#judith lorber

[saintgoodlove]

Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water. Gender is so much the routine ground of everyday activities that questioning its taken-for-granted assumptions and presuppositions is like thinking about whether the sun will come up.1 Gender is so pervasive that in our society we assume it is bred into our genes. Most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life. Yet gender, like culture, is a human production that depends on everyone constantly “doing gender” (West and Zimmerman 1987).

—Judith Lorber, The Paradoxes of Gender (1994), “1–Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”

[maegdistudies]

[genderacceptance]

Gender " norms " are so common and naturally instilled within us that it's not until you actually sit and observe the world that you realize how much they play apart in our everyday life. Society uses gender to determine rank, class and status. Everything in this world evolves, that's a never ending process so why is it so hard for people to accept gender evolution? Why does a male make more than a female even if she does a better job with the task at hand ? Why are people who don't identify with Male or Female often criticized ? Who we are or who we identify with should have nothing to do with how far we get in life or what opportunities we are able to partake in. You are expected to act a certain way if you are a male and a completely different way if you're a female. When discussing social norms , there is no in between for some people , society feels that anything that varies outside of a male or female is abnormal. Society needs to learn to adapt and adjust just like it does with other things.

[i-kn0w-my-valu3]

“The social Constuction of Gender” by Judith Lorber

While reading the article one of the key features that stuck out is humans tend to want to fit in, no matter the category maybe, the sense of longing to be recongized . Although we believe that our society is decided by what gentialia we are born with that is not the case, rather it seems that we change and construct categories in which we decide where we fall. 

[sam613-blog1]

Judith Lorber: “The Social Construction of Gender”

After reading this text, my eyes “opened” up on what exactly is around me. Such as gender norms. I knew it was there, but I didn’t know the impact it had on my everyday life. As Lorber states, “Gender is so much the routine ground of everyday activities.” It’s a human creation, gender, and “is a process of creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities.” However, why should this be? Why should there be gender norms like these? Everyone should be able to do as they please. There shouldn’t be gender boundaries, but unfortunately there are

[saintgoodlove]

Paradoxically, then, bending gender rules and passing between genders does not erode but rather preserves gender boundaries. In societies with only two genders, the gender dichotomy is not disturbed by transvestites, because others feel that a transvestite is only transitorily ambiguous—is “really a man or woman underneath.” After sex-change surgery, transsexuals end up in a conventional gender status—a “man” or a “woman” with the appropriate genitals (Eichler 1989). When women dress as men for business reasons, they are indicating that in that situation, they want to be treated the way men are treated; when they dress as women, they want to be treated as women:

—Judith Lorber, The Paradoxes of Gender (1994)

[saintgoodlove]

Gender signs and signals are so ubiquitous that we usually fail to note them—unless they are missing or ambiguous.

—Judith Lorber, The Paradoxes of Gender (1994)

[saintgoodlove]

It is true that without individual actions (voluntary or coerced) there would be no social institutions, since the social structures we call “gender,” “government,” “family,” “economy,” and so on must be enacted every day in order to continue and in that enactment are strengthened or weakened, sustained or resisted (D. E. Smith 1987a). Nonetheless, social institutions, except in periods of revolutionary or anarchic upheaval, exist prior to any individual’s birth, education, and social patterning. The patterned and intertwined structures of work, family, culture, education, religion, and law are gendered, and they deeply and continuously shape the lives of individuals, starting at birth (or even before, when the sex of the fetus is known). Through gendered personalities and identities, these patterns are internalized and willingly reenacted.

—Judith Lorber, The Paradoxes of Gender (1994), “Introduction"