Gender (Sociology)

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This past week we have been focusing on gender. Gender is a fundamental social division. All around us we see differences between men and women (and girls and boys). The way they dress. The activities they engage in. What they say. What they want out of life. We see gender differences in the college classroom -- who tends to major in what subjects? We see gender differences at the workplace -- who tends to hold positions of power and authority? We see gender differences in the home -- who tends to do the majority of housework? These social arrangements, which create and sustain gender differences, end up having powerful effects on the lifestyles and life chances of individuals.

ESSAY TOPIC
Are we ever not doing gender? From the moment we wake up until we go to bed, it seems like we are constantly doing gender. For this essay, I want you to walk me through a small segment of your day (when you wake up, when you walk to class, when you eat lunch, when you shop, when you drive or ride the bus, when you go out on a date, when you attend religious ceremonies, when you watch movies with friends, etc). Do not describe your whole day, but rather, choose some small segment (a strip) of your life to describe. During that small segment of your day, in what ways are you doing gender? How are you displaying your gendered identity? Given the situation you find yourself in, how are you conforming -- or not -- to gendered expectations of behavior? As you write up your response, please reference and integrate into your essay the reading by West and Zimmerman "Doing Gender" and/or Judith Lorber's "Night to His Day"

My profile: I am a junior international student in California. I'm from china and I am a girl.

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5 Lorber! "Night to His Day" 5 "Night to His Day": The Social Construction of Gender Judith Lorber . Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water. Cender is so much the routine ground of everyday activities that questioning its taken-far-granted assumptions and presuppositions is like thinking about whether the sun will come up.1 Cender is so pervasive that in our society we assume it is bred into our genes. Most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life. Yet gender, like culture, is a human production that de­ pends on everyone constantly "doing gender" (West and 'Zimmerman 1987) An\~ everyone "does gender" without thinking about it. Today, on the subway, I saw a well-dressed man with a year-old child in a stroller. Yesterday, on a bus, I saw a man with a tiny baby ina carrier on his chest. Seeing men taking care of small children in public is increasircgly common-at least in New York City. But both men were quite obviously stared at-and smiled at, approvingly. Everyone was doing gender-the men who were changing the role of fathers and the other pas­ sengers, who were applauding them silently. But there was more gendering going on that probably fewer people noticed. The baby was wearing a white crocheted cap and white clothes. You couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. The child in the stroller was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and dark print pants. As they started to leave the train, the father put a Yankee baseball cap 011 the child's head. Ah, a boy, I thought. Then I noticed the gleam of tiny earrings in the child's ears, and as they got off, I saw the little flowered sneakers and lace-trimmed socks. Not a boy after all. Cender done. Cender is such a familiar part of daily life that it usually takes a deliberate dis­ ruption of our expectations of how women and men are supposed to act to pay at­ tention to how it is produced. Cender signs and signals are so ubiquitous that we usually fail to note them-unless they are missing or ambiguous. Then we are un­ comfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated.... From" 'Night to His Day': The Social ComtLlction of Gender," in Paradoxes Copyright 1994. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press. or Gender, pp. 13-36. 55 For the individual, gender construction starts with assignment to a sex categorYI on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth Z Then babies are dressed orl adorned in a way that displays !Iw category because parents don't want to be con-, stantly askee; whether their baby IS a girl or a boy. A sex category becomes a gender status through naming, dress, and the use of other gender markers. Once a child's gender is evident, others treat those in one gender differently from those in the other, and the children respond to the different treatment by feeling different and behaving differently. As soon as they can talk, they start to refer to themselves as members of their gender. Sex doesn't corne into play again until puberty, but by that time, sexual feelings and desires and practices have been shaped by gendered norms and expectations. Adolescent boys and girls approach and avoid each other in an elaborately scripted and gendered mating dance. Parenting is gendered, with different expectations for mothers and for fathers, and people of different genders work at different kinds of jobs. The work adults do as mothers ar;,1 fathers and as low-level workers and high-level bosses, shapes women's and men's life experi­ ences, and these experiences produce different feelings, consciousness, relation­ ships, skills-ways of being that we call feminine or masculine 3 All of these processes constitute the social construction of gender. Cendered roles change-today fathers are taking care of little children, girls and boys are wearing unisex clothing and getting the same education, women and men are working at the same jobs. Although many traditional social groups are quite strict about maintaining gender differences, in other socia! groups they seem to be blurring. Then why the one-year-old's earrings? Why is it still so important to mark a child as a girl or a boy, to make sure she is not taken for a boy or he for a girl? What would happen if they were? They would, quite literally, have changed places in their social world. To explain why gendering is done from birth, constantly and by everyone, we have to look not only at the way individuals experience gender but at gender as a so­ CIal institution. As a social institution, gender is one of the major ways that human beings organize their lives. Human society depends on a predictable division of labor, a designated allocation of SCarce goods, assigned responsibility for children and others who cannot care for themselves, common values and their systematic transmission to new members, legitimate leadership, music, art, stories, garnes, and other symbolic productions. One way of choosing people for the different tasks of society is on the basis of their talents, motivations, and competence-their demon­ strated achievements. The other way is on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity-as­ cribed membership in a category of people. Although societies vary in the extent to which they use one or the other of these ways of allocating people to work and to carry out other responsibilities, every society uses gender and age grades. Every soci­ ety classifies people as "girl and boy children," "girls and boys ready to be married," and "fully adult women and men," constructs similarities among them and differ­ ences between them, and assigns them to different roles and responsibilities. Personality characteristics, feelings, motivations, and ambitions flow from these different life experiences so that the me/nbers of these different groups become 56 I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality different kinds of people. The process of gendering and its outcome are legitimated by religion, law, science, and the society's entire set of values .... Western society's values legitimate gendering by claiming that it all comes from physiology-female and male procreative differences. But gender and sex are not equivalent, and gender as a social construction does not flow automatically from genitalia and reproductive organs, the main physiological differences of fe­ males and males. In the construction of ascribed social statuses, physiological dif­ ferences such as sex, stage of development, color of skin, and size are crude marke,s. They are not the source of the social statuses of gender, age grade, and race. Social statuses are carefully constructed through prescribed processes of teaching, learning, emulation, and enforcement. Whatever genes, hormones, and biological evolution contribute to human social institutions is materially as well as qualitatively transformed by social practices. Evcry social institution has a material base, but culture and social practices transform that base into something with qual­ itatively different patterns and constraints. The economy is much more than pro­ ducing food and goods and distributing them to eaters and users; family and kinship are not the equivalent of having sex and procreating; morals and religions cannot be equated with the fears and ecstasies of the brain; language goes far be­ yond the sounds produced by tongue and larynx. No one eats "money" or "credit"; the concepts of "god" and "angels" are the subjects of theological disquisitions; not only words but objects, such as their flag, "speak" to the citizens of a country. Similarly, gcnder cannot be equated with biological and physiological differ­ ences between human females and males. The building blocks of gender are so­ cially constructed statuses. Western socIeties have only two genders, "man" and "woman." Some societies have three genders- men, women, and berdaches or hiiras or xaniths. Berdaches, hijras, and xaniths are biological males who behave, dress, work, and are treated in most respects as social women; they are therefore not men, nor are they female women; they are, in our language, "male women."4 There are Mrican and American Indian societies that have a gender status called manly hearted Women- biological females who work, marry, and parent as men; their so­ cial status is "female men" (Amadiume 1987; Blackwood 1984). They do not have to behave or dress as men to have the social responsibilities and prerogatives of hus­ bands and fathers; what makes them men is enough wealth to buy a wife. Modern Western societies' transsexuals and transvestites are the nearcst equiva­ lent of these crossover genders, but they are not institutionalized as third genders (Bolin 1987). Transsexuals are biological males and females who have sex-change operations to alter their genitalia. They do so in order to bring their physical anatomy in congruence with the way they want to live and with their own sense of gender identity. They do not become a third gender; they change genders. Transvestites are males who live as women and females who live as men but do not intend to have sex-change surgery. Their dress, appearance, and mannerisms fall within the range of what is expected from members of the opposite gender, so that they "pass." They also change genders, sometimes temporarily, some for most of their lives. Transvestite women have fought in wars as men soldiers as recently as 5 Lorber / "Night to His Day" 57 the nineteenth century; some married women, and others went back to being women and married men once the war was over.' Some were discovered when their wounds were treated; others not until they died. In order to work as a jazz musician, a man's occupation, Billy Tipton, a woman, lived most of her life as a man. She died recently at seventy-four, leaving a wife and three adopted sons for whom she was husband and father, and musicians with whom she had played and traveled, for whom she was "one of the boys" (New York Times 1989).6 There have been many other such occurrences of women passing as men to do more presti­ gious or lucrative men's work (Matthaei 1982, 192-93).7 Genders, therefore, are not attached to a biological substratum. Gender boundaries are breachablc, and individual and socially organized shifts from one gender to another call attention to "cultural, social, or aesthetic dissonances" (Garber 1992, 16). These odd or deviant or third genders show us what we ordinar­ ily take for granted-that people have to learn to be women and men .... For Individuals, Gender Means Sameness Although the possible combinations of genitalia, body shapes, clothing, manner­ isms, sexuality, and roles could produce infinite varieties in human beings, the so­ cial institution of gcndcr depends on the production and maintenance of a limited number of gender statuses and of making the members of these statuses similar to each other. Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be taught to be masculine or feminineS As SImone de Beauvoir saId: "One is not born, but rather becomes, :3 woman ... ; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature ... which is described as feminine." (1953, 267). Children learn to walk, talk, and gesture the way their social group says gnls and boys should. Ray Birdwhistell, in his analysis of body motion as human com­ munication, calls these learned gender displays tertiary sex characteristics and ar­ gues that they are needed to distinguish genders because humans are a weakly dimorphic species-their only sex markers are genitalia (1970, 39-46). Clothing, paradoxically, often hides the sex but displays the gender. In early childhood, humans develop gendered personality structures and sexual orientations through their interactions with parents of the same and opposite gen­ der. As adolescents, they conduct their sexual behavior according to gendered scripts. Schools, parents, peers, and the mass media guide young people into gen­ dered work and family roles. As adults, they take on a gendered social status in their society's stratification system. Gender is thus both ascribed and achieved (West and Zimmerman 1987). .. Gender norms are inscribed in the way people move, gesture, and even eat. In one African society, men were supposed to eat with their "whole mouth, whole­ heartedly, and not, like women, just with the lips, that is halfheartedly, with reser­ vation and restraint" (Bourdieu [1980] 1990, 70). Men and women in this society learncd to walk in ways that proclaimed their different positions in the society: 51> I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality The manly man, , , stands up straight into the face of the person he approaches, or wishes to welcome, Ever on the alert, because ever threatened, he misses nothing of what happens around him, , , , Conversely, a well brought-up woman, , , is expected to walk with a slight stoop, avoiding every misplaced movement of her body, her head or her arms, looking down, keeping her eyes on the spot where she will next put her foot, especially if she happens to have to walk past the men's assembly, (70) , , , For human beings there is no essential femaleness or maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expecta­ tions, Individuals may vary on many of the components of gender and may shift genders temporarily or permanently, but they must fit into the limited number of gender statuses their society recognizes. In the process, they re-create their society's version of women and men: "If we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sus­ tain, reproduce, and render legitimate the institutional arrangements. , .. If we fail to do gender appropriately, we as individuals-not the institutional arrange­ ments-may be called to account (for our character, motives, and predisposi­ tions)" (West and Zimmerman 1987, 146). The gendered practices of everyday life reproduce a society's view of how women and men should act (Bourdieu [1980] 1990). Gendered social arrange­ ments are justified by religion and cultural productions and backed by law, but the most powerful means of sustaining the moral hegemony of the dominant gender ideology is that the process is made invisible; any possible alternatives are Virtually unthinkable (Foucault 1972; Gramsci 1971)9 For Society, Gender Means Difference The pervasiveness of gender as a way of structuring social life demands that gender statuses be clearly differentiated. Varied talents, sexual preferences, identities, per­ sonalities, interests, and ways of interacting fragment the individual's bodily and social experiences. Nonetheless, these are organized in Western cultures into two and only two socially and legally recognized gender statuses, "man" and "woman."lO In the social construction of gender, it does not matter what men and women actually do; it does not even matter if they do exactly the same thing. The social institution of gender insists only that what they do is perceived as different. If men and women are doing the same tasks, they are usually spatially segre­ gated to maintain gender separation, and often the tasks are given different job ti­ tles as well, such as executive secretary and administrative assistant (Reskin 1988). If the differences between women and men begin to blur, society's "sameness taboo" goes into action (Rubin 1975, 178). At a rock and roll dance at West Point in 1976, the year women were admitted to the prestigious military academy for the first time, the school's administrators "were reportedly perturbed by the sight of mirror-image couples dancing in short hair and dress gray trousers," and a rule was 5 Lorber / "Night to His Day" 59 established that women cadets could dance at these events only if they wore skirts (Barkalow and Raab 1990, 53).11 Women recruits in the U,S. Marine Corps are re­ quired to wear makeup-at a minimum, lipstick and eye shadow-and they have to take classes in makeup, hair care, poise, and etiquette. This feminization is part of a deliberate policy of making them clearly distinguishable from men Marines. Christine Williams quotes a twenty-five-year-old woman drill instructor as saying: "A lot of the recruits who come here don't wear makeup; they're tomboyish or ath­ letic. A lot of them have the preconceived idea that going into the military means they can still be a tomboy. They don't realize that you are a Woman Marine" (1989,76-77)12 If gender differences were genetic, physiological, or hormonal, gender bending and gender ambiguity would occur only in hermaphrodites, who are born with chromosomes and genitalia that are not clearly female or male. Since gender dif­ ferences are socially constructed, all men and all women can enact the behavior of the other, because they know the other's social script: " 'Man' and 'woman' are at once empty and overflowing categories. Empty because they have no ultimate, transcendental meaning. Overflowing because even when they appear to be fixed, they still contain within them alternative, denied, or suppressed definitions," (Scott 1988,49).... For one transsexual man-to-woman, the experience of living as a woman changed hislher whole personality. As James, Morris had been a soldier, foreign correspondent, and mountain climber; as Jan, Morris is a successful travel writer. But socially, James was superior to Jan, and so Jan developed the "learned helpless­ ness" that is supposed to characterize women in Western society: We are told that the social gap between the sexes is narrowing, but I can only report that having, in the second half of the twentieth century, experienced life in both roles, there seems to me no aspect of existence, no moment of the day, no contact, no arrangement, no response, which is not different for men and for women, The very tone of voice in which I was now addressed, the very posture of the person next in the queue, the very feel in the air when I entered a room or sat at a restaurant table, constantly emphasized my change of status. And if other's responses shifted, so did my own. The more I was trea ted as woman, the more woman I became. I adapted willy-nilly. If I was assumed to be incompetent at reversing cars, or opening bottles, oddly incompetent I found my­ self becoming. If a case was thought too heavy for me, inexplicably I fouIld it so myself,. . Women treated me with a frankness which, while it was one of the happiest discoveries of my metamorphosis, did imply membership of a camp, a faction, or at least a school of thought; so I found myself gravitating always towards the female, whether in sharing a railway compartment or supporting a political cause, Men treated me more and more as junior, , .. and so, addressed every day of my life as an inferior, involuntarily, month by month I accepted the condition. I discovered that even now men prefer women to be less informed, less able, less talkative, and certainly Jess self-centered than they are themselves; so I gerrerally obliged them. (1975,165-66)]1 I The Social Construction o(Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality 5 Lorber I "Night to His Day" 61 Gender as Process, Stratification, and Structure characteristics of these c::ltegories define the Other as that which lacks the valuable As a social institution, gender is a process of creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities. As part of a stratification system that ranks these statuses unequally, gender is a major building block in the social structures built on these unequal statuses. As a process, gender creates the social differences that define "woman" and "man." In social interaction throughout their lives, individuals learn what is ex­ pected, see what is expected, act and react in expected ways, and thus simultane­ ously construct and maintain the gender order: "The very injunction to be a given gender takes place through discursive routes: to be a good mother, to be a heterosexually desirable object, to be a fit worker, in sum, to signify a multiplicity of guarantees in response to a variety of different demands all at once" (Butler 1990, 145). Members of a social group neither make up gender as they go along nor exactly replicate in rote fashion what was done before. In almost every en­ counter, human beings produce gender, behaving in the ways they learned were appropriate for their status, or resisting or rebelling against these norms, Resistance £lDd rebellion have altered gender norms, but so far they have rarely eroded the statuses. Gendered patterns of mteraction acquire additional layers of gendered sexual­ ity, parenting, and work behaviors in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Gendered norms and expectations are enforced through informal sanctions of gender-inappropriate behavior by peers and by formal punishment or threat of punishment by those in authority should behavior deviate too far from socially imposed standards for women and men .... As part of a stratification system, gender ranks men above women of the same race and class. Women and men could be diffcrent but equal. [n practice, the process of creating difference depends to a great extent on differential evaluation, As .f';ancy Jay (1981) says: "That which is defined, separated out, isolated from all else is A and pure. Not-A is necessarily impure, a random catchall, to which noth­ ing is external except A and the principle of order that separates it from Not-A" (45). From the individual's point of view, whichever gender is A, the other is Not­ A; gender boundaries tell the individual who is like him or her, and all the rest are unlike. From society's point of view, however, one gender is usually the touch­ stone, the normal, the dominant, and the other is different, deViant, and subordi­ nate, In Western society, "man" is A, "wo-man" is Not-A. (Consider what a society would be like where woman was A and man NotA) The further dichotomization by race and class constructs the gradations of a heterogeneous society's stratification scheme. Thus, in the United States, white is A, African American is Not-A; middle class is A, working class is Not-A, and "African-American women occupy a position whereby the inferior half of a series of these dichotomies converge" (Collins 1990, 70). The dominant categories are the hegemonic ideals, taken so for granted as the way things should be that white is not ordinarily thought of as a race, middle class as a class, or men as a gender. The qualities the dominants exhibit. In a gender-stratified society, what men do is usually v::llued more highly than wh8t women do because men do it, even when their activities are very similar or the same. In different regions of southern India, for example, harvesting rice is men's work, shared work, or women's work: "Wherever a task is done by women It is considered easy, and where it is done by [men] it is conSIdered difficult" (Mencher 1988, 104). A gathering and hunting society's survival Llsually depends on the nuts, grubs, ::Ind small animals brought in by the women's foraging trips, but when the mcn's hunt is successful, it is the occasion for a