Gender & Sexuality

In an essay about science fiction's relevance to gender and sexuality, Pluretti, Lingel, & Sinnreich (2015) talk about a fictional world where gender is not lived by, or even talked about much at all. However, we do not have to look to science fiction to see that our definitions of gender and sexuality are currently expanding, just like space. When we think about gender roles and interpersonal communication, it’s important to have those definitions in order to be ‘in the know’ about what others are experiencing. To truly have empathy for another and listen, we need to be able to understand the terms.

Though Pluretti et al., said “gender and sexuality provide a set of acceptable attributes and behaviors, masculine and feminine, heterosexual and homosexual, for men and women,” they go on to describe how culturally, there is more of a hierarchy, that favors masculinity and heterosexuality over the “other.” (2015, p. 392-393). In this Module, we will discuss key terms in discussions of gender and sexuality.

Sex

Sex from a biological perspective is defined as a classification of human beings based on their reproductive organs and functions. In this section we will briefly discuss these classifications as a starting point for the exposition on gender, which is differentiated from sex by the aspect of performance.

Female

Both males and females have 46 chromosomes. The last pair of chromosomes determines whether we are ‘female’ or ‘male.’ For a female, the last chromosome pair is two X’s. For a male, the last chromosome pair includes an X and a Y. This chromosomal difference results in the development of different sex parts, due to the differences in hormone production.

While both women and men have levels of testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone present in the body, in females, levels of estrogen and progesterone are higher than in men, resulting in the development of ovaries, a uterus and a vagina. The aforementioned sexual organs allow the opportunity for females to carry and bear children when they reach the stage of puberty.

Male

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, males also carry 46 chromosomes with the difference of the Y chromosome while females have two X chromosomes. The XY combination creates higher production of testosterone in men which results in the development of testes and a penis. Again, both males and females carry levels of testosterone, estrogen and progesterone from conception and these levels fluctuate over the life span of the individual. The secondary effects of testosterone dominance are increased levels of physical strength and aggression.

Intersex

Anne Fausto-Sterling discusses in detail the phenomenon of intersex in the groundbreaking essays, The Five Sexes (1993) and The Five Sexes, Revisited (2000). In The Five Sexes, Fausto-Sterling argued that the female/male categories of sex were limiting in describing the scope of biological sexual reality as intersex is not accounted for in the binary defining of sex.

Fausto-Sterling suggested “a five-sex system” that “in addition to males and females…included ‘herms’ (named after true hermaphrodites, people born with both a testis and an ovary); ‘merms’ (male pseudohermaphrodites, who are born with testes and some aspect of female genitalia); and ‘ferms’ (female pseudohermaphrodites, who have ovaries combined with some aspect of male genitalia)” (Fausto-Sterling, 2000, p. 19). Today, these terms are no longer used, nor do most intersex people use the term hermaphrodite. Instead, intersex is used as a blanket term that many intersex people modify in different ways to identify themselves. For example, some may say they are intersex, whereas others may identify as having an intersex condition (Dreger & Herndon, 2009).

Estimates of intersexuality vary among different studies with factors like environment having an influence on the levels of variable hormonal differences in different parts of the world. Most children who are born with intersexual characteristics are operated on at infancy to normalize their sex. This decision is usually made by the parents. The biological ambiguity of intersexuality results in difficulties in acceptance in a world where most people fit into the male/female binary. Estimates of babies born with intersex characteristics vary from 1 in 1,500 to 2,000 births to estimates as high as 4% (Intersex Human Rights Australia, 2019). While the estimates vary greatly depending on which study is referenced, many theorists and human rights advocates agree that biological sex should be thought of as more of a continuum than a binary distinction.

Gender as Performativity

As opposed to sex, which is assigned to us at birth based on a variety of biological indicators, gender is a performative act—meaning that it is not tied directly to our sex, but is rather expressed by us through our behavior. This is why we consider gender to be performative, meaning that is performed through our interpersonal communication, including how we dress, talk, walk, and even in how we may think (Butler, 1991).

