that's a big question, Terry!

I believe it boils down to convenience. Yes, convenience. We cannot NOT know
how to treat people in everyday life. We form conventions for dealing with
all sorts of social interactions and gender is one of them. It is a core
ordering social category. We learn to act like a man or a woman not because
we are biologically pre-determined to do so but because it is socially
convenient to occupy an established gender.

I reject the idea that gender is necessarily associated with "biological"
males and females. Gender happens to be associated with "biological" males
and females because we are socially trained to occupy those roles, not
because it is pre-ordained. Again, there are some exceptions to this,
specifically relating to heightened levels of aggression in some
circumstances due to male testosterone levels, but most of what we think of
as biologically "male" and "female" are actually socially constructed "man"
and "woman."

Drag queens and kings tell us that when we "do" gender, we can often fool
people without changing our biological traits. The Fa'Fa'fine of Samoa and
the Ladyboys of SE Asia tell us that our disbelief about a third gender is
rooted in our particular cultures, not biology.




On Jan 20, 2008 2:58 PM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi Sam,
> I'm interested in how you feel the reason for gendering occurs and why
> biological women and men are associated with genders.
> Best wishes,
> Terry
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
> research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sam
> Ladner
> Sent: Sunday, 20 January 2008 7:34 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Gender
>
> Hello all,
>
> While I haven't read every post on this topic, I see a bit of confusion
> that
> can be cleared up by looking at gender studies' fundamentals.
>
> The notion that men and women have "different hormones" really is
> irrelevant
> here. Men's and women's hormonal structure has been shown to affect a very
> narrow portion of human behavior, specifically relating to aggression. See
> Armstrong and Armstrong, The Double Ghetto for a very nice critique of
> supposed anatomical differences that are actually constructed out of
> gendered assumptions.
>
> Gender is a very fluid category. See for example the excellent film
> Paradise
> Bent, the story of the Fa'Fa'Fine on the island of Samoa. This is
> effectively a third gender: anatomical men that take on stereotypical
> feminine roles, including housework, childrearing and sexualized labour.
> These men are not ashamed or hidden -- in fact it's considered a blessing
> to
> have such people in one's family.
>
> The point of that example is to show our "male designers" discussion isn't
> about men, but false androgyny. We assume there to be one gender of
> importance, that is the masculine gender. We ignore "feminine" issues of
> home life, reproductive labour, sexual objectification, and systemic
> under-valuing of empathy.
>
> We will likely NOT see a 50/50 ratio of credentialed designers, just as we
> do not see a 50/50 ratio of law firm partners, CEOs, engineers, computer
> scientists, surgeons, or airline pilots despite many years of women
> entering
> these fields. The issue isn't that we don't have enough women with
> sufficient experience in the field yet, and just given time, we will have
> them.
>
> No the issue is the systematic undervaluing of life concerns that
> typically
> fall under women's responsibility. That is to say women's domestic labour
> and social labour prevents them from reaping the full benefit of their
> professional experience.
>
> Gender is not sex; women are not anatomically determined to be empathetic
> or
> caring. Neither are men pre-programmed to be insensitive poor designers
> who
> ignore the users of their products.
>
>