celebration, Conversely, bec::luse they are the superior group, white men do not have to do the "dirty work," such ::IS housework; the most inferior group does it, usually poor women of color (Palmer 1989)... , Societies vary in the extent of the inequality in social status of their women and men members, but where there is inequality, the status "woman" (and its atten­ dant behavior and role allocations) is usually held in lesser esteem than the status "man," Since gender is also intertwined with a society's other constructed statuses of differential evaluation-race, religion, occupation, class, country of origin, and so on-men and women members of the favored groups comm::lnd more power, more prestige, and more property than the members of thc disfavored groups Within many social groups, however, men are advantaged over women. The more economic resources, such as educ::ltion and job opportunities, are available to a group, the more they tend to be monopolized by men. In poorer groups that have few resources (such as working-c1::1ss Mrican Americans in the United States), women and men are more nearly equ::ll, and the women may even outstrip the men in education ::Ind occupational status (Almquist 1987). As a structure, gender divides work in the home and in economic production, legitimates those in authority, and organizes sexuality and emotional life (Connell 1987, 91-142). As primary parents, women significantly influence children's psy­ chological development and emotiol18l attachments, in the process reproducing gender. Emergent sexuality is shaped by heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and sadomasochistic patterns that are gendered -different for girls and boys, and for women and men-so that sexual statuses reflect gender statuses. Wnen gender is a major componcnt of structured inequality, the devalued gen­ ders have less power, prestige, and economic rewards than the valued genders. In countries that discouwge gender discrimination, many m::ljor roles are still gendered; women still do most of the domestic labor and child rearing, even while doing full­ time paid work; women and men are segregated on the job and each does work con­ sidered "appropriate"; women's work is usually paid less than men's work. IvIen dominate the positions of authority and leadership in government, the military, and the law; cultural productions, religions, and sports reflect men's interests. In societies that create the gre~test gender difference, such as Saudi Arabia, women are kept out of sight behind walls or veils, have no ciVil rights, and often cultural ::Ind emotional world of their own (Bernard 1981) But even in 60 G~: ~, ,::; 5 62 I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality Lorber / "Night to His Day" 63 10. Other societies recognize more than two categories, but usually no more than three societies with less rigid gender boundaries, women and men spend much of their time with people of their own gender because of the way work and family are orga­ nized. This spatial separation of women and men reinforces gt:ndered different­ ness, identity, and ways of thinking and behaving (Coser 1986), Gender inequality-the devaluation of "women" and the social domination of "men" -has social functions and a social history. It is not the result of sex, procre­ ation, physiology, anatomy, hormones, or genetic predispositions, It is produced and maintained by identifiable social processes and built into the general social structure and individual identities deliberately and purposefully. The social order as we know it in Western societies is organized around racial ethnic, class, and gender inequality. I contend, therefore, that the continuing purpose of gender as a modern social institution is to construct women as a group to be the subordinates of men as a group, The life of everyone placed in the status "woman" is "night to his day-that has forever been the fantasy, Black to his white. Shut out of his sys­ tem's space, she is the repressed that ensures the system's functioning" (Cixous and Clement [1975] 1986,67). or four (Jacobs and Roberts 1989). 11. Carol Barkalow's book has a photograph of eleven first-year West Pointers in a math class, who are dressed in regulation pants, shirts, and sweaters, with short haircuts. The cap­ tion challenges the reader to locate the only woman in the room. 12. The taboo on males and females looking alike reflects the U.S. militJ';'s homopho­ bia (Berube 1989). If you can't tell those with a penis from those with a vagina, how are you going to determine whether their sexual interest is heterosexual or homosexual unless you watch them having sexual relations? 13. See Bolin 1988, 149-50, for transsexual men-to-women's discovery of the dangers of rape and sexual harassment. Devor's "gender blenders" went in the opposite direction. Because they found that it was an advantage to be taken for men, they did not deliberately cross-dress, but they did not feminize themselves either (1989, 126-40). REFERENCES Almquist, Elizabeth M, 1987. Labor market gendered inequality iC) minority groups Gender 6 Society 1:400-14. Amadiume, Ifi, 1987, Male daughters, female husbands: Gender and sex in an African NOTES I, Gender is, in Erving Goffman's words, an aspect of Felicity's Condition: "any arrangement which leads us to judge an individual's. , . acts not to be a manifestation of strangeness, Behind Felicity's Condition is our sense of what it is to be sane" (1983, 27). Also see Bern 1993; Frve 1983, 17-40; Goffman 1977, 2, In cases of a~biguity in countries with modern medicine, surgery is usually per­ formed to make the genitalia more clearly male or female. 3. See Butler 1990 for an analySIS of how doing gender is gender Identity, 4. On the hijras of India, see Nanda 1990; on the xaniths of Oman, Wikan 1982, 168-86; on the American lndian berdaches, W. L. Williams 1986, Other societies that have similar institutionalized third-gender men are the Koniag of Alaska, the Tanala of Madagascar, the Mesakin of Nuba, and the Chukchee of Siberia (Wikan 1982, 170), 5. Durova 1989; Freeman and Bond 1992; Wheelwright 1989. 6. Gender segregatiol~ of work in popular music still has not changed very much, ac­ cording to Groce and Cooper 1990, despite considerable androgyny in some very popular figures. See Garber 1992 on the androgyny. She discusses Tipton on pp. 67-70, 7, In the nineteenth century, not only did these women get men's wages, but they also "had male privileges and could do all manner of things other women could not: open a bank account, write checks, own property, go anywhere unaccompanied, vote in elections" (Faderman 1991,44), 8. For an account of how a potential man-to-woman transsexual learned to be femi­ nine, see Garfinkel 1967, 116-85,285-88, For a gloss on this account that points out how, throughout his encounters with Agnes, Garfinkel failed to see how he himself was con­ structing his own masculinity, see Rogers 1992. 9, The concepts of moral hegemony, the effects of everyday activities (praxis) on thought and personality, and the necessity of consciousness of these processes before politi­ cal change can occur are all based on Marx's analysis of class relations, society. London: Zed Books. Barkalow, Carol, with Andrea Raab. 1990, In the men's house. New York: Poseidon Press. Bem, Sandra Lipsitz, 1993. The lenses of gender: Transfonning the debate on sexual in­ equality. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bernard, Jessie, 1981. The female world. New York: Free Press, Berube, Allan. 1989. Marching to a different drummer: Gay and lesbian GIs m World War II. In Duberman, Vicinus, and Chauncey. Birdwhistell, Ray L. 1970. Kinesics and context: Essays on body motion communication Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Blackwood, Evelyn. 1984. Sexu81ity and gender in certain Native American tribes: The case of cross-gender females. Signs: ioumal of Women in Culture and Society 10:27-42, Bolin, Anne. 1987. Transsexualism and the limits of traditional analysis. American Behavioral Scientist 31 :41-65. 1988. In s~arch of Eve: Transsexual rites of passage. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey. Bourdieu, Pierre, [1980] 1990, The logic of practice. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University '.: Press. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York and London: Routledge, Cixous, Helene, and Catherine Clement. [1975J 1986. The newly bam woman, tr8ns­ lated by Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowennent. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Connell, R.[Robert] W. 1987. Gender and power: Societ)', the person, and sexual poli­ tics. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Coser, Rose Laub, 1986. Cognitive structure and the use of social space. Sociological Fon.1m 1: 1-26 4 64 6 Hubbard! The Social Construction of Sexuality 65 The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality De Beauvoir, Simone. 1953. The second sex, translated by H. M. Parshley. New York: Knopf. Devor, Holly. 1989. Gender blending: Confronting the limits of duality. Bloomington: Indiana Un iversity Press. Duberman, Martin Bauml, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. (eds.). 1989. Hidden from history: Reclaiming the gay and lesbian past. New York: New American Library. Durova, Nadezhda. 1989. The cavalry maiden: Journals of a Russian officer in the Napoleonic Wars, translated by Mary Fleming Zirin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dwyer, Daisy, and Judith Bruce (eds.). \988. A home divided: Women and income in the Third World. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Faderman, Lillian. 1991. Odd girls and twilight lovers: A histoT)' of lesbian life in twentieth-century America. New York: Columbia University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The archeology of knowledge and the discourse on language, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon. Freeman, Lucy, and Alma Halbert Bond. 1992. America's first woman warrior: The courage of Deborah Sampson. r\ew York: Paragon. Frye, Marilyn. 1983. The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory. Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press. Garber, Marjorie. 1992. Vested interests: Cross-dressing and cultural anxiety. New York and London: Routledge. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice­ Hall. Goffman, Erving. 1977. The arrangement between the sexes. Theory and Society 4:301-33. _ _. 1983. Felicity's condition. American Journal of Sociology 89: 1-53. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the prison notebooks, translated and edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers. Groce, Stephen B., and Margaret Cooper. 1990. Just me and the boys? Women in local-level rock and roll. Gender 6 Society 4:220-29. Jacobs, Sue-Ellen, and Christine Roberts. 1989. Sex, sexuality, gender, and gender vari­ ance. III Gender and anthropology, edited by Sandra Morgen. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association. Jay, Nancy. 1981. Gender and dichotomy. Feminist Studies 7:38-56. Matthaei, Julie A. 1982. An economic history of women's work in America. New York: Schocken. Mencher, Joan. 1988. Women's work and poverty: Women's contribution to household maintenance in South India. In Dwyer and Bruce. Morris, Jan. 1975. Conundrum. New York: Signet. Nanda, Serena. 1990. Neither man nor woman: The hijras of India. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth. New York Times. 1989. Musician's death at 74 reveals he was a woman. 2 February. Palmer, Phyllis. 1989. Domesticity and dirt: HOllsewives and domestic servants in the United States, 1920-1945. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Reskin, Barbara F. 1988. Bringing the men back in: Sex differentiation and the devalua­ tion of women's work. Gender 6 Society 2:58-81. Rogers, Mary F. 1992. They were all passing: Agnes, Garfinkel, and company Gender 6 Society 6: 169-91. Rubin, Gayle. 1975. The traffic in women: Notes on the political economy of sex. In Toward an anthropology of women, edited by Rayna R[app] Reiter. New York: Monthly ReVIew Press. Scott, Joan Wallach. 1988. Gender and the politics of history. New York: Columbia University Press West, Candace, and Don Zimmerman. 1987 Doing gender. Gender 6 Societ)' J 1:125-51. Wheelwright, Julie. 