Sex and Gender Identity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Sex and Gender Identity - Essay Example Nowadays it has become obvious that such 'typical' sexual features as height, weight, musculature and sinews are a great deal less connected with sex than it had consider to be. Aside from men and women biological distinctions there is a division of their social roles, forms of activities, difference in their behavior and emotional characteristics. Long ago anthropologists, ethnographers, and historians have ascertained in relativity of 'typically man' and 'typically women' notions. The point is that the same activity (behavior, characteristic), which in one community is regarded as manlike, may be treated as womanish in the other. The world's variety of social characteristics of both men and women and fundamental sameness of human beings' biological characteristics brings us to a conclusion that biological sex can not be taken as an explanation to dissimilarity of their social roles, existing in different communities. Accordingly the notion of gender as summation of social and cultural norms, which are appointed by the society depending on the biological sex of individual, comes into being. Let us consider two articles: 'Sex and Gender Identity' written by Jami L. Anderson, who states that we should reject biological essentialism and turn to the idea that sex categories are socially constructed, and 'The Five Sexes' written by Ann Fausto-Sterling, claiming that it is time to challenge the man and women division. On studying the phenomenon of sex, Anderson throws discredit upon the conception of biological essentialism, which considers the categories of man and women as some biological categories, and according to which in order to qualify a human's sex, one should examine a human's body. Biological essentialist suggest the following definitions of sex categories man and woman: A man is a human with a penis and testes A woman is a human with ovaries and a uterus Anderson points out the weak sides of these definitions. First of all, there are cases when people are born with testes and some aspects of female genitalia, and on the contrary some are born with ovaries and some aspects of male genitalia. So in such cases we cannot refer such people to any of these categories. More over there is a great number of women, who had to have hysterectomies in order to treat ovarian cancer. This notwithstanding they remain to be women. The same can be said about men, who have their testicles removed to deal with testicular cancer.Some biological essentianalists may contest that chromosomes may be used as a key-determinant of sex category. Herewith they suggest the following definitions of sex categories man and woman: A man is a human with XY chromosomes A woman is a human with XX chromosomes Anderson claims that these definitions are also a matter of argument, as 'it has been estimated that as many as 4 % of the world's population have a karotype other than XX or XY'. That is why the author states that the only way to make theses definitions exhaustive is to add another category: An intersexed person is a human with a karotype other than XX or XY.The author proposes us to consider sex categories as not biological ones, but as social categories. According to Anderson, both self- and other-identification play an important part in determining one's sex. Here we deal with gender, which main categories are

Issues in Human Sexuality Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Issues in Human Sexuality - Essay Example Traditionally, we believed that the feminine role was an expressive one, and the masculine role as instrumental. Expressive activities of the woman fulfill internal functions, and man, on the other hand, performed the external functions of a family, such as providing monetary support. Gender identity, to a large extent, refers to an individual’s identification with male or female gender roles and behaviors and the labeling of different activities as feminine and masculine, which is largely a social construction based on stereotyped expectations regarding gender and perceived gender differences. It is recognized that individuals’ identification with masculine and feminine personality traits could vary when measured in different contexts or when gender identity was more or less salient to the other variables being examined-as found in the observations. If we closely examine the whole thing, we learn that the gender role is a set of behavioral norms associated particularly with males or females in a given social group or system. All societies, to a certain effect, have a gender/sex system, although the components and workings of this system vary widely from society to society. A persons gender role is composed of several elements and can be expressed through clothing, behavior, choice of work, personal relationships and other factors. There is nothing strange in seeing that people spontaneously categorize stereotypically masculine and stereotypically feminine traits and job labels according to gender even when the task at hand has nothing to do with gender. They are grounded in perceptions of differences between these gender categories.