Dear Keith,it depends on how you interpret gender, which I do as a
performance (see Judith Butler), rather than an individual attribute
that one 'has'. That is, one performs (enacts) gender through
behaviour, appearance, actions and language. This allows us to
separate sex (based on anatomy) from sex category and gender, which is
culturally and socially constituted and reproduced through
performance. Multiple masculinities and femininities are performed on
a daily basis. Hegemonic masculinity is performed by, for example, a
few of our (recent) previous male Prime Ministers. In Australia, that
is, for those who have not kept up with the changing kaleidoscope of
political leadership over the past decade. For an overview of the
differences between sex, sex-identity and gender, see pp. 24–25 of
my PhD thesis, where I cite West and Fenstermaker, who state that
gender is:
…a situated accomplishment of societal members, the local
management of conduct in relation to normative conceptions of
appropriate attitudes and activities for particular sex
categories…gender is not merely an individual attribute but
something that is accomplished in interaction with others (1995, p.
21). Thus, gender is a verb (that one enacts), rather than a noun
(something an individual owns or was born with), such as gendered
practices and discourses. As a process which requires continual
reproduction, we all engage in reproducing gendered practices (women
and men). Being aware of their very existence as dependent on their
being reproduced means they are also vulnerable – in other words, we
are in a position to change gendered practices. The same for raced
practices. And practices that produce subject positions based on the
intersection of gender, race, class, ability, etc.cheers, teen Oops -
I forgot ³we as gender² mostly because I mostly forget I have a
gender.
West, C. & Fenstermaker, S. 1995, 'Doing difference', _Gender &
Society_, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 8–37.
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