1989. Amazons and military maids: Women who cross-dressed in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. London: Pandora Press. Wikan, Unni. 1982. Behind the veil in Arabia: Women in Oman. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press. Williams, Christine L. 1989. Gender differences at work: Women and men in nontradi­ tionaloccupations. Berkeley: University of California Press. Williams, Walter L. 1986. The spirit and the flesh: Sexual diversity in American Indian culture. Boston: Beacon Press. 6 The Socia~ Construction of Sexual ity Ruth Hubbard There is no "natural" human sexuality. This is not to say that our sexual feelings are "unnatural" but that whatever feelings and activities our society interprets as sexual are channeled from birth into socially acceptable forms of expression. Western thinking about sexuality is based on the Christian equation of sexual­ ity with sin, which must be redeemed through making babies. To fulfill the Christian mandate, sexuality must be intended for procreation, and thus all forms of sexual expression and enjoyment other than heterosexuality are invalidated. Actually, for most Christians nowadays just plain heterosexuality wdl do, irrespec­ tive of whether it is intended to generate offspring. ,~i From Ruth Hubbard, The Politics of Women's Biology. Copyright © 1991 by Rutgers, The State University. Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press. 66 I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality These ideas about sexuality set up a major contradiction in what we tell chil­ dren about sex and procreation. We teach them that sex and sexuality are about becoming mommies and daddies and warn them not to explore sex by them­ selves or with playmates of either sex until they are old enough to have babies. Then, when they reach adolescence and the entire culture pressures them into heterosexual activity, whether they themselves feel ready for it or not, the more "enlightened" among us tell them how to be sexually (meaning heterosexually) active without having babies. Surprise: It doesn't work very well. Teenagers do not act "responsibly" -teenage pregnancies and abortions are on the rise and teenage fathers do not acknowledge and support their partners and babies. Somewhere we forget that we have been telling lies. Sexuality and procreation are not linked in societies like ours. On the contrary, we expect youngsters to be heterosexually active from their teens on but to put off having children until they are economically independent and married, and even then to have only two or, at most, three children. Other contradictions: This society, on the whole, accepts Freud's assumption that children are sexual beings from birth and that society channels their polymor­ phously perverse childhood sexuality into the accepted forms. Yet we expect our children to be asexual. We raise girls and boys together more than is done in marlY societies while insisting that they rrust not explore their own or each other's sexual parts or feelings. What if we acknowledged the sep::Jration of sexuality from procreation and en­ couraged our children to express themselves sexually if they were so inclined? What if we, further, encouraged them to explore their own bodies as well as those of friends of the some and the other sex when they felt like it? They might then be able to feel at home with their sexuality, have some sense of their own and other people's sexual needs, and know how to talk about sexuality and procreation with their friends and sexual partners before their ability to procreate becomes an issue for them. In this age of AIDS and other serious sexually transmitted infections, such a course of action seems like essential preventive hygiene. Without the em­ barrassment of unexplored and unacknowledged sexual needs, contraceptive needs would be much easier to confront when they arise. So, of course, would same-sex Jove relationships. Such a more open and accepting approach to sexuality would rnake life easIer for children and adolescents of either sex, but it would be especially advantageous for girls. VI/hen a boy discovers his penis as an organ of pleasure, it is the same organ he is taught about as his organ of procreation. A girl exploring her pleasur­ able sensations finds her clitoris, but when she is taught about making babies, she hears about the functions of the vagina in sex and birthing. Usually, the clitoris goes unmentioned, and she doesn't even learn its name until much later. Therefore for boys there is an obvious link between procre::ltion and their own pleasurable, erotic explorations; for most girls, there isn't. 6 Hubbard / The Social Construction of Sexuality 67 Individual Sexual Scripts Each of us writes our own sexual script out of the range of our experiences. None of this script is inborn or biologically given. We construct it oul of our diverse life situations, limited by wh::lt we are taught or what we can imagine to be permissible and correct. There is no unique female sexual experience, no male sexual experi­ ence, no unique heterosexual, lesbian, or gay male experience. 'I'Ve take the expe­ riences of different people and sort and lump them according to sociully significant categories. When I hear generalizations about the sexuu] experience of some particular group, exceptions immediately come to mind. Except that I refuse to call them exceptions: They are part of the range of our sexual experiences. Of course, the similar circumstances in which members of a particular group find themselves will give rise to group similarities. But we tend to exaggerate them when we go looking for similarities within groups or differences between them. This exaggeration is easy to see when we look at the dichotomy between "thc heterosexual" and "the homosexual." The concept of "the homosexual," along with many other human typologies, originated toward the end of the nineteenth century. Certain kinds of behavior stopped being attributed to particular persons ::md came to define them. A persoll who had sexual relations with someone of the S::lme sex became a certain kind of person, a "homosexual"; a person who had sex­ ual relations with people of the other sex, a different kind, a "heterosexu::ll." This way of categorizing people obscured the hitherto ::lccepted fact that many people do not have sexual relations exclusively with persons of one or the other sex. (None of us has sex with a kind of person; we have sex with a person.) This catego­ rization created the stereotypes that were popularized by the sex reformers, such as Havelock Ellis ond Edward Carpenter, who biologized the "difference." "The ho­ mosexual" became ::l person who is different by nature and therefore should not be made responsible for his or her so-called deviance. This definition served the pur­ pose of the reformers (although the laws have been slow to change), but it turned same-sex love into a medical problem to be treated by doctors rather tha n punished by judges -an improvement, perhaps, but not acceptance or liber::ltion.... Toward a Nondeterministic Model of Sexuality ... Some gay men and lesbians feel that they were born "different" and have al­ ways been homosexual. They recall feeling strongly attracted to ITlembers of their own sex when they were children and udoJescents. But many womer:. who live with men and think of themselves as heterosexual also had strong affective and erotic ties to girls and women while they were growing up. If they were now in lov­ ing relationships with women, they might look back on their earlier loves as proof • "0 eJVCWI loonstruction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality that they were always lesbiafls, But if they are now involved with men, they may be tempted to devalue their former feeliflgs as "puppy love" or "crushes," Even withifl the preferred sex, most of us feel a greater affinity for certain "types" than for others, Not any man or woman will do, No Ofle has seriously sug­ gested that something ifl our inflate makeup makes us light up ifl the presence of only certain women or men, "lYe would think it absurd to look to hormone levels or any other simplistic biological cause for our preference for a specific "type" within a sex, In fact, scientists rarely bother to ask what in our psychosocial experi­ ence shapes these kinds of tastes anc! preferences, "lYe assume it must have some­ thing to do with our relationship to our parents or with other experiences, but we do not probc deeply unless people prefer the "Wroflg" sex, Then, suddenly, scien­ tists begin to look for specific causes. Because of our recent history and political experiences, feminists tend to reject simplistic, causal models of how our sexuality develops, Many women who have thought of themselves as hetcrosexual for much of their life and who have been marricd and have had children have fallen in love with a woman (or women) when they have had thc opportunity to rethink, refeel, and restructure their lives. The society in which we live chanflels, guides, and limits our imaginatiofl in sexual as well as other matters. Why some of us give ourselves permission to love people of our own sex whereas others cannot even imagifle doing so is an iflterest­ ing question, But I do not think it will be amwered by measuring our hormone levels or by trying to unearth our earliest affectional tics, A:s women begin to speak freely about our sexual experiences, we are getting a varied range of iflformation with which we can reexamine, reevaluate, and change ourselves, Lately, increas­ ing numbers of women have begun to acknowledge their "bisexuality" -the fact that they can love women and men in :succession or simultaneously, People fall in love with individuals, not with a sex, Gender fleed not be a significant factor in our choicc, although for some of us it may be, Doing Gender Author(s): Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman Reviewed work(s): Source: Gender and Society, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 125-151 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/189945 . Accessed: 03/01/2013 11:59 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Gender and Society. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DOING GENDER CANDACE WEST University of California, Santa Cruz DON H. ZIMMERMAN University of California, Santa Barbara The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation. In the beginning, there was sex and there was gender. Those of us who taught courses in the area in the late 1960s and early 1970s were careful to distinguish one from the other. Sex, we told students, was what was ascribed by biology: anatomy, hormones, and physiology. Gender, we said, was an achieved status: that which is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social means. To introduce the difference between the two, we drew on singular case studies of hermaphrodites (Money 1968, 1974; Money and Ehrhardt 1972) and anthropological investigations of "strange and exotic tribes" (Mead 1963, 1968). Inevitably (and understandably), in the ensuing weeks of each term, our students became confused. Sex hardly seemed a "given" in AUTHORS' NOTE: This article is based in part on a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, September 1977. For their helpful suggestions and encouragement, we thank Lynda Ames, Bettina Aptheker, Steven Clayman, Judith Gerson, the late Erving Goffman, Marilyn Lester, Judith Lorber, Robin Lloyd, Wayne Mellinger, Beth E. Schneider, Barrie Thorne, Thomas P. Wilson, and most especially, Sarah Fenstermaker Berk. GENDER&SOCIETY,Vol. 1 No. 2, June 1987125-151 0 1987Sociologistsfor Womenin Society 125 This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 126 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 the context of research that illustrated the sometimes ambiguous and often conflicting criteria for its ascription. And gender seemed much less an "achievement" in the context of the anthropological, psychological, and social imperatives we studied-the division of labor, the formation of gender identities, and the social subordination of women by men. Moreover, the received doctrine of gender socialization theories conveyed the strong message that while gender may be "achieved," by about age five it was certainly fixed, unvarying, and static-much like sex. Since about 1975, the confusion has intensified and spread far beyond our individual classrooms. For one thing, we learned that the relationship between biological and cultural processes was far more complex-and reflexive-than we previously had supposed (Rossi 1984, especially pp. 10-14). For another, we discovered that certain structural arrangements, for example, between work and family, actually produce or enable some capacities, such as to mother, that we formerly associated with biology (Chodorow 1978 versus Firestone 1970). In the midst of all this, the notion of gender as a recurring achievement somehow fell by the wayside. Our purpose in this article is to propose an ethnomethodologically informed, and therefore distinctively sociological, understanding of gender as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment. We contend that the "doing" of gender is undertaken by women and men whose competence as members of society is hostage to its production. Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine "natures." When we view gender as an accomplishment, an achieved property of situated conduct, our attention shifts from matters internal to the individual and focuses on interactional and, ultimately, institutional arenas. In one sense, of course, it is individuals who "do" gender. But it is a situated doing, carried out in the virtual or real presence of others who are presumed to be oriented to its production. Rather than as a property of individuals, we conceive of gender as an emergent feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for various social arrangements and as a means of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society. To advance our argument, we undertake a critical examination of what sociologists have meant by gender, including its treatment as a role enactment in the conventional sense and as a "display" in Goffman's (1976) terminology. Both gender role and gender display This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 127 focus on behavioral aspects of being a woman or a man (as opposed, for example, to biological differences between the two). However, we contend that the notion of gender as a role obscures the work that is involved in producing gender in everyday activities, while the notion of gender as a display relegates it to the periphery of interaction. We argue instead that participants in interaction organize their various and manifold activities to reflect or express gender, and they are disposed to perceive the behavior of others in a similar light. To elaborate our proposal, we suggest at the outset that important but often overlooked distinctions be observed among sex, sex category, and gender. Sex is a determination made through the application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as females or males.' The criteria for classification can be genitalia at birth or chromosomal typing before birth, and they do not necessarily agree with one another. Placement in a sex category is achieved through application of the sex criteria, but in everyday life, categorization is established and sustained by the socially required identificatory displays that proclaim one's membership in one or the other category. In this sense, one's sex category presumes one's sex and stands as proxy for it in many situations, but sex and sex category can vary independently; that is, it is possible to claim membership in a sex category even when the sex criteria are lacking. Gender, in contrast, is the activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one's sex category. Gender activities emerge from and bolster claims to membership in a sex category. We contend that recognition of the analytical independence of sex, sex category, and gender is essential for understanding the relationships among these elements and the interactional work involved in "being" a gendered person in society. While our primary aim is theoretical, there will be occasion to discuss fruitful directions for empirical research following from the formulation of gender that we propose. We begin with an assessment of the received meaning of gender, particularly in relation to the roots of this notion in presumed biological differences between women and men. PERSPECTIVES ON SEX AND GENDER In Western societies, the accepted cultural perspective on gender views women and men as naturally and unequivocally defined This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 128 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 categories of being (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 116-18) with distinctive psychological and behavioral propensities that can be predicted from their reproductive functions. Competent adult members of these societies see differences between the two as fundamental and enduringdifferences seemingly supported by the division of labor into women's and men's work and an often elaborate differentiation of feminine and masculine attitudes and behaviors that are prominent features of social organization. Things are the way they are by virtue of the fact that men are men and women are women-a division perceived to be natural and rooted in biology, producing in turn profound psychological, behavioral, and social consequences. The structural arrangements of a society are presumed to be responsive to these differences. Analyses of sex and gender in the social sciences, though less likely to accept uncritically the naive biological determinism of the view just presented, often retain a conception of sex-linked behaviors and traits as essential properties of individuals (for good reviews, see Hochschild 1973; Tresemer 1975; Thorne 1980; Henley 1985). The "sex differences approach" (Thore 1980) is more commonly attributed to psychologists than to sociologists, but the survey researcher who determines the "gender" of respondents on the basis of the sound of their voices over the telephone is also making trait-oriented assumptions. Reducing gender to a fixed set of psychological traits or to a unitary "variable" precludes serious consideration of the ways it is used to structure distinct domains of social experience (Stacey and Thorne 1985, pp. 307-8). Taking a different tack, role theory has attended to the social construction of gender categories, called "sex roles" or, more recently, "gender roles" and has analyzed how these are learned and enacted. Beginning with Linton (1936) and continuing through the works of Parsons (Parsons 1951; Parsons and Bales 1955) and Komarovsky (1946, 1950), role theory has emphasized the social and dynamic aspect of role construction and enactment (Thorne 1980; Connell 1983). But at the level of face-to-face interaction, the application of role theory to gender poses problems of its own (for good reviews and critiques, see Connell 1983, 1985; Kessler, Ashendon, Connell, and Dowsett 1985; Lopata and Thorne 1978; Thorne 1980; Stacey and Thorne 1985). Roles are situated identities-assumed and relinquished as the situation demands-rather than master identities (Hughes 1945), such as sex category, that cut across situations. Unlike most roles, such as "nurse," "doctor," and "patient" or "professor" and "student," gender has no specific site or organizational context. This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 129 Moreover, many roles are already gender marked, so that special qualifiers-such as "female doctor" or "male nurse"-must be added to exceptions to the rule. Thorne (1980) observes that conceptualizing gender as a role makes it difficult to assess its influence on other roles and reduces its explanatory usefulness in discussions of power and inequality. Drawing on Rubin (1975), Thorne calls for a reconceptualization of women and men as distinct social groups, constituted in "concrete, historically changing-and generally unequal-social 1980, 11). (Thorne p. relationships" We argue that gender is not a set of traits, nor a variable, nor a role, but the product of social doings of some sort. What then is the social doing of gender? It is more than the continuous creation of the meaning of gender through human actions (Gerson and Peiss 1985). We claim that gender itself is constituted through interaction.2 To develop the implications of our claim, we turn to Goffman's (1976) account of "gender display." Our object here is to explore how gender might be exhibited or portrayed through interaction, and thus be seen as "natural," while it is being produced as a socially organized achievement. GENDER DISPLAY Goffman contends that when human beings interact with others in their environment, they assume that each possesses an "essential nature"-a nature that can be discerned through the "natural signs given off or expressed by them" (1976, p. 75). Femininity and masculinity are regarded as "prototypes of essential expressionsomething that can be conveyed fleetingly in any social situation and yet something that strikes at the most basic characterization of the individual" (1976, p. 75). The means through which we provide such expressions are "perfunctory, conventionalized acts" (1976, p. 69), which convey to others our regard for them, indicate our alignment in an encounter, and tentatively establish the terms of contact for that social situation. But they are also regarded as expressive behavior, testimony to our "essential natures." Goffman (1976, pp. 69-70) sees displays as highly conventionalized behaviors structured as two-part exchanges of the statement-reply type, in which the presence or absence of symmetry can establish deference or dominance. These rituals are viewed as distinct from but articulated with more consequential activities, such as performing tasks or engaging in discourse. Hence, we have what he terms the This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 130 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 "scheduling" of displays at junctures in activities, such as the beginning or end, to avoid interfering with the activities themselves. Goffman (1976, p. 69) formulates gender display as follows: If gender be defined as the culturally established correlatesof sex (whetherin consequenceof biology or learning),then genderdisplay refersto conventionalizedportrayalsof thesecorrelates. These gendered expressions might reveal clues to the underlying, fundamental dimensions of the female and male, but they are, in Goffman's view, optional performances. Masculine courtesies may or may not be offered and, if offered, may or may not be declined (1976, p. 71). Moreover, human beings "themselves employ the term 'expression', and conduct themselves to fit their own notions of expressivity" (1976, p. 75). Gender depictions are less a consequence of our "essential sexual natures" than interactional portrayals of what we would like to convey about sexual natures, using conventionalized gestures. Our human nature gives us the ability to learn to produce and recognize masculine and feminine gender displays-"a capacity [we] have by virtue of being persons, not males and females" (1976, p. 76). Upon first inspection, it would appear that Goffman's formulation offers an engaging sociological corrective to existing formulations of gender. In his view, gender is a socially scripted dramatization of the culture's idealization of feminine and masculine natures, played for an audience that is well schooled in the presentational idiom. To continue the metaphor, there are scheduled performances presented in special locations, and like plays, they constitute introductions to or time out from more serious activities. There are fundamental equivocations in this perspective. By segregating gender display from the serious business of interaction, Goffman obscures the effects of gender on a wide range of human activities. Gender is not merely something that happens in the nooks and crannies of interaction, fitted in here and there and not interfering with the serious business of life. While it is plausible to contend that gender displays-construed as conventionalized expressions-are optional, it does not seem plausible to say that we have the option of being seen by others as female or male. It is necessary to move beyond the notion of gender display to consider what is involved in doing gender as an ongoing activity embedded in everyday interaction. Toward this end, we return to the distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender introduced earlier. This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 131 SEX, SEX CATEGORY, AND GENDER Garfinkel's (1967, pp. 118-40) case study of Agnes, a transsexual raised as a boy