Critical Response #2

Critical Response #2

Gender is an important aspect of a person’s identity, shaping social life and informing attitudes, behavior and the individual sense of self. The author goes ahead to say that gender is a social script shaping the qualities of femininity and masculinity. Therefore, I think culture has a significant role in the gender attributes which have accumulated over the evolution of time. Simply put, gender is the social organization of sexual difference (biological and cultural). Sex has two meanings. The first is the act of intercourse between two individuals and the other is determination of the gender. According to me gender and sexuality, share many different relationships. By this I mean that sexuality generally means sexual orientation. If we consider gender as the attributes of a particular sex, generally the sexual orientation and the attributes of gender favor heterosexuality and especially men in heterosexual position compared to people in other categories. Hence, gender and sexuality impose limitations towards any direction a person wants to act or behave towards. This is one of greatest problems we face as a society with development at such rapid scale in all segments.

I’m not sure if I understood your question about explaining at least three different frameworks of making sense of gender, but my understanding is that on what grounds is gender justified into being biased or directed towards a particular gender. Social construction is based on previous experiences of different cultures. Another aspect is biological differences of man and woman. The biology of man supports the strenuous physical labor which is endured for the particular jobs. The third aspect would be giving in to the mass mentality. Many of us may have felt the bias towards a particular side, but we are afraid to go against it as we feel we will seem the odd one out.

I have a personal example to explain why I feel gender is socially constructed. (Just a recap) I am an international student from India who joined VT at the age 18 in fall’03. I was in a serious relationship since 3 years before with Sneha who was 4 years older to me(when I joined VT). During that time her elder cousin told her to reconsider our relationship. Her basis was that even when I graduate I would not be on my feet (monetarily independent from my father irrespective of him being able to take care of me till much later). Her cousin thought that the future with someone who is dependant on his father will not be helpful for her in the long run. I view this as the society around her who is cautious irrespective of the emotional attachments around us and has chosen to take the safer way out. This stands out more for me because the cousin was in an emotional relationship and chose the safer route out.
After reading “ Gender in A Transnational World I would prefer to answer the following questions from my personal perspective. Regarding the relationships between science/technology and sex/gender according to me are that, primarily the internet allows one to be transparent. By this I mean that we control most of the attributes we give out online regarding behavior or actual orientation. Therefore, we can view the internet as more open and flexible to one’s orientation or situational behavior without imposing a judgment with a final conclusion.(I am not sure if I have clearly answered the questions you posed. If you feel that I am going in the wrong direction to what you require I shall correct and repost my entry with the correct modifications.)