Kai Myers
9-17-14
Professor Soyoung Park
Women's Studies

What is Gender?

     According to modern society, gender is divided into two separate categories: male and female. This, however, is not the case. Gender is much more fluid; people can express multiple genders regardless of biological features. In sum, genitalia does not determine gender. "...It is really impossible to speak of a fixed biological sex category outside of the sense that a culture makes of that category", (Shaw and Lee, 125).

    What is truly disturbing is that most people in the United States believe that the strong implications between masculinity and femininity (a result of the gender binary) is considered to be a natural state of human development instead of a social construction. Gender, in truth, cannot be categorized into two separate boxes. It is something that cannot fit in any box, any form. Gender is constantly fluctuating throughout a person's life. "...Gender is a process that involves multiple patterns of interaction and is created and re-created constantly in human interaction" (Shaw and Lee, 126).

    The strong distinction between masculinity and femininity and the genders that perform these actions form stereotypes. Males are categorized as active, powerful, aggressive, while females are passive, nurturing, and emotional. These notions behind physical males and females create limitations that ultimately leads to the barrier between the definition between masculinity and femininity. 

    Those who do not follow the narrow divisions constructed by the gender binary are considered to be gender deviant. Who are these types of people? Transgendered people, lesbians, gays, masculine women, effeminate men, and honestly anyone who has had felt annoyed that there are no unisex options or that they are judged for wearing or wanting whatever they choose. 

    The gender binary is a social system that has given additional power to the patriarchy's ideals. It enforces the strength of males and the delicacy of females without considering that it is human nature to not fit tightly into a singular category.

Kai Myers

9/10/12

Professor Soyoung Park

Women's Studies

Homophobia and its Relation to Feminism

      Feminism, according to most, including prominent writer and blogger, Jessica Valenti, has more to do with the desire for equality among all people. Based on the influences of the third wave of feminism, this idea is considered to be a more modern day approach, as the earlier movements tended to focus on white, upperclass, heterosexual females. Thankfully, feminism today considers all types of people, specifically, all types of women from all walks of life as essential parts of the movement (gender deviants, lesbians, those in third world countries and so on). It is crucial that the topic of homophobia is discussed when it has such close ties to the dispute of true equality.

      Suzanne Pharr, in her article Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism, goes to say that homophobia and the emphasis on its counter part, heterosexism, is another method of keeping the systems of power, the imbalance of status between men and women, in check. "Homophobia works effectively as a weapon of sexism because it is joined with a powerful arm, heterosexism. Heterosexism creates the climate for homophobia with its assumption that the world is and must be heterosexual and its display of power and privilege as the norm" (Pharr, 87). Most of what this is all boils down to scare tactics and the urge to conform as to not stand out or be under pressure from society. 

      These scare tactics have flaws, however. In homophobia, they create stereotypes. For example, not all lesbians may like to work on cars, only wear flannel, and have short hair. People are more complex than that; no one can accurately label someone else by using a word that already has meaning behind it. Really, there shouldn't be a race to label everyone anyhow, but, hey, modern society does not work that way. Everyone is obsessed with labels and how they fit into them.

      Homophobia creates labels with negative connotations; the people of this nation are buying into them. Slurs such as "gay", "faggot", and "lesbian" are used as insults and not as markers of identification. So how does feminism come play with all of this?

      "...We know that so long as the word lesbian can strike fear in any woman's heart, then work on behalf of women can be stopped; the only successful work against sexism must include work against homophobia" (Pharr, 91). So, in order for feminism to be successful, the removal of homophobia must also be included. It is as much an issue as the differences in the wage-gap between men and women.