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Chapter 2 Gender Analysis

Decent Essays

Chapter 2 of the textbook describes ideas of gender and the gender binary, as well as the ways we associate objects, people, places, and ideas with gender. The personal exception theory of gender states that we assume that most people are better described by the gender binary than we are. I feel that most everyone experiences this phenomenon, mainly because we are the only ones who know everything about ourselves. Not every single thing about us as individuals will fit into a box of “masculine” or “feminine.” Since I know every detail about myself, I can say that although I am female, I have certain interests and habits that don’t fit within the “feminine” sphere, such as four wheeling and taking up a lot of space when I sit. When you simply …show more content…

This chapter immediately made me think of sex education in high schools. I went to high school in Phoenix, and we only learned about abstinence. I feel our sex education was meant to make us feel awkward and alienated by bodies of the opposite gender. It was as if they wanted us to think that men and women are polar opposites, and that it’s just plain weird to see the genitals of the opposite sex. Genitals were seen as solely biological, for making children and not much else. In reality, however, men and women are not that much different biologically; there is little sexual dimorphism. Men and women have much of the same hormones, just different amounts of them. There is also very little evidence that men and women are dissimilar genetically or in brain structure. I think that sex education programs like the one I was in exaggerate biological differences between men and women, which in turn makes them seem even more opposite on the …show more content…

I see gender rules and policing every day in my own life, both right in front of me and on social media. For instance, I generally eat more than my boyfriend. I’m just always hungry. As a result, I often order a great deal of food when I’m going out to eat. A part of doing gender as a female is supposed to include not eating “too much” and eating less than men. My friends like to ask me, “Are you really going to eat all that food?”. I say yes and usually don’t offer an account other than that I’m hungry. I also saw gender policing today on Facebook when I saw a video of a boy doing his makeup. I saw way too many comments saying that his preference for makeup is the result of not having a father figure, or that he should be “playing in the dirt with action figures instead of doing makeup, which is for girls.” A majority of the comments referenced extremely stereotypical gender rules, as if all girls and all boys should have the exact same interests. The fact that the boy didn’t give an account or excuse for doing his makeup seemed to make some of the commenters even more aggressive in bullying

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