Gender in Society.

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Gender in Society

Part 1)

In the reading “Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” Ludmilla Jordanova identifies a number of interesting facts and highlights the various points pertaining to gender and gender roles within our society. Within this text Jordanova identifies and to an extent isolates the processes of “naturalization” as a primary focal point by which to better understand and analyse such culturally distinct gender roles.

Gender is constitutive of societies basic identity. Its use, to mean social and cultural sexual identity however, is comparatively recent. By using gender, one implies that masculine and feminine attributes are defined in relation to each other. The constant defining of gender however has caused it to no longer just be associated with ones sexual identity, giving the term an applied masculinity.

Jordanova notes that nature is often configured as a female whose secrets will be revealed by a masculine science. Jordanova also notes that these comparisons have been to the detriment of women, making them seen as the “problem sex” throughout history. Jodanova poses throughout the reading the idea that medicine and science contain implications about matters beyond their explicit content. Namely they have historically made assumptions about women and their relation to science/medicine.

Through naturalization, whereby ideas, theories, experiences, languages, and so on, take on the quality of being natural, gender has gained false connotations that have until now been seen as fact.   Jordanova then goes on to highlight the importance of “unpacking” the processes of naturalization to relieve these terms of their socially developed ideas.

The text challenges the reader to question the pre programmed thinking we have developed over past centuries, as a result of societies prejudice. Jordanova repeatedly stresses the ways in which man has dealt extensively with the scientific, economical, technological and political progress of society.  This has affected gender relations to the point where women have become considered more capable in matters of the emotional and moral, being dominated more readily by their sentiments and feelings. Consequently such ideas could enable us to better understand what has been predominantly viewed as a patriarchal society, with what many would argue, are still largely male dominated values.

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I believe this author’s argument has been included in a course on gender, history and culture because it more closely assess the implications of the social constructs of gender and culture that have developed over time. In conclusion Jordanova sets out to achieve what the article is posing, a need for the unpacking of naturalization, inciting the reader to question today’s ideas, theories, experiences, languages, and so on, and their validity in today society.


Part 2)

Over the past two centuries, we have seen great changes in marital relations and gendered identities within marriage. These in turn ...

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