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Abigail Cabrera
Professor Jon Beadle
English 115
7 December 2016
The Cycle of Gender
What is gender? We use it to identify people, categorize them, and even separate them.
We use gender every day, we see it and live with it, yet we hardly notice it. Gender is prevalent
in every aspect of our life; when we are dressing, shopping, interacting, and even when going to
the restroom. However, people never notice gender because they dont know how to identify it.
The articles No Way My boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents responses to Childrens
Gender Nonconformity, Night to his Day; The Social Construction of Gender and From
Women, Men, and Society, share the common idea that gender is a socially constructed cycle
that molds men as dominant and oppressed women by making them the subordinates. This cycle
begins from the minute an individual is born and continues on as each individual continues the
cycle with the next generation.
People most commonly believe that the sex of a person defines or dictates their
gender. However this belief is false by definition. Sex only defines people, as male or female, in
terms of their roles in the process of reproduction. Males and females have different
reproductive organs and different genitalia. Aside from the physiological differences between
males and females at any stage in growth and development there are no other clearly defined

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differences between males and females across a spectrum comparing the two. So, in other words,
there must be a separate factor that separates behavior, communication, understanding, and
psychology between males and females which defines them as men and women. Sex does not
dictate gender is the fact that one can change their gender without changing their sex. According
to Judith Lorber, a professor of sociology and womens studies, transgender individuals are
males who live as women and females who live as men but do not intend to have a sex-change
surgery (23). This shows that there is no direct link between sex and gender as transgendered
persons are of one sex and associated with the gender not typically associated to their sex. If a
transgendered person has to essentially build or construct their gender then the same would have
to go for the rest of society.
Gendering of an individual begins with the parents or parental figures of the individuals.
Given that it is difficult to identify if a baby is a male of female, Parents most often use clothing
to avoid confusion (Renzetti and Curran 77). This clothing acts as a marker that identifies the
baby with a gender and in turn how the baby is to be interacted with. These interactions, along
with observations of other persons interacting, are how children learn the behavior that they are
expected to emulate. Thirteen- and fourteen-month-old children showed no differences in their
attempts to communicate, adults tended to respond to boys when they forced attention by being
aggressive, or by crying, whining, and screaming, whereas similar attempts by girls were usually
ignored. Instead, adults were responsive to girls when they used gestures or gentle touching, or
when they simply talked (Renzetti and Curran 78). This interaction reinforces boys to become

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dominant by being aggressive, while it reinforces girls to behave the opposite by being
submissive. Renzetti and Curran state that, parents use a greater number and variety of emotion
words when talking with daughters than sons. They also talk more about sadness with daughters,
whereas they talk more about anger with sons, which is the enforcement of emotional
expression for each gender (79). Here you see again that boys are being taught dominance by
being encouraged to be aggressive in verbal and emotional expression. These behavioral
interactions between parents and children are a major in how gender is constructed, it is when the
next generations come that the construction of gender continues the same or is change.
After individuals have come to accept their own standards of gender and apply them,
each gendered individual will then hold the role of having to gender their own children. In
society, how an individual's child is gendered reflects on the parent. This is most often the issue
that prevents some parents from abandoning traditional views of gender, in how these parents
feel that they will not be approved of if their child is not gendered in the way which society
thinks is proper. In society it is often believed that there must be subordinates in any
relationship and this subordinate it commonly pictured as being female; in the case of
homosexuality this concept means that there must be a subordinate in the relationship, and
regardless of which male that is the result is the same, one male is not dominant. In the article
No Way My boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents responses to Childrens Gender
Nonconformity, Emily Kane noted the way one father replied to the possibility of his son being
gay as, If [he] were to be gay, it would not make me happy at all. I would probably see that as a