who adopted a female identity at age 17 and underwent a sex reassignment operation several years later, demonstrates how gender is created through interaction and at the same time structures interaction. Agnes, whom Garfinkel characterized as a "practical methodologist," developed a number of procedures for passing as a "normal, natural female" both prior to and after her surgery. She had the practical task of managing the fact that she possessed male genitalia and that she lacked the social resources a girl's biography would presumably provide in everyday interaction. In short, she needed to display herself as a woman, simultaneously learning what it was to be a woman. Of necessity, this full-time pursuit took place at a time when most people's gender would be well-accredited and routinized. Agnes had to consciously contrive what the vast majority of women do without thinking. She was not "faking" what "real" women do naturally. She was obliged to analyze and figure out how to act within socially structured circumstances and conceptions of femininity that women born with appropriate biological credentials come to take for granted early on. As in the case of others who must "pass," such as transvestites, Kabuki actors, or Dustin Hoffman's "Tootsie," Agnes's case makes visible what culture has made invisible-the accomplishment of gender. Garfinkel's (1967) discussion of Agnes does not explicitly separate three analytically distinct, although empirically overlapping, concepts-sex, sex category, and gender. Sex Agnes did not possess the socially agreed upon biological criteria for classification as a member of the female sex. Still, Agnes regarded herself as a female, albeit a female with a penis, which a woman ought not to possess. The penis, she insisted, was a "mistake" in need of remedy (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 126-27, 131-32). Like other competent members of our culture, Agnes honored the notion that there are "essential" biological criteria that unequivocally distinguish females from males. However, if we move away from the commonsense viewpoint, we discover that the reliability of these criteria is not beyond question (Money and Brennan 1968; Money and Erhardt 1972; Money and Ogunro 1974; Money and Tucker 1975). Moreover, This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 132 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 other cultures have acknowledged the existence of "cross-genders" (Blackwood 1984; Williams 1986) and the possibility of more than two sexes (Hill 1935; Martin and Voorhies 1975, pp. 84-107; but see also Cucchiari 1981, pp. 32-35). More central to our argument is Kessler and McKenna's (1978, pp. 1-6) point that genitalia are conventionally hidden from public inspection in everyday life; yet we continue through our social rounds to "observe" a world of two naturally, normally sexed persons. It is the presumption that essential criteria exist and would or should be there if looked for that provides the basis for sex categorization. Drawing on Garfinkel, Kessler and McKenna argue that "female" and "male" are cultural events-products of what they term the "gender attribution process"-rather than some collection of traits, behaviors, or even physical attributes. Illustratively they cite the child who, viewing a picture of someone clad in a suit and a tie, contends, "It's a man, because he has a pee-pee" (Kessler and McKenna 1978, p. 154). Translation: "He must have a pee-pee [an essential characteristic] because I see the insignia of a suit and tie." Neither initial sex assignment (pronouncement at birth as a female or male) nor the actual existence of essential criteria for that assignment (possession of a clitoris and vagina or penis and testicles) has much-if anythingto do with the identification of sex category in everyday life. There, Kessler and McKenna note, we operate with a moral certainty of a world of two sexes. We do not think, "Most persons with penises are men, but some may not be" or "Most persons who dress as men have penises." Rather, we take it for granted that sex and sex category are congruent-that knowing the latter, we can deduce the rest. Sex Categorization Agnes's claim to the categorical status of female, which she sustained by appropriate identificatory displays and other characteristics, could be discredited before her transsexual operation if her possession of a penis became known and after by her surgically constructed genitalia (see Raymond 1979, pp. 37, 138). In this regard, Agnes had to be continually alert to actual or potential threats to the security of her sex category. Her problem was not so much living up to some prototype of essential femininity but preserving her categorization as female. This task was made easy for her by a very powerful resource, namely, the process of commonsense categorization in everyday life. This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 133 The categorization of members of society into indigenous categories such as "girl" or "boy," or "woman" or "man," operates in a distinctively social way. The act of categorization does not involve a positive test, in the sense of a well-defined set of criteria that must be explicitly satisfied prior to making an identification. Rather, the application of membership categories relies on an "if-can" test in everyday interaction (Sacks 1972, pp. 332-35). This test stipulates that if people can be seen as members of relevant categories, then categorize them that way. That is, use the category that seems appropriate, except in the presence of discrepant information or obvious features that would rule out its use. This procedure is quite in keeping with the attitude of everyday life, which has us take appearances at face value unless we have special reason to doubt (Schutz 1943; Garfinkel 1967, pp. 272-77; Bernstein 1986).3 It should be added that it is precisely when we have special reason to doubt that the issue of applying rigorous criteria arises, but it is rare, outside legal or bureaucratic contexts, to encounter insistence on positive tests (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 262-83; Wilson 1970). Agnes's initial resource was the predisposition of those she encountered to take her appearance (her figure, clothing, hair style, and so on), as the undoubted appearance of a normal female. Her further resource was our cultural perspective on the properties of "natural, normally sexed persons." Garfinkel (1967, pp. 122-28) notes that in everyday life, we live in a world of two-and only two-sexes. This arrangement has a moral status, in that we include ourselves and others in it as "essentially, originally, in the first place, always have been, always will be, once and for all, in the final analysis, either 'male' or 'female"' (Garfinkel 1967, p. 122). Consider the following case: This issue remindsme of a visit I madeto a computerstorea couple of years ago. The person who answered my questions was truly a salesperson.I could not categorizehim/her as a woman or a man. What did I look for?(1) Facial hair: She/he was smooth skinned, but some men havelittle or no facialhair.(This variesby race,NativeAmericans and Blacks often have none.) (2) Breasts:She/he was wearing a loose shirt that hung from his/her shoulders. And, as many women who sufferedthrough a 1950s'adolescenceknow to theirshame,women are often flat-chested.(3) Shoulders:His/hers weresmall and round for a man, broad for a woman. (4) Hands: Long and slender fingers, knuckles a bit large for a woman, small for a man. (5) Voice: Middle range,unexpressivefora woman, not at all the exaggeratedtonessome This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 134 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 gay males affect. (6) His/her treatment of me: Gave off no signs that would let me know if I wereof the sameor differentsex as this person. There werenot even any signs that he/she knew his/her sex would be difficultto categorizeand I wonderedaboutthatevenas I did my bestto hide thesequestionsso I would not embarrasshim/her while we talked of computerpaper.I left still not knowing the sex of my salesperson, and was disturbedby that unansweredquestion (child of my culture that I am). (Diane Margolis,personalcommunication) What can this case tell us about situations such as Agnes's (cf. Morris 1974; Richards 1983) or the process of sex categorization in general? First, we infer from this description that the computer salesclerk's identificatory display was ambiguous, since she or he was not dressed or adorned in an unequivocally female or male fashion. It is when such a display fails to provide grounds for categorization that factors such.as facial hair or tone of voice are assessed to determine membership in a sex category. Second, beyond the fact that this incident could be recalled after "a couple of years," the customer was not only "disturbed" by the ambiguity of the salesclerk's category but also assumed that to acknowledge this ambiguity would be embarrassing to the salesclerk. Not only do we want to know the sex category of those around us (to see it at a glance, perhaps), but we presume that others are displaying it for us, in as decisive a fashion as they can. Gender Agnes attempted to be "120 percent female" (Garfinkel 1967, p. 129), that is, unquestionably in all ways and at all times feminine. She thought she could protect herself from disclosure before and after surgical intervention by comporting herself in a feminine manner, but she also could have given herself away by overdoing her performance. Sex categorization and the accomplishment of gender are not the same. Agnes's categorization could be secure or suspect, but did not depend on whether or not she lived up to some ideal conception of femininity. Women can be seen as unfemninine,but that does not make them "unfemale." Agnes faced an ongoing task of being a woman-something beyond style of dress (an identificatory display) or allowing men to light her cigarette (a gender display). Her problem was to produce configurations of behavior that would be seen by others as normative gender behavior. This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 135 Agnes's strategy of "secret apprenticeship," through which she learned expected feminine decorum by carefully attending to her fiance's criticisms of other women, was one means of masking incompetencies and simultaneously acquiring the needed skills (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 146-147). It was through her fianc&that Agnes learned that sunbathing on the lawn in front of her apartment was "offensive" (because it put her on display to other men). She also learned from his critiques of other women that she should not insist on having things her way and that she should not offer her opinions or claim equality with men (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 147-148). (Like other women in our society, Agnes learned something about power in the course of her "education.") Popular culture abounds with books and magazines that compile idealized depictions of relations between women and men. Those focused on the etiquette of dating or prevailing standards of feminine comportment are meant to be of practical help in these matters. However, the use of any such source as a manual of procedure requires the assumption that doing gender merely involves making use of discrete, well-defined bundles of behavior that can simply be plugged into interactional situations to produce recognizable enactments of masculinity and femininity. The man "does" being masculine by, for example, taking the woman's arm to guide her across a street, and she "does" being feminine by consenting to be guided and not initiating such behavior with a man. Agnes could perhaps have used such sources as manuals, but, we contend, doing gender is not so easily regimented (Mithers 1982; Morris 1974). Such sources may list and describe the sorts of behaviors that mark or display gender, but they are necessarily incomplete (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 66-75; Wieder 1974, pp. 183-214; Zimmerman and Wieder 1970, pp. 285-98). And to be successful, marking or displaying gender must be finely fitted to situations and modified or transformed as the occasion demands. Doing gender consists of managing such occasions so that, whatever the particulars, the outcome is seen and seeable in context as gender-appropriate