Essay on SOC 1

Submitted By Bunny19930521
Words: 741
Pages: 3

“ Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water.” , which is written by Judith Lorber on the page 96 of his work—“NIGHT TO HIS DAY”. Gender is such a familiar part of our daily lives that it plays a very important role in the society. So, what does gender mean? Gender is the range of characteristics differentiating between femaleness and maleness biologically. The definition of gender indicates that gender means sameness for every single person. We are born with our own gender. In addition, we do not have chances to change our gender. Furthermore, gender is more important in society like I mentioned before because gender means difference for society.
So, how is gender performed? From my perspective, people perform gender by obeying social standards. For example, girls would like to wear dresses and wear makeup, they do what their mothers and grandmothers do. On the contrary, there are only few boys wearing dresses because they cannot find any other boy around them doing that. The standard is social constructed, moreover, people perform gender by obeying these standards. Judith Lorber argues that “ people have to learn to be women and men. ” On the page of 97 of the essay “NIGHT TO HIS DAY,” the author also says that “ because transvestism is direct evidence of how gender is constructed, Marjorie Garber(1992) claims it has extraordinary power to disrupt, expose, and challenge, putting in question the very notion of the original and the stable identity”(p.16). In addition, I hold the opinion that the things we earned guarantee our abilities to perform gender.
There is another question, is the performance of gender following a script, creative improvisation, or something else? From my perspective, the answer is positive. Biologically, I think there are gender scripts existed, for example, a female gender script could be cleaning or shopping and a male gender script could be working or exercising. Gender scripts are the results of social constructions and social standards. “ Since gender difference are socially constructed, all men and women can enact the behavior of the other, because they know the other’s social script, ” written by Judith Lorber on the page 105. So, the author also tells us that the performance of gender follows a script. It is true that people have chances to shift their genders and their gender statuses, but most people still hold the gender boundaries. As a consequence, gender will be continually constructed, at the same time, the gendered social order will not come crashing down.
In addition, in society, the performance of gender also follows a script and creative improvisation. The gender statuses of different people are really different in society. Judith Lorber makes an argument that “ in the social construction of gender, it does not matter what men and women