Doing Gender

A detailed Summary of Doing Gender

"...everyone "does gender without thinking about it" (Judith Lorber, "Paradoxes of Gender, p.13).

When I was young I did not think about my gender role. I did not think about the day to day events in my life that effected my gender. When I look back I can find so many instances of gender in my life. So, I am taking one of the smallest instances because of the many ways it relates to not only gender building, but maintaining.

As a child I remember very cold winters in Omaha. My sister and I loved to play outside in the snow. So, my parents bought us matching snowsuits. They were pink with lavender trim. My friend, Charlie, who lived up the street, had a snowsuit too. His was black and red with a logo of a racecar on the back. As a child I never thought of the implications of my snowsuit. It was functional and I suppose I thought the color pink was pretty at the time. My room was pink, my bike was pink, and Barbie's corvette was pink. Why should it be any other way?

As I look back at the photographs of the three of us playing as children I see what implications the pink snowsuit had on my gender. Not only that but how we played together. All of us had hoods on our snowsuits to cover our e

Lorber believes that as gendered beings we go along with these norms and expectations "to build a sense of worth and identity" (Lorber, p.35). We have been taught that things like Bem's view of antrocentrism is normal and that we have no need to stray from the reality that society gives us. If we do we might be alienated, not desired, and end up alone.

According to Lorber, social statuses, such as gender, must be constructed through teaching, learning, and enforcement. "Gender is thus both ascribed and achieved (West and Zimmerman 1987). So how is it that by age four, that we were constructed to know so much about what was supposedly masculine and what was supposedly feminine? There are different theories about how children are gendered.

Biology between men and women is different. No one denies that. But it is history, not biology, which is determining the gender norms. Biology does not put little girls in pink and little boys in blue. Biology does not teach girls to build snow angels and boys to build snow forts. Accepting biology as the reason for gender norms is an easy way out. Bem puts it best when she says "No matter how many subtle biological differences there are between the sexes there may someday prove to be, both the size and the significance of those biological differences will depend, in every single instance, on the situational context in which men and women live their lives" (Bem, p.38).

Society, our parents, and our race mark us by gender. They do it by the clothes we wear and the activities we are involved in. We are seen as masculine or feminine. Girls that have more masculine qualities are not seen as being masculine but instead, tomboys. Boys that have more feminine traits are not seen as feminine but instead, weak. We label the members of society based on their gender.

Bem sees three different aspects of a woman's relationship to a man. First, that men see women's difference from man and inferiority to man. Second, that man see women's domestic and reproductive function, as he will be the head of the household. Third, that men see women as a way to satisfy their sexual needs.

Charlie took a role to protect us, almost like Bem's second idea, that men see women as domesticated and he had his need to protect them and head up that household. Also, as in Bem's first idea of how men view women, Charlie thought building the snow fort would be difficult, giving us girls the easier job. At the time, I did not feel inferior but it was inferior and we both knew better then to help with his big job of building the snow fort. Charlie was proud of his massive creation, and my sister and I were p

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Approximate Word count = 1793
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Politics