Doing Gender

• Sex


  Determination made through the application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as males, females, or intersex individuals. Determined through an individual's chromosomes, hormones, gonads, and the internal and external organs comprising the reproductive system.
• Sex category


  Placement in a sex category is achieved through application of the sex criteria, but in everyday life, categorization is established and sustained by the socially required identificatory displays that proclaim one's membership in one or the other category.
• Gender


  The activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one's sex category. Gender activities emerge from and bolster claims to membership in a sex category.
• Sex and sex category can vary independently, it is possible to claim membership in a sex category even when the sex criteria are lacking.
• Gender is not something we have but something we do (West and Zimmerman 1987); a continuous process of accomplishment (interactions, institutions).
• Gender is something we perform (Butler) /performative; 'pass as' (what gender) ; stylized repetition of acts through time.
• Doing Gender


  • Gender should be viewed as a product of interactions. When a person interacts with others, one gives off verbal or nonverbal cues which inform others of the person's so-called "essential nature". Femininity and masculinity are examples of this nature, displayed across different settings of social interaction and ultimately informing others of one's identity.
• Gender as an emergent feature


  • Rather than as a property of individuals, we conceive of gender as an emergent feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for various social arrangements and as a means of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society.
• Western-dominated gender perspective


  • Clear dividing line between men and women as distinct categories largely rooted in their sex or reproductive function. Tied to their biological needs, strengths, and limitations, men and women fulfill different kinds of tasks which eventually mold the established division of labor – a crucial component of social organization.
• Gender attribution


  Drawing on Garfinkel, Kessler and McKenna argue that "female" and "male" are cultural events-products of what they term the "gender attribution process-rather than some collection of traits, behaviors, or even physical attributes.
• Neither initial sex assignment (pronouncement at birth as a female or male) nor the actual existence of essential criteria for that assignment (possession of a clitoris and vagina or penis and testicles) has much-if anything-to do with the identification of sex category in everyday life.
• We take it for granted that sex and sex category are congruent-that knowing the latter, we can deduce the rest.
• If-can test


  The act of categorization does not involve a positive test, in the sense of a well-defined set of criteria that must be explicitly satisfied prior to making an identification. Rather, the application of membership categories relies on an "if-can" test in everyday interaction.
• Agnes was a transsexual who grew up as a boy and chose to embody a female identity at 17 years old. She later on went through the process of sex reassignment.
• Agnes's case


  • Agnes attempted to be "120 percent female", that is, unquestionably in all ways and at all times feminine. She thought she could protect herself from disclosure before and after surgical intervention by comporting herself in a feminine manner, but she also could have given herself away by overdoing her performance.
• Sex categorization and the accomplishment of gender are not the same. Agnes's categorization could be secure or suspect, but did not depend on whether or not she lived up to some ideal conception of femininity.
• Agnes's strategy


  • Agnes's strategy of "secret apprenticeship," through which she learned expected feminine decorum by carefully attending to her fiancé's criticisms of other women, was one means of masking incompetencies and simultaneously acquiring the needed skills.
• Popular culture abounds with books and magazines that compile idealized depictions of relations between women and men.
• Doing gender


  • Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys and women and men, differences that are not natural, essential, or biological. Once the differences have been constructed, they are used to reinforce the "essentialness" of gender.
• Popular culture


  Abounds with books and magazines that compile idealized depictions of relations between women and men
• Doing gender


  • Managing situations so that the outcome is seen and seeable as gender-appropriate or gender-inappropriate
• Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys and women and men, differences that are not natural, essential, or biological</b>
• Goffman's "arrangement between the sexes"


  Institutionalized frameworks through which our "natural, normal sexedness" can be enacted
• Physical features of social setting

  • Sex segregation of North American public bathrooms
  • Dimorphic equipment (urinals for men, grooming facilities for women)
• Toilet segregation is a cultural matter, not a natural consequence of biological differences
• Standardized social occasions


  • Organized sports as a framework for expression of masculinity
• Assortative mating practices


  Ensure couples where boys/men are visibly bigger, stronger, and older than girls/women
• Any interactional situation sets the stage for depictions of "essential" sexual natures
• Fishman's research on casual conversations

  Women had to ask more questions, fill more silences, and use more attention-getting beginnings to be heard
• Emotional labor


  Work related to what constitutes being a woman, obscured as part of what women are
• Role conflict


  Occasions where persons of a particular sex category can see they are out of place
• Role conflict


  • Women chastised for putting career first
  • Men pressured to be breadwinners even if they'd rather be house husbands
• Gender is managed, not simply an aspect of what one is, but something one does in interaction with others
• Recruitment to gender identities

  New members of society monitor their own and others' conduct for gender implications, appropriating gender ideals and identities
• Ways of doing gender

  • Boys appropriating ideal of efficaciousness
  • Girls learning to value appearance
  • Allocation of household tasks to women
• Second shift


  Household and childcare duties that follow the day's work for pay outside the home
• Doing gender appropriately sustains, reproduces, and renders legitimate institutional arrangements based on sex category
• Social change must be pursued at both the institutional/cultural level of sex category and the interactional level of gender
• Gender as ideology


  A powerful device that produces, reproduces, and legitimates choices and limits predicated on sex category