The Sociology of Women: A Study

Different people have different ideas about what the term transgender means. Most describe a transgender person as someone who feels strongly that their gender is not the same as the sex they were assigned at birth. Transgender people feel and express their gender in many different

I will address three topics that caught my attention in the video which are the empower of women, freedom and democracy, Arab Spring and the importance of religion.

Feminists have played a major part in the ideology of the family, as they provide an alternative view to the traditional sociology of the family. There are many different types of feminists; the main ones are Radical feminists, Marxist feminist and liberal feminists. Although they are categorised separately, they fundamentally believe in the same idea, which is the dominant functionalist assumptions are inaccurate and should therefore be challenged. Functionalists believe that in the family, the role of the woman is functional when she plays a necessary ‘expressive’ role, providing care and affection for members in a more subordinate role than that of the breadwinner husband.

The roles of women during the Patriarchy Society influenced feminism throughout Shelley’s novel. Each individual woman in Frankenstein fulfilled a different role, therefore being seen in a unique way through the eyes of society in the story. This can be displayed through the actions of Agatha towards Felix when the monster states, “Soon after this the young man returned, bearing on his shoulder a load of wood. The girl met him at the door and helped relieve him of his burden” (page 97). This illustrates feminism through the view of the woman feeling that it was her duty to help the man of the house. Feeling that she needed to assist Felix, Agatha demonstrates the role that women play in a feminist environment. These specific roles are positively viewed through the eyes of each individual, as seen when Safie recalls the memories of her mother. The monster narrates, “Safie related that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a slave by the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of the father of Safie, who married her” (page 110). He states how “the young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who born in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced” (page 110) which in turn clearly illustrates how much Safie adores her mother. The role of feminism in this situation is positive due to the viewpoint being from another woman. Similarly, this role is also displayed when Justine stands trial for the murder of Henry Clerval.

In Susan Stryker’s “Transgender Studies,” the author outlines the genesis of the field and how it differs from other areas of research like Queer studies. Stryker asserts that, “transgender studies is concerned with anything that disrupts…the normative linkages we generally assume to exist between the biological specificity of the…body, [and] the social roles and statuses that a particular form of body is expected to occupy” (pg. 3). At first glance, such a declaration seems to coincide with the goal of Queer studies: to destabilize what are imagined to be static (sexual) identities. However, Stryker notes that Transgender Studies diverges from Queer Studies’ tendency to privilege homosexual ways of difference over other forms of queer disruption. This focus on other means of queer resistance is exemplified in Dean Spade’s “Mutilating Gender,” which examines the restrictive gendered scripts that are require of transgender individuals who wish to undergo sex reassignment surgery (SRS). Unlike Stryker’s work, Spade’s analysis in “Mutilating Gender,” is not concerned with defining Transgender Studies but in applying it through the lens of lived experience. Spade details the incentivizing of hegemonic gender performances which are seen as more ‘normative’ and consequently deserving of access to SRS. As a result, Spade exemplifies transgender studies’ goal, as outlined by Stryker, of disrupting the presumed connections between social roles and the sexually differentiated body.

Transgender means having a gender identity that does not correspond to the sex that is on the person’s birth certificate. A transgender woman means that she identifies as a female, but her assigned sex is male. Many people do not know that there is a difference between gender and sex. Gender is what someone inwardly feels that they are more like male or female. Some people are gender fluid, meaning that one day they might feel more like a male and one day they might feel more like a female, or they might feel like they don’t fit on the traditional gender spectrum and have a specific gender. Sex is what is what you are assigned at birth and is on your birth certificate. Most people identify with the same sex they were given at birth, which means that they are cisgender.

Transsexuals are people with the biological characteristics of one sex who identify themselves as the opposite gender and have had some type of surgical alteration and/or hormone treatments that changes their bodies’ appearance in alignment with their identity.