With this analysis it is important to recognize that gender is performative and just because a person is male or female does not mean they will express themselves in a masculine or feminine manner. Gender performance is more of a continuum than a distinct binary and many will reject the notion that men communicate in a certain way or women communicate in a certain way. However, these social constructs influence the communication cultures of each gender. As we continue to shift and redefine the rules and norms of gender performance, the definitions and practices will also continue to shift.

By recognizing and understanding these distinctions we can better understand how to communicate regardless of how one performs or identifies. To distinguish between genders in modern society people have often framed the concept through a binary of a man and a woman, but just as intersex is a third category in the biological assignment of sex, there are many people today whose gender is performed in non-normative ways that are often understood as transgender. Transgender refers to anyone who bridges, or collapses the performances of man or woman into an alternative gender performance that does not adhere to the gender binary.

While most people today still identify as cisgender, meaning that their gender identity matches the traditional sex assignment (i.e. man/male, woman/female), the growing recognition of transgendered people is now commonplace (Chodorov, 2014). Still, the term “transgender” can be confusing because it is used to describe a range of gender performativities. For example, some transgender people identify with a traditional gender identity, even though it is not the one traditionally assigned to their sex, whereas other people identifying as transgender reject traditional gender identities entirely (Stryker, 1994).

Masculine Performativity

When we talk about what it means to ‘act like a man’ we are describing what is known as masculine performativity. Masculinity is the performance of being a man. This performativity is culturally specific, and can vary depending on cultures, sub-cultures, or co-cultures (Buchbinder, 1994). Three prominent masculinity studies scholars, Kimmel, Hearn, and Connell (2004), approach the performance of masculinity in their work by recognizing that there are multiple masculinities, just as with feminine performativity where there are multiple femininities.

It is important to note that since masculinity is constructed in a social context through performed interpersonal exchanges, that it can be performed even by people of the female sex. Halberstam (1998) notes that female masculinity is a common form of masculinity in contemporary society, especially in social contexts where women are taking on social or workplace roles that had traditionally been exclusive to men. The same can be true of men who engage in social roles that have previously been identified as the domain of women. ‘Stay at home dads’, for example, are noted for failing to enact traditional masculinity by playing a caretaking role for their children (Godfrey, 2017).

At the interpersonal level, masculine performativity informs many of the social expectations we have when dealing with other people. Despite impressive gains in workplace and social equality, women still face outdated expectations to ‘man up’ their gender performativity in order to assume some workplace roles. Men too, suffer from expectations about their performativity that may discourage them from expressing their full identity as fathers, lovers, brothers, sons, and co-workers. Men today are still discouraged from public displays of affection toward others, including their children, and they still feel chastened when they relax their bravado in the company of other men (Buchbinder, 1994, Kimmel, et al., 2004, Kimmel, 2013).

Feminine Performativity

Just as men must perform their gender in order to be understood as masculine, women too have to perform their femininity. Femininity has evolved in many ways over time in response to the women’s movement, and the progressing acceptance of women as social, cultural, and economic leaders. Simone De Beauvoir (1949) first explained the construct of femininity by noting the fact that masculinity could only be understood by contrast to femininity, and vice versa. To some extent this is still true today, but being feminine is not simply about not being masculine.

To be feminine in today’s society embraces a range of characteristics (Gill & Scharff, 2013). Women today face paradoxical expectations to be both caring and self-reliant, to focus more on relationships than their male counterparts, while also performing enough detachment to maintain their reputation for virtue and professionalism. Certain feminine traits exist as an extension of presumed social roles—primarily motherhood. Because females give birth, many of our social constructions regarding parenting are aligned with the performance of motherhood, which is a gendered role ascribed to women. For many people, part of being a good woman, is to also be a good or ‘natural’ mother, so that caretaking remains a primary focus when conditioning girls about womanhood (Gimenez, 2018).

