Paper Title
Panel
Identity and Fluidity in Gender and Sexuality
Location
Room 214, West Center
Keywords
Gender, Construction, Socialization, Male Gaze, Gender Performance
Start Date
2-4-2016 2:00 PM
End Date
2-4-2016 3:15 PM
Abstract
In the historical and social landscape that currently exists in America, the concept of gender, and especially the concept of women, has been created and enforced through societal expectations. From essentialism in the past, social and psychological theory has evolved to consider the social impact on gender construction. Foucault’s prison theory, Berger’s theory of surveying, and Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze can be used to show that gender, though it used to be viewed as inherent to a person’s identity, is actually a process of social conditioning. Women are shaped by society but continue to follow their roles because social pressure, as it applies to gender, is perpetual and eventually is imposed by women on themselves. Distinctions in the way that men and women speak and utilize language, ways that women are treated in the media and advertising as nurturing and submissive or as sexual objects, and the way that young girls are marketed sexualized products from a young age prove that men and women are different. However, this difference is a direct result of being socialized into occupying separate roles, a phenomenon that has created a restrictive and limited interpretation of gender.
Included in
Gender as a Socially Constructed Phenomenon
Room 214, West Center
In the historical and social landscape that currently exists in America, the concept of gender, and especially the concept of women, has been created and enforced through societal expectations. From essentialism in the past, social and psychological theory has evolved to consider the social impact on gender construction. Foucault’s prison theory, Berger’s theory of surveying, and Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze can be used to show that gender, though it used to be viewed as inherent to a person’s identity, is actually a process of social conditioning. Women are shaped by society but continue to follow their roles because social pressure, as it applies to gender, is perpetual and eventually is imposed by women on themselves. Distinctions in the way that men and women speak and utilize language, ways that women are treated in the media and advertising as nurturing and submissive or as sexual objects, and the way that young girls are marketed sexualized products from a young age prove that men and women are different. However, this difference is a direct result of being socialized into occupying separate roles, a phenomenon that has created a restrictive and limited interpretation of gender.
