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Adrian Lopez
Professor Beadle
English 115-TR-11:00
October 4th, 2016
A Societys Doing: Contribution and Construction

Within our society gender is binary it always has been in western culture. However, in
recent years gender theorists, sociologists, journalists and feminist scholars, such as Emily Kane,
Daniel Curran, Claire Renzetti, Aaron Devor, Barbara Kantrowitz, Pat Wingert and Ruth
Hubbard have challenged this cemented concept. In the book, Composing Gender: A Bedford
Spotlight Reader by John OHara and Rachel Groner, a collection of articles from many of these
individuals has been put together to understand how society constructs gender. These individuals
look to expose this growing concept of gender construction in order to support the growing
population of gender varied individuals. An overarching idea can be seen across a selection of
articles from Composing Gender, this idea being how society contributes to and constructs
everyones understanding, even my own, of gender through gender labels, expectation and the
patriarchal gender system.
First, In western society, gender labels are quite common, ranging from clothing to even
toys. Through these mediums are where everyones construction of gender occurs. We are raised
from birth to label view the things around us as boy related or girl related. Our parents choose
our clothing for us because of our biological sex and what is socially accepted. A prime example
of this concept can be viewed in Emily Kanes article, No Way My Boys are going to be like
that: Parents Responses to Childrens gender Nonconformity. I try not to encourage him to
like pink because, you know, hes not a girl. (Kane 93). The idea of the color pink being

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associated with girls is a societal construction. Girls wear pink because it represents femininity
boys wear blue because it is masculine. Furthermore, gender construction does not stop at
clothing, it can be seen even in childrens toys. It is evident when you go to a toy store and every
toy is divided into a girls section and a boys section. This is not just for convenience it is done
this way to reinforce societal norms. Girls play with dolls boys play with action figures. Another
form of reinforcement are the toys themselves. In the article, From Women, Men, and Society,
Claire Renzetti and Daniel Curran explain this second form of reinforcement. Toys for boys
tend to encourage exploration, manipulation, invention, construction, competition and
aggression. (Renzetti and Curran 82). These characteristics in childrens toys lead to a binary
system of how we perceive gender. We inadvertently differentiate mediums such as clothing and
toys into boy related and girl related because society deems it necessary to
In all societies, expectation shapes us as individuals it even constructs our understanding
of gender. Lets break this down into two views as society always has. Parental expectation
drives forth our perception of gender at the start of our life. While Societal expectations
consistently surround us. They are a part of a cycle that society has created. Claire Renzetti and
Daniel Curran state a reasonable example in their article, From Women, Men and Society.
Girls may be better behaved than boys because their mothers expect them to be. (Renzetti and
Curran 78) This expectation leads to how individuals expect the opposite genders role in society.
Ultimately, it is how we as humanity obtain our expected gender performances. Males lead
females follow. Put simply it is how in a dating scenario a male is expected to ask the female to a
date. Furthermore, society determines how gender is performed. Aaron Devor in his article,
Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender, clarifies societal expectation,
Society demands different gender performances from us and rewards, tolerates or punishes us

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differently for conformity to, or digression from, social norms. (Devor 35) These parental and
societal expectations for different gender performances fabricates our own understanding of
Gender.
Lastly, the Patriarchal Gender system in Western Civilization greatly influences our grasp
on gender. This connects with my previous paragraph on expectation. Aaron Devor describes this
system in his article, Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender, The
Ideology which the schema grows out of postulates that the cultural superiority of males is a
natural growth of the innate predisposition of males toward aggression and dominance. (Devor
40) This system, created by society, is the foundation of how we as humans construct our
knowledge of gender. Furthermore, it also leads to the concept of female subservience within our
society. In addition, we have a concrete standard of gender performance in our society. ender
performance is key and helps individuals understand their place in a community university
educated men with strong personal and political interests in describing women in ways that make
it appear natural for us to fulfill roles that are important for their well-being, personally and as
a group. (Hubbard 46) Ruth Hubbard explains the Patriarchal Gender system and how female
subservience warps our knowledge on gender roles. This warping of our knowledge of gender
explains why women are supposed to be submissive to men. Consequently, this system in our
society prevents women from holding positions of higher power as well as being equally
compensated to men. This drives our understanding and resolution of the binary system of
gender within the Western world.
We as a civilization are extremely progressive, with my generation becoming so
politically correct it seems very logical to see authors covering the perception of gender and how
it is constructed through multiple mediums. This explanation ignites the controversial topic of

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gender varied individuals. I believe these authors are covering this controversial topic of gender
construction to support the acceptance of the growing population of gender varied and LGBTQ
individuals. This growth pushes individuals such as Walter Bockting a clinical psychologist, who
believes their identities expand our understanding of gender. (Kantrowitz and Wingert 68). This
expansion of thought on gender identification leads to the grass roots of how we identify and
understand gender from a societal view. Therefore, we have the spawning of this topic of social
gender construction.
My overarching idea of societies contribution and construction of understanding gender
affects my life on a daily basis. Even in this writing, I noticed many of my examples that I cited
from my sources were male related. When I was a child the way my parents raised my brothers
and I was very traditional. We were taught to respect everyone, especially our elders, but most,
importantly girls. Due to the societal expectation of males respecting females. In addition, when
it came to chores around my house my mother and grandmother handled washing clothes and
cooking. My parents however, strictly supported the idea of my brothers and I being able to clean
the house and yard with them. So, chores that some individuals will consider to be done by
females were gender neutral in my home. Aside from that, I personally like to wear button down
shirts that have floral print on them, many would consider floral print to be associated with girls.
At first, I was hesitant about wearing floral print I even received some negative comments,
because males do not wear designs specifically worn by females. This personal experience shed
some light on identity for me because it was not normative for boys my age to wear floral print at
the time I was frowned upon. This is representative of social construction of gender at teenage
level. This common idea of social construction of gender seen across the collection of articles

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from Composing Gender: A Bedford Spotlight Reader, can be applied to everyones life in
western civilization and it can certainly be applied to my own.
In Conclusion, many individuals are completely unaware of how society creates our
gender. Through mediums such as Gender Labels, Expectation and the Patriarchal Gender
System our perception of gender is molded to societies demand. It is interesting to consider how
gender is a societal construction, in order to maintain a social order, maybe in the next 100 years
our social order of Male and Female genders will change.

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Works Cited Page

Groner, Rachael, and John O'Hara F. Composing Gender. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins,
2014.
Devor, Aaron. Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender.
Composing Gender: A Bedford Spotlight Reader. Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. Boston. Pages 3545
Hubbard, Ruth. Rethinking Womens Biology. Composing Gender: A Bedford
Spotlight Reader. Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. Boston. Pages 46-52
Kantrowitz, Barbara and Wingert, Pat. Are We Facing a Genderless Future?.
Composing Gender: A Bedford Spotlight Reader. Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. Boston. Pages 6871
Renzetti, Claire and Curran, Daniel. From Women, Men, and Society. Composing
Gender: A Bedford Spotlight Reader. Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. Boston. Pages 76- 87
Kane, W. Emily. No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents Responses to
Childrens Gender Noncomformity. Composing Gender: A Bedford Spotlight Reader.
Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. Boston. Pages 91-98