Last quarter I took a psychology class about sexuality and this quarter I am taking a woman’s studies class about feminism. Before I had taken those classes I had never thought about the gender as a social construct. Growing up as a white middle-class heterosexual man I had never questioned the way sex and gender were defined. I admit that I had never acknowledged the issues concerning the gender dichotomy existing within my society until just recently. But that realization has given me a greater understanding of those that have had to live as “gender-freaks” in a society that doesn’t acknowledge a third gender category.
The social constructs of gender is a huge issue in society today, it is an issue that needs to be identified and realized in order for a third or forth or firth gender category to be accepted. It is ridiculous that some people are forced to live as outsiders in their own country simply because of how gender roles are two-dimensionally constructed. When I use the term two-dimensional I am referring to the structured ideology that our biological sex determines our gender role in society, a male is supposed to identify with manly gender roles while a female is supposed to identify with womanly gender roles. But what about those that don’t identify with a certain sex or what about those that choose to not identify with the certain gender role associated with their biological sex. These people are ostracized and ridiculed in society simply because those ridiculing them are oblivious to the fact that their own gender identity is socially constructed.
What needs to change in our society is our definitions of gender. We have to rethink our preconceived notions of what gender really is and then and only then can we come to see gender as a spectrum. A spectrum in which gender is separate from our biological sex, where a man is separate from a male and where a woman is separate from a female. Our emphasis in society towards certain gender roles being male or female causes friction between those that reside within the two-dimensional gender construct and those that do not. In order for social change to occur gender must be seen and accepted as a spectrum in which biological sex does not necessarily determine a person’s gender identity.
