Dickson  

Weston Dickson

Schumacher

Women Studies 100

September 24, 2008

How is Gender Created?

What people see in there everyday life may not seem to be what it actually is. Men dress like men and women dress like women. Growing up people learn what is right and wrong. Parents teach there kids these norms, and when we see something out of the ordinary we put them down. Not all men are masculine and not all women are feminine. Sigmund Freud, Judith Lorber, and Judith Butler all agree that gender is socially constructed. Gender is looked at as male or female, but is this opinion socially constructed or a biological fact?

Sigmund Freud essay’s on the Theory of Sexuality shows that gender is socially constructed, and not a biological fact. He uses psychoanalytic investigation to study how human behavior affects our gender. He uses three steps in showing how humans gain their sexuality. First is infantile sexuality, and how as infants we gain our sexuality on our own. When we are babies we use thumb sucking to pleasure our self, replacing the nipple. Being young, we do not realize the right and wrong of public sexuality. In the second step, latency, we start learning right and wrong. Our mouth is no longer a place for pleasure, and we move on to other things like potty training. Sexuality is mainly constructed in our third and fourth year of our life. Finally, puberty reaches us and we acknowledge our sexuality. Freud says once we reach our puberty, our choices are merely based on our childhood experiences, though we do not remember them. Freud says that it is known that establish the difference between masculine and feminine at puberty. From puberty on Freud states, “This contrast has a more decisive influence that any other upon the shaping of human life (Freud).” It is at this time when we have to start making decisions on our own. Who will our sexual object be? He first explains that it comes from our early infantile period of sucking and gaining pleasure. Who we will seek this please from will be our choice, and gaining that pleasure from the genitals. Another way we find our objects is narcissistic, searching for our own ego and finding it in other people. I think this is a major cause of bisexuality and inverts. An example would be a boy who grows up with his mother notices how his father treats her and makes her loved. This young boy might grow up to search for someone with the same traits as his father, making him homosexual. These examples prove that Freud is stating that gender is socially constructed. From the time that we are born there are three steps we take to find our split between masculine and feminine, and who our sexual objects will be. This social construction can be created in different ways.

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Judith Lorber bases her writing on continuums. All of the gender categories such as sex, sexuality, and gender are based on two sides, but with grey areas. Sex is based on biology or physiology. Sexuality is based on desire, or sexual performance and orientation, and gender is based on a social status. For most, sex is assigned when we are born, based on the appearance of our genitalia. But what about people who are born with a penis and now live as a women and people born with a vagina that now live as a man? These people in today’s ...

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