#Male Dominate Culture

[examing-gender-blog]

A Basic Social "De"Construction on Gender

In "The Social Construction of Gender" Judith Lorber gives an easy to follow look at how gender dictates social order. Lorber has a gift for making you look at the world you live in through a much finer lenses than we do on a daily basis.

Having read this before I still feel that her first page is brilliant. "Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water." There is no more perfect a description; gender is the water we swim through everyday, the seemingly invisible thing we must mold ourselves to fit within constantly. In describing how we "do gender" (if you can I suggest reading the West and Zimmerman article Lorber sites) Lorber shows how basic an instinct it is to look at/for gender. The description of the babies on a New York City bus shows both how we are making a little progress in our thinking by having dressing babies in less gendered colors. It also shows how things haven't changed, and likely never will, in that the author of this article (who is obviously open minded about gender) was looking at these babies and trying to figure out what gender they are. Even those who are aware of how gendered society is and that changes need to be made will still fall victim to the years of training our brains have been through, making it difficult to challenge the male dominate culture.