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failure as a dad, as a failure because I am raising him to be a boy, a man, (96). This lack of
dominance is what creates the fear of homosexuality in that it threatens traditional concepts of
masculinity and femininity, and this is displayed in this fathers comment; he will accept no other
concept of gender from his children other then the ones he teaches. It is clear that this father
wishes to have males and men remain the dominant. However gender roles can be changed as
some of the more traditional gender roles and standards normally associated with one gender are
becoming part of both. Kane also stated that, a white, middle-class, heterosexual father
emphasized domestic competence when he noted that it does not bother him for his son to play
with dolls at his cousins house: How then are they going to learn to take care of children if they
dont (Kane 91). In this example this father changed his standards, and in turn those of his son
in the future, by encouraging the extension of the role of traditional caretaking, of children, from
women to men. This section in life is where the cycles of gendering both continue and start anew.
It continues in that members of each gender are expected to carry out the roles of enforcing their
gender standards on the rest of society; it starts anew in that the children of the gendered
individuals are beginning their cycle.
The articles: No Way My boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents responses to
Childrens Gender Nonconformity, by Emily Kane; Night to his Day; The Social
Construction of Gender, by Judith Lorber; and From Women, Men, and Society, by Claire
Renzetti and Daniel Curran, share a common idea that gender is constructed by our society. They
also recognize that our society constructs gender so that is oppresses women. The authors

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purpose of making their arguments in their articles was for two reasons. The first reason was to
inform and explain to readers the gravity of our gender situation. They want readers to
understand exactly what the problem so that they may then have a better understanding of how to
fix it. The authors want readers, and society to work towards creating a gender cycle that does
not oppress anyone, and it starts with each individual, even myself.
I was raised as a girl, and I do accept this gender. The concept of my gender is different in
how my parents presented it to me. In the case of my upbringing my parents did what the
authors, of the articles mentioned, want their readers to do. My mom did not my sisters and I to
be raised to be mens maids, like she was; my father did not want to see us grow up being abused
and dependent, like the women he was raised around. So to prevent us from being oppressed in
the ways that my parents knew that women were, they decided to make a change. They taught us
how to do chores, for the sake of being able to clean up after ourselves. They encourage us to
learn to cook, use power tools, to learn basic car maintenance, sew, etc., so that we did not have
to rely on anyone else, but the activities were never forced. They also encourage us to be
assertive, confident that we can do whatever we choose, and to defend ourselves; in other words,
not to be submissive but still polite. Our parents were very open, but sometimes the values under
which they were raised would make a show. For example, our parents liked to dress us in pink,
pastels, flowers, dresses, etc., as children. Even now my father will tell me that he me to wear
earrings because I am his little girl. Regardless of these small displays of traditional gender

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concepts that they may still have, they made the choice and effort to change the meaning of
gender for us, just like the authors want their readers and us to do.
Gender is an interpretation of many factors that include a persons behavior, speech,
apparel, emotional level, etc. Gender is constructed by society in the form of a cycle. We are
born, assigned a gender, taught how to participate in society as that gender, have the gender
enforced by the rest of society, and finally we restart the cycle when we gender the next
generation. In our society gender is constructed so as to make women the subordinates to men,
the dominants. The articles No Way My boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents responses
to Childrens Gender Nonconformity, Night to his Day; The Social Construction of Gender
and From Women, Men, and Society, show this. The authors of these articles all want for
gender roles, concepts, and the cycle which constructs them, to change so that it no longer results
in inequality. This can only be accomplished through the choice to make the change, starting
with ourselves.

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Works Cited
Kane, Emily W. No Way My boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents responses to
Childrens Gender Nonconformity. Composing Gender: A Bedford Spotlight
Reader,

edited by Rachael Groner and John F. OHara, Bedford/St. Martins 2014,

pp. 91-97.

Lorber, Judith. Night to his Day; The Social Construction of Gender. Composing Gender: A
Bedford Spotlight Reader, edited by Rachael Groner and John F. OHara,
Bedford/St.

Martins, 2014, pp. 19-30.

Renzetti, Claire, and Daniel Curran. From Women, Men, and Society. Composing Gender: A
Bedford Spotlight Reader, edited by Rachael Groner and John F. OHara,
Bedford/St.

Martins, 2014, pp. 76-84.