Gender As A Socially Constructed Accomplishment1

Gender As A Socially Constructed Accomplishment

Gender is a very strange topic in today's society. Many people don't know what to do with people who are transvestites or transsexuals and they often times hate them because they are different. People always think that there can only be two types of gender: masculine and feminine. People also feel that these genders most always correspond to a person's sex. So if the person is a male, then most people wouldn't accept that person into society if they acted feminine.

"For human beings there is no essential femaleness and maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood, or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expectations. Individuals may vary on many of the components of gender any may shift genders temporarily or permanently, but they must fit into the limited number of gender statuses their society recognizes." (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, For Individuals, Gender Means Sameness, Page 463)

"...a defining feature of reality construction is to see our world as being the only possible one." (Kessler & McKenna, Gender: An E

When it comes to dealing with transsexuals and transvestites, we often believe that they should not be in our community. Transsexuals and transvestites feel unnatural in the way society treats them so they try to change it by acting differently. They feel that by doing this, society will treat them differently, and often times it does work.

At all times we constantly try to find out a person's sex and gender. We often place the two together and don't even realize that they could be different. Sometimes we even completely misunderstand the two.