Night To His day: The Social Construction Of Gender Blog #10

         Although gender is often assumed to be natural, it is an all-encompassing social institution that has power over people. Gender is a process that humans create; a stratification system that ranks people and a structure that organize life. 

         

       In Judith Lorber's, "The Social Construction Of Gender," the role and significance of gender is compared to fish talking about water. the roles we've created within our genders are something so natives and routine to us in a cycle that goes almost entirely unnoticed. Lorber states, "Most people find it hard to believe gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and it the texture and order of social of that social life. 

Yet gender, like culture, is a human production that depends on everyone constantly "Doing Gender". Because of what Lorber calls "Doing Gender," we, over time create social norms that passed down from action to action, person to person, family to family, and anything less or opposed to these created social norms, is either questioned or consider out right wrong.

       Throughout the reading, i felt it important to keep an open mind.  I do feel it's very unfair that women are given the lower hand simply because they are born with vaginas, I have to ask myself, does every women believe that roles associated with their gender is necessarily less important than men's? This reading reminds me of a book i read in high school called "The left hand of darkness" This book is set in the future where a man from earth is sent into space to go to another planet. on this planet the population of intelligents being is no longer male or female and have the ablity to change their "Gender" whenever they like. The main character of this is strictly hetrosexual male and goes on a journey with an alien that presents himself as male majority of the time. while on his journey with this "Male" alien, the main character falls in love and disregards the "Gender" of the alien. 

I believe this is the concept that Lorber is trying to raise in her article. That gender is really a human creation and in reality is an illusion. I'm left asking what really defines "Gender" can there be any specific criterion that needs to be met to be a man or women?