or, as the case may be, gender-inappropriate, that is, accountable. GENDER AND ACCOUNTABILITY As Heritage (1984, pp. 136-37) notes, members of society regularly engage in "descriptive accountings of states of affairs to one another," This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 136 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 and such accounts are both serious and consequential. These descriptions name, characterize, formulate, explain, excuse, excoriate, or merely take notice of some circumstance or activity and thus place it within some social framework (locating it relative to other activities, like and unlike). Such descriptions are themselves accountable, and societal members orient to the fact that their activities are subject to comment. Actions are often designed with an eye to their accountability, that is, how they might look and how they might be characterized. The notion of accountability also encompasses those actions undertaken so that they are specifically unremarkable and thus not worthy of more than a passing remark, because they are seen to be in accord with culturally approved standards. Heritage (1984, p. 179) observes that the process of rendering something accountable is interactional in character: [This] permits actors to design their actions in relation to their circumstancesso as to permitothers,by methodicallytakingaccountof circumstances,to recognizethe action for what it is. The key word here is circumstances. One circumstance that attends virtually all actions is the sex category of the actor. As Garfinkel (1967, p. 118) comments: [T]he work and socially structuredoccasions of sexual passing were obstinatelyunyielding to [Agnes's]attemptsto routinize the grounds of daily activities.This obstinacypoints to the omnirelevanceof sexual statusto affairsof daily life as an invariantbut unnoticedbackground in the textureof relevancesthatcompose the changing actualscenesof everydaylife. (italics added) If sex category is omnirelevant (or even approaches being so), then a person engaged in virtually any activity may be held accountable for performance of that activity as a woman or a man, and their incumbency in one or the other sex category can be used to legitimate or discredit their other activities (Berger, Cohen, and Zelditch 1972; Berger, Conner, and Fisek 1974; Berger, Fisek, Norman, and Zelditch 1977; Humphreys and Berger 1981). Accordingly, virtually any activity can be assessed as to its womanly or manly nature. And note, to "do" gender is not always to live up to normative conceptions of femininity or masculinity; it is to engage in behavior at the risk of gender assessment. While it is individuals who do gender, the This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 137 enterprise is fundamentally interactional and institutional in character, for accountability is a feature of social relationships and its idiom is drawn from the institutional arena in which those relationships are enacted. If this be the case, can we ever not do gender? Insofar as a society is partitioned by "essential" differences between women and men and placement in a sex category is both relevant and enforced, doing gender is unavoidable. RESOURCES FOR DOING GENDER Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys and women and men, differences that are not natural, essential, or biological. Once the differences have been constructed, they are used to reinforce the "essentialness"of gender. In a delightful account of the "arrangement between the sexes," Goffman (1977) observes the creation of a variety of institutionalized frameworks through which our "natural, normal sexedness" can be enacted. The physical features of social setting provide one obvious resource for the expression of our "essential" differences. For example, the sex segregation of North American public bathrooms distinguishes "ladies" from "gentlemen" in matters held to be fundamentally biological, even though both "are somewhat similar in the question of waste products and their elimination" (Goffman 1977, p. 315). These settings are furnished with dimorphic equipment (such as urinals for men or elaborate grooming facilities for women), even though both sexes may achieve the same ends through the same means (and apparently do so in the privacy of their own homes). To be stressed here is the fact that: The functioning of sex-differentiatedorgans is involved, but thereis nothing in this functioning thatbiologically recommendssegregation; that arrangementis a totally cultural matter... toilet segregationis presentedas a naturalconsequenceof the differencebetweenthe sexclasses when in fact it is a means of honoring, if not producing, this difference.(Goffman 1977,p. 316) Standardized social occasions also provide stages for evocations of the "essential female and male natures." Goffman cites organized sports as one such institutionalized framework for the expression of manliness. There, those qualities that ought "properly" to be associated with masculinity, such as endurance, strength, and com- This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 138 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 petitive spirit, are celebrated by all parties concerned-participants, who may be seen to demonstrate such traits, and spectators, who applaud their demonstrations from the safety of the sidelines (1977, p. 322). Assortative mating practices among heterosexual couples afford still further means to create and maintain differences between women and men. For example, even though size, strength, and age tend to be normally distributed among females and males (with considerable overlap between them), selective pairing ensures couples in which boys and men are visibly bigger, stronger, and older (if not "wiser") than the girls and women with whom they are paired. So, should situations emerge in which greater size, strength, or experience is called for, boys and men will be ever ready to display it and girls and women, to appreciate its display (Goffman 1977, p. 321; West and Iritani 1985). Gender may be routinely fashioned in a variety of situations that seem conventionally expressive to begin with, such as those that present "helpless" women next to heavy objects or flat tires. But, as Goffman notes, heavy, messy, and precarious concerns can be constructed from any social situation, "even though by standards set in other settings, this may involve something that is light, clean, and safe" (Goffman 1977, p. 324). Given these resources, it is clear that any interactional situation sets the stage for depictions of "essential" sexual natures. In sum, these situations "do not so much allow for the expression of natural differences as for the production of that difference itself" (Goffman 1977, p. 324). Many situations are not clearly sex categorized to begin with, nor is what transpires within them obviously gender relevant. Yet any social encounter can be pressed into service in the interests of doing gender. Thus, Fishman's (1978) research on casual conversations found an asymmetrical "division of labor" in talk between heterosexual intimates. Women had to ask more questions, fill more silences, and use more attention-getting beginnings in order to be heard. Her conclusions are particularly pertinent here: Since interactionalwork is relatedto what constitutesbeing a woman, with what a woman is, the idea thatit is workis obscured.The workis not seen as what women do, but as part of what they are. (Fishman 1978,p. 405) We would argue that it is precisely such labor that helps to constitute the essential nature of women as women in interactional contexts This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 139 (West and Zimmerman 1983, pp. 109-11; but see also Kollock, Blumstein, and Schwartz 1985). Individuals have many social identities that may be donned or shed, muted or made more salient, depending on the situation. One may be a friend, spouse, professional, citizen, and many other things to many different people-or, to the same person at different times. But we are always women or men-unless we shift into another sex category. What this means is that our identificatory displays will provide an ever-available resource for doing gender under an infinitely diverse set of circumstances. Some occasions are organized to routinely display and celebrate behaviors that are conventionally linked to one or the other sex category. On such occasions, everyone knows his or her place in the interactional scheme of things. If an individual identified as a member of one sex category engages in behavior usually associated with the other category, this routinization is challenged. Hughes (1945, p. 356) provides an illustration of such a dilemma: [A] young woman ... became part of that virile profession, engineering. The designer of an airplane is expected to go up on the maiden flight of the first plane built accordingto the design. He [sic] then gives a dinner to the engineersand workmenwho workedon the new plane. The dinner is naturallya stag party.The young woman in question designed a plane. Her co-workersurged her not to take the risk-for which, presumably,men only arefit-of the maidenvoyage. They were,in effect,asking her to be a ladyinsteadof an engineer.She chose to be an engineer. She then gave the partyand paid for it like a man. Afterfood and the first round of toasts,she left like a lady. On this occasion, parties reached an accommodation that allowed a woman to engage in presumptively masculine behaviors. However, we note that in the end, this compromise permitted demonstration of her "essential" femininity, through accountably "ladylike" behavior. Hughes (1945, p. 357) suggests that such contradictions may be countered by managing interactions on a very narrow basis, for example, "keeping the relationship formal and specific." But the heart of the matter is that even-perhaps, especially-if the relationship is a formal one, gender is still something one is accountable for. Thus a woman physician (notice the special qualifier in her case) may be accorded respect for her skill and even addressed by an appropriate title. Nonetheless, she is subject to evaluation in terms of normative conceptions of appropriate attitudes and activities for her sex This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 140 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 category and under pressure to prove that she is an "essentially" feminine being, despite appearances to the contrary (West 1984, pp. 97-101). Her sex category is used to discredit her participation in important clinical activities (Lorber 1984, pp. 52-54), while her involvement in medicine is used to discredit her commitment to her responsibilities as a wife and mother (Bourne and Wikler 1978, pp. 435-37). Simultaneously, her exclusion from the physician colleague community is maintained and her accountability as a woman is ensured. In this context, "role conflict" can be viewed as a dynamic aspect of our current "arrangement between the sexes" (Goffman 1977), an arrangement that provides for occasions on which persons of a particular sex category can "see" quite clearly that they are out of place and that if they were not there, their current troubles would not exist. What is at stake is, from the standpoint of interaction, the management of our "essential" natures, and from the standpoint of the individual, the continuing accomplishment of gender. If, as we have argued, sex category is omnirelevant, then any occasion, conflicted or not, offers the resources for doing gender. We have sought to show that sex category and gender are managed properties of conduct that are contrived with respect to the fact that others will judge and respond to us in particular ways. We have claimed that a person's gender is not simply an aspect of what one is, but, more fundamentally, it is something that one does, and does recurrently, in interaction with others. What are the consequences of this theoretical formulation? If, for example, individuals strive to achieve gender in encounters with others, how does a culture instill the need to achieve it? What is the relationship between the production of gender at the level of interaction and such institutional arrangements as the division of labor in society? And, perhaps most important, how does doing gender contribute to the subordination of women by men? RESEARCHAGENDAS To bring the social production