“There’s a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For [most] people, those things are in alignment. For Transgender people, they’re mismatched. That’s all it is. It’s not complicated…” Chaz Bruno, a transgender individual, explains to Cintra Wilson, a writer for The New York Times. Transgender is a term used to describe individuals whose gender identity or gender expression does not conform to the social expectations for their assigned sex at birth (Currah). The rights movement for this group of people has highly accelerated over the last thirty years but is still very fragile. These individuals have gone from “meeting in secret” to “lobbying Congress” and from “being arrested for cross-dressing” to “mobilizing public protests against

Transgender is a term that is used to describe men and women who were born a certain sex, but feel their true gender is the opposite. Some live completely - or part time - as the opposite sex. There are also some transgender people that get sex reassignment surgery, completely changing their gender. While the definition of transgender is not yet fully agreed upon and is indeed still changing on a regular basis, there are some elements that seem to remain consistent:

Transphobia is fear, discrimination or hatred against transgender people specifically or people of non-binary gender more generally. Transphobia is often closely connected with homophobia and is justified for the same reasons that homophobes use to justify their hatred of gays. (religion, prescriptive gender norms, etc.). Indeed, many clueless homophobes conflate homosexual people with transgender people and cross-dressers. Transphobia also manifests itself in some schools of radical feminist thought, as some feminists resent the idea that people who aren't "really" women might make claims as women. On a societal scale, it can manifest itself in any number of ways, from systemic discrimination against transgender people in housing, healthcare,

“I belong to that classification of people known as wives. I am a wife...I, too, would like to have a wife.” In the 1960’s and 70’s women were expected to live a very simple life: raise kids, take care of the home, and serve your husband, but, as various causes for social change arose like movements for the protection of the environment, gay rights, and civil rights, so did the the feminist movement and its opposition to those same expectations. in the United States. Women like Betty Friedan started writing books like The Feminine Mystique and women who felt unhappy and frustrated with their lifestyles wanted to do more. Educated women felt In an excerpt from Judy Brady’s 1971 essay I Want a Wife Brady uniquely explains the plight of women

experiment with a one year gap in between. These tests involved the software AMOS, as

Transgender is a human who does not identify with the sex that they were assigned at birth. Transgender is often shortened to trans to make it easier to say and convey what they mean easier. Transgender is an umbrella term to encompass many identities. There are many other identities that go along with being transgender like trans man or women, trans demiboy or demigirl, trans nonbinary, and many others. The thing that makes you transgender is if you self identify with being transgender than you are transgender. There are many words at this moment that are used against trans people and some of those words are tranny, transgendered, transexual, shemale, and many others. These words are used against trans people to spread hate in this world. Many trans

For centuries, the status and perception of women has been a disputed and controversial subject. Due to precarious political or social standings, even women in power were subject to the judgement and power of men. When considering the portrayal of exceptional women throughout history, rarely has a woman been able to fully embrace the stage without reservations. An analysis of research texts and journal articles reveals and connects the way that a queen of ancient times and one of the English Renaissance controlled their image, were affected by societal views of women, and were ultimately depicted. Scholarship on Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth I relays the idea that society and patriarchy led to their respective authorities and depictions.

“So, please show that skin some love! Pamper it, baby it, show it off, without shame. Go out without guilt, go on and be bold. Let the whole world know, that the skin you’re in, is a temple to behold” (Zen and Pi). This poem created for women shows that women should love their bodies and appreciate the temples that have been given to them. It does not mean to abuse it by constantly eating unhealthy and not taking care of ones body, but understanding that a little meat on your bones is not the worse thing in the world. “We all struggle with negative thought about our bodies. Glamour magazine launched a survey in 2011 that found 97 percent of women have at least one negative thought about their bodies every single day” (Friedman, Michael). Being that this statistic was found in an article from 3 years ago, I would hope that percentage has gone down. There are plenty people in the world who do not love their bodies because of the body shaming the society places on them. In the end, they continue to harm themselves in order to conform to societies standards. “Accepting the body as it is can be a tough exercise, but it is crucial to overall mental and physical health. Hating our bodies only feeds into a cycle of risky behaviors that reinforce our negative self-assessment. Starts today off right by learning to accept the skin you’re in” (Friedman, Michael). In the movie Real Woman Have Curves there is a stand against what society considers the norm for all woman.