading for Tuesday very eye-opening and thought provoking. I think all authors want readers to understand that the way we look at gender is too simplistic. Gender and sex cannot fall into clear black and white (or more accurately, pink and blue) categories. Like Fritz Klein’s grid with seven variables, we should measure gender and sexuality on a scale, not as an either-or. As Fausto-Sterling writes, “A body’s sex is simply too complex. There is no either/or. Rather, there are shades of difference” (3). In “One Bad Hair Day Too Many” a little girl asks her dad if the author is a boy or a girl. Sometimes, the answer is more complex than boy or girl. This idea was exemplified in Ariel Levy’s “From Womyn to Bois” chapter. In this chapter, Levy shows that there is a wide spectrum of women that identify themselves as lesbians. Julien Rosskam, transitioning from Julie Rosskam, expressed his frustration at being placed in a category: “I don’t like when people feel the need to put people into categories like that. If you had a line of women we could put them on a spectrum from the most femme to the most butch, but everything in our world is set up as a dichotomy and I just feel like that’s so limiting” (126). I think this dichotomy that Rosskam speaks of is very prevalent in our lives, even in ways that we may not realize. Oftentimes, we are spilt into boys and girls. I can’t count the times in elementary school that we were divided in this manner: boys versus girls in four square, boys answering question 1, girls answering question 2. Bathrooms, department stores, and locker rooms are all divided into female and male. It is hard to think of public places where there is not a clear split.
I found “Dueling Dualisms” in Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto-Sterling very interesting because although I knew that socially, gender and sex could have varying degrees, I wasn’t very familiar with the sex scale that can occur on a physical and medical basis. It is boggling to me that doctors alter sexuality at birth to fit into our sex norms: “Surgeons remove parts and use plastic to create ‘appropriate’ genitalia for people born with body parts that are not easily identifiable as male or female” (27). I look forward to getting farther in this book and finding out more about how sex is constructed.
I agree with Emma. I really liked the Anne Fausto-Sterling reading. It raised through provoking questions. I definitely agree that gender and sexuality are fluid. There are few things in life that are so rigid and clear cut. There are so many things in life and about sexuality and gender that are interconnected and blurred. One question that really got me thinking was her question 'If gay people in the present-day sense, had always existed, did that mean that the condition is inherited in some portion of the population?" I think that that is probably true. Our society is still very homophobic and I can't imagine that anyone would consciously choose to be gay because it usually comes with those awkward stares that Myhre describes and ridicule and judgement. Furthermore, it seems to be inherent if people can be born with both male and female genitalia. However, I think it is in human nature to want to simplify things.......from small things like fractions, to large things like gender, however it is definitely problematic to simplify things so intertwined and interconnected. I'm interested to hear Fausto-Sterling's solution to such a complex problem.
ReplyDeleteBeing a sociology major, I'm really familiar with the idea that gender and sex are separate from each other. I think the most profound point from this reading is as Emma said the fact that gender scientifically isn't black and white. I know that in studying gender at colgate and in general as a SOAN major I know that there are now multiple classifications. I really connected this reading with an concept that I learned in my intro to anthropology class. The idea that race isn't black or white is also an idea that is challenging popular beliefs. There was a video that I have watched in multiple classes that speaks about race and shows students who do genetic testing. The genetic testing showed that race really was only skin, or color deep. The main point that was drive home in all of my SOAN classes is that while there much to desire by the way of scientific evidence, the social presence of race or gender is very real and very measurable.
ReplyDeleteOne aspect of these readings which interested me way the way many of the individual’s identities are derived from definition against another set of rules for identity/sexuality. The bois that Levy describes like to define themselves as “Kind of dirty. Sexually dirty, but also we’re not in the clean, pressed, buttoned-up world… We’re like little urchins” (Levy 1230). Questionable crustacean metaphor aside, the women find the gender/sexuality mold ill-fitting and develop their own culture to reflect their identities more truly. The woman in “One Bad Hair Day Too Many” similarly presents her identity as distinctly in response to the stereotypes of femininity which require of her excessive beauty procedures which she feels are unnecessary. She becomes “other” in not prescribing to traditional womanly appearances. Homosexuality ahs often been categorized in comparison to heterosexuality as the “other”, but Fausto-Sterling writes that sexual identity cannot be labeled this way. Instead of it being such a polarized definition, sexuality is more fluid than one of a few options or even the 1-6 scale which Kinsey created. It is dependent upon historical/social context. Attempts to classify people is inherently problematic, as given in the example of the gender testing of Olympic athletes. A more recent example of this is Caster Semenya, a runner from South Africa who appeared too “many” and thus drew enormous criticism, rigorous testing and debate in the athletic community. Perhaps if she had posed for Playboy like other female athletes she would not have encountered such issues.
ReplyDeletehttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/caster_semenya/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=Caster%20Semenya&st=cse