of gender under empirical scrutiny, we might begin at the beginning, with a reconsideration of the process through which societal members acquire the requisite categorical apparatus and other skills to become gendered human beings. This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 141 Recruitmentto GenderIdentities The conventional approach to the process of becoming girls and boys has been sex-role socialization. In recent years, recurring problems arising from this approach have been linked to inadequacies inherent in role theory per se-its emphasis on "consensus, stability and continuity" (Stacey and Thorne 1985, p. 307), its ahistorical and depoliticizing focus (Thorne 1980, p. 9; Stacey and Thorne 1985, p. 307), and the fact that its "social" dimension relies on "a general assumption that people choose to maintain existing customs" (Connell 1985, p. 263). In contrast, Cahill (1982, 1986a, 1986b) analyzes the experiences of preschool children using a social model of recruitment into normally gendered identities. Cahill argues that categorization practices are fundamental to learning and displaying feminine and masculine behavior. Initially, he observes, children are primarily concerned with distinguishing between themselves and others on the basis of social competence. Categorically, their concern resolves itself into the opposition of "girl/boy" classification versus "baby" classification (the latter designating children whose social behavior is problematic and who must be closely supervised). It is children's concern with being seen as socially competent that evokes their initial claims to gender identities: During the exploratorystageof children'ssocialization ... they learn that only two social identities are routinely available to them, the identity of "baby," or, depending on the configuration of their external genitalia, either "big boy" or "big girl." Moreover, others subtly inform them that the identity of "baby" is a discrediting one. When, for example, children engage in disapprovedbehavior,they areoften told "You're a baby" or "Be a big boy." In effect, these typical verbal responses to young children's behavior convey to them that they must behaviorally choose between the discrediting identity of "baby" and their anatomically determinedsex identity.(Cahill 1986a,p. 175) Subsequently, little boys appropriate the gender ideal of "efficaciousness," that is, being able to affect the physical and social environment through the exercise of physical strength or appropriate skills. In contrast, little girls learn to value "appearance," that is, managing themselves as ornamental objects. Both classes of children learn that the recognition and use of sex categorization in interaction are not optional, but mandatory (see also Bem 1983). This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 142 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 Being a "girl" or a "boy" then, is not only being more competent than a "baby," but also being competently female or male, that is, learning to produce behavioral displays of one's "essential" female or male identity. In this respect, the task of four- to five-year-old children is very similar to Agnes's: For example, the following interaction occurred on a preschool playground A 55-month-oldboy (D) was attemptingto unfasten the clasp of a necklacewhen a preschoolaide walkedover to him. A: Do you want to put that on? D: No. It's for girls. A: You don't have to be a girl to wearthings aroundyour neck. Kings wear things aroundtheir necks.You could pretendyou'rea king. D: I'm not a king. I'm a boy. (Cahill 1986a,p. 176) As Cahill notes of this example, although D may have been unclear as to the sex status of a king's identity, he was obviously aware that necklaces are used to announce the identity "girl." Having claimed the identity "boy" and having developed a behavioral commitment to it, he was leery of any display that might furnish grounds for questioning his claim. In this way, new members of society come to be involved in a self-regulating process as they begin to monitor their own and others' conduct with regard to its gender implications. The "recruitment" process involves not only the appropriation of gender ideals (by the valuation of those ideals as proper ways of being and behaving) but also gender identities that are important to individuals and that they strive to maintain. Thus gender differences, or the sociocultural shaping of "essential female and male natures," achieve the status of objective facts. They are rendered normal, natural features of persons and provide the tacit rationale for differing fates of women and men within the social order. Additional studies of children's play activities as routine occasions for the expression of gender-appropriate behavior can yield new insights into how our "essential natures" are constructed. In particular, the transition from what Cahill (1986a) terms "apprentice participation" in the sex-segregated worlds that are common among elementary school children to "bona fide participation" in the heterosocial world so frightening to adolescents is likely to be a keystone in our understanding of the recruitment process (Thorne 1986; Thore and Luria 1986). This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 143 Gender and the Division of Labor Whenever people face issues of allocation-who is to do what, get what, plan or execute action, direct or be directed, incumbency in significant social categories such as "female" and "male" seems to become pointedly relevant. How such issues are resolved conditions the exhibition, dramatization, or celebration of one's "essential nature" as a woman or man. Berk (1985) offers elegant demonstration of this point in her investigation of the allocation of household labor and the attitudes of married couples toward the division of household tasks. Berk found little variation in either the actual distribution of tasks or perceptions of equity in regard to that distribution. Wives, even when employed outside the home, do the vast majority of household and child-care tasks. Moreover, both wives and husbands tend to perceive this as a "fair" arrangement. Noting the failure of conventional sociological and economic theories to explain this seeming contradiction, Berk contends that something more complex is involved than rational arrangements for the production of household goods and services: Hardlya question simply of who hasmoretime,or whosetimeis worth more, who has more skill or morepower,it is clearthat a complicated relationship between the structure of work imperatives and the structure of normative expectations attached to work as gendered determines the ultimate allocation of members'time to work and home. (Berk1985,pp. 195-96) She notes, for example, that the most important factor influencing wives' contribution of labor is the total amount of work demanded or expected by the household; such demands had no bearing on husbands' contributions. Wives reported various rationales (their own and their husbands') that justified their level of contribution and, as a general matter, underscored the presumption that wives are essentially responsible for household production. Berk (1985, p. 201) contends that it is difficult to see how people "could rationally establish the arrangements that they do solely for the production of household goods and services"-much less, how people could consider them "fair." She argues that our current arrangements for the domestic division of labor support two production processes: household goods and services (meals, clean children, and so on) and, at the same time, gender. As she puts it: This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 144 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987 Simultaneously,members"do"gender,as they "do" houseworkand child care,and what [has]beencalledthe division of laborprovidesfor thejoint productionof householdlaborandgender;it is themechanism by which both thematerialandsymbolicproductsof the householdare realized.(1985,p. 201) It is not simply that household labor is designated as "women's work," but that for a woman to engage in it and a man not to engage in it is to draw on and exhibit the "essential nature" of each. What is produced and reproduced is not merely the activity and artifact of domestic life, but the material embodiment of wifely and husbandly roles, and derivatively, of womanly and manly conduct (see Beer 1983, pp. 70-89). What are also frequently produced and reproduced are the dominant and subordinate statuses of the sex categories. How does gender get done in work settings outside the home, where dominance and subordination are themes of overarching importance? Hochschild's (1983) analysis of the work of flight attendants offers some promising insights. She found that the occupation of flight attendant consisted of something altogether different for women than for men: As the company's main shock absorbersagainst "mishandled"passengers, their own feelings are more frequently subjected to rough treatment.In addition,a day'sexposureto people who resistauthority in a woman is a different experience than it is for a man.... In this respect,it is a disadvantageto be a woman.And in this case,theyarenot simply women in the biological sense.They are also a highly visible distillation of middle-class American notions of femininity. They symbolize Woman. Insofar as the category "female" is mentally associatedwith having less status and authority,female flight attendantsaremorereadilyclassifiedas "really"femalesthan otherfemales are. (Hochschild 1983,p. 175) In performing what Hochschild terms the "emotional labor" necessary to maintain airline profits, women flight attendants simultaneously produce enactments of their "essential" femininity. Sex and Sexuality What is the relationship between doing gender and a culture's prescription of "obligatory heterosexuality" (Rubin 1975; Rich 1980)?As Frye (1983, p. 22) observes, the monitoring of sexual feelings in relation to other appropriately sexed persons requires the ready This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 145 recognition of such persons "before one can allow one's heart to beat or one's blood to flow in erotic enjoyment of that person." The appearance of heterosexuality is produced through emphatic and unambiguous indicators of one's sex, layered on in ever more conclusive fashion (Frye 1983, p. 24). Thus, lesbians and gay men concerned with passing as heterosexuals can rely on these indicators for camouflage; in contrast, those who would avoid the assumption of heterosexuality may foster ambiguous indicators of their categorical status through their dress, behaviors, and style. But "ambiguous" sex indicators are sex indicators nonetheless. If one wishes to be recognized as a lesbian (or heterosexual woman), one must first establish a categorical status as female. Even as popular images portray lesbians as "females who are not feminine" (Frye 1983, p. 129), the accountability of persons for their "normal, natural sexedness" is preserved. Nor is accountability threatened by the existence of "sex-change operations"-presumably, the most radical challenge to our cultural perspective on sex and gender. Although no one coerces transsexuals into hormone therapy, electrolysis, or surgery, the alternatives available to them are undeniably constrained: When the transsexual experts maintain that they use tran...
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Running head: GENDER ROLES

Gender Roles
Student’s Name
Course Number- Name of Course
Instructor’s Name
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GENDER ROLES

2
Gender Roles

The issue of gender is depicted in our daily lives by the different roles that people take
part in, and it has become so profound in a society that people tend to think that it is in their
genes (Rothenberg, 2004). I wake up at six in the morning to prepare for my classes which are
supposed to start at eight. I am used to walking to school instead of using the bus because I find
it cheaper and relaxing. I am a junior international student from China and am a lady. During the
weekdays, my schedule is like any other student in the United States, and since I do not live with
any family, my duties involve taking care of myself. This includes things like doing my laundry,
cleaning my room and...


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