I think the biggest and most important way that "The Five Sexes" and "Doing Gender" relate to each other is
that by the time I finished reading them I realized that gender is not as black and white as I once thought it was. It's a gray zone.
It was really interesting reading about "The Five Sexes" because I knew nothing about this. I knew about "herms" (people with one testis and one ovary), but I did not know about "merms" (people with testes and some aspects of the female genitalia, but no ovaries) or "ferms" (people with ovaries and some aspects of the male genitalia but they lack testes). I actually learned in my Psychology of Women's class that it is not politically correct to call people hermaphrodites; the correct terminology is intersex. I found it to be super interesting how the term "hermaphrodite" came into being though!
Here is a quote I pulled from "Doing Gender" that I would like to talk about: "Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine 'natures.'" This quote interests me because it means that we are essentially playing a role that society has told us to play. When I was younger I often dressed like a boy, wearing army pants and Star Wars t-shirts. I hated dresses and makeup and anything considered remotely girly, but I didn't exactly want to be a boy either. My family forced me to wear dresses and I hated it. Today I like them and to a certain degree I do enjoy being "girly", but I wonder if for the most part, I was socialized into liking it. As I grew up I used to think that everything I knew was set in stone and was part of nature or something like that, but that's not true. A lot of what I know, in fact, most of what I know has been told to me by the media and those around me. Just because you like Star Wars, getting muddy, playing rough, and hate dresses doesn't make you any less of a girl. I was actually lucky growing up because girls are given more freedom to like boy stuff compared to the other way around. If I was a boy who wanted to wear skirts I would have been judged harsher. People probably would think that I am gay. Gender and sexuality are two completely different things and it's important to continue to have an open mind about it.
that by the time I finished reading them I realized that gender is not as black and white as I once thought it was. It's a gray zone.
It was really interesting reading about "The Five Sexes" because I knew nothing about this. I knew about "herms" (people with one testis and one ovary), but I did not know about "merms" (people with testes and some aspects of the female genitalia, but no ovaries) or "ferms" (people with ovaries and some aspects of the male genitalia but they lack testes). I actually learned in my Psychology of Women's class that it is not politically correct to call people hermaphrodites; the correct terminology is intersex. I found it to be super interesting how the term "hermaphrodite" came into being though!
Here is a quote I pulled from "Doing Gender" that I would like to talk about: "Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine 'natures.'" This quote interests me because it means that we are essentially playing a role that society has told us to play. When I was younger I often dressed like a boy, wearing army pants and Star Wars t-shirts. I hated dresses and makeup and anything considered remotely girly, but I didn't exactly want to be a boy either. My family forced me to wear dresses and I hated it. Today I like them and to a certain degree I do enjoy being "girly", but I wonder if for the most part, I was socialized into liking it. As I grew up I used to think that everything I knew was set in stone and was part of nature or something like that, but that's not true. A lot of what I know, in fact, most of what I know has been told to me by the media and those around me. Just because you like Star Wars, getting muddy, playing rough, and hate dresses doesn't make you any less of a girl. I was actually lucky growing up because girls are given more freedom to like boy stuff compared to the other way around. If I was a boy who wanted to wear skirts I would have been judged harsher. People probably would think that I am gay. Gender and sexuality are two completely different things and it's important to continue to have an open mind about it.