#Sex and #Gender Sex are the biological traits that societies | Sociology with Shekhar

#Sex and #Gender

Sex are the biological traits that societies use to assign people into the category of either male or female, through physical ascription.

Gender is more fluid. It is a concept that describes how societies determine and manage sex categories; the cultural meanings attached to men and women’s roles; and how individuals understand their identities including, but not limited to, being a man, woman, transgender, intersex, gender queer and other gender positions. Gender involves social norms, attitudes and activities that society deems more appropriate for one sex over another. Gender is also determined by what an individual feels and does.

Sociology focuses on understandings and perception  of differences between masculinity (what society deems appropriate behaviour for a “man”) and femininity (what society deems appropriate behaviour for a “woman”) and pays special focus on the power relationships that follow from the established gender order in a given society, as well as how this changes over time.

Gender, like all social identities, is socially constructed. Social constructionism is one of the key theories sociologists use to put gender into historical and cultural focus. Social constructionism is a social theory about how meaning is created through social interaction – through the things we do and say with other people. This theory shows that gender it is not a fixed or innate fact, but instead it varies across time and place.

Gender norms (the socially acceptable ways of acting out gender) are learned from birth through childhood socialisation. We learn what is expected of our gender from what our parents teach us, as well as what we pick up at school, through religious or cultural teachings, in the media, and various other social institutions.

From Marxist Feminist Perspective, Like all social identities, gender identities are dialectical. They involve at least two sets of actors referenced against one another: “us” versus “them.” In Western culture, this means “masculine” versus “feminine.” As such, the “masculine” is treated as the default human experience by social norms,  the law and other social institutions. Masculinities are rewarded over and above femininities.