In many ways, femininity is complicated by the concurrent shifts in masculinity that are meant to make space for women in male dominated social, without fully transforming society (Chodorow, 2014). In other words, women have been welcomed into leadership roles, but often with the assumption they will modulate their gender performativity to be both feminine enough, and masculine enough at the same time (Greenwood, 2017). There are few, if any places in society today for women, where a single performance of femininity can go uncontested or un-criticized.

Gender Roles

Another way of thinking of performativity is by considering what theorists call gender roles. West and Zimmerman (1987) famously theorized the notion of a performed gender by explaining that the model for gender performances are the traditional gender roles that are assigned to different sexes during their life, and expected of them in order for a person to achieve what is known as gender role competency. Gender role competency means the ability of an individual to satisfactorily behave in accordance with the society’s expectations of a cisgender man or woman.

However, West and Zimmerman expanded previous discussions of a performed gender to include the concept of a sex category—the labeling of someone’s sex by those who cannot know for certain what that person’s actual sex may be. In other words, most of the time we don’t really know someone else’s sex, but we assume we know based on certain presentational aspects of their body, and we use those aspects to assign a sex category to people. For interpersonal communication, the notion of a sex category is important to understand because it underlies the fact that most of what we assume about others is only that. Even when you have met someone you assume to be cisgender, you can’t know that for sure without somehow confirming their biological sex.

Social construction of these gender roles has changed over time. For instance, women’s rights were sparse until the right to vote was enacted, but even now, women are marginalized in many areas of life. During World War II, as an example, women were called to work in the factories on previous jobs males held, and “women were still expected to be feminine but not too sultry. They were also expected to do a ‘man's job’ but not to become masculine while performing it with the expectations of ‘do as a man, appear as a woman’” (Tobin, 2017, p. 321). Women were to remain taking care of the children and home while doing these other jobs, but also stay ‘ladylike.’ As more women went into the workforce later, it has become the norm to have a two-earner household, or for women to work. According to a Forbes article, 49% of employed women in the United States self-disclose that they are the family’s main income generator. Moreover, women have outpaced men in college attendance and degrees, the wage gap has fallen, but is still not equal (Germano, 2019).

In addition, though women are more educated and employed, they still are more likely to care for elderly family members, do the household chores, and care for children (Germano, 2019). On the other hand, men have been the ones in the past to go to work and to war, and that’s changed, so women now join the military more often, and both men and women participate in the workforce. One article indicates there are approximately 7 million stay-at-home dads, and said, “Dads are feeling more comfortable with the caregiving role, and economics have forced couples to make ‘non-traditional’ decisions” (Godfrey, 2017, para. 2). Godfrey said this may be from economic factors like who in a household was able to get or keep a job after the recession, and child care costs. Even with this number increasing, Godfrey said, “While about half of Americans (surveyed by Pew) (51%) think that a child is better off with a mother at home, as opposed to in the workforce, just 8% say a child is better off with a stay-at-home father” (2017, para. 8). Looking at the gender roles as more than just the binary and along a continuum will become more and more prevalent, with norms in roles and relationships getting blurred.

Generational change may end up creating less defined gender roles. For instance, the Boomer generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, may have more traditional thoughts about roles, though they change as well. Generation X, those born between 1965-1980, grew up knowing about changing roles, with many coming from divorced parents, where single parent households were more common and different gender roles were enacted. Millennials, Americans born between 1981 and 1996, experienced some of the same role differences. The recent “OK, Boomer” phenomenon, in which young adults dismiss an older person’s views shows the change in generational thinking as well. Most post-Millennials, born from 1997 to now, have always used technology, and see the world through that lens, with the changing gender roles shown in the media.

Conclusion

Understanding gender roles and how they affect communication begins first with the discussion of biological sex. As we discussed, sex is not just limited to the female/male binary but must account for intersexuality. We also have to distinguish clearly between the constructs of sex and those of gender, noting that gender is a performative act that is always occurring. We never stop performing our genders, and it is because of this that many people are able to perform transgender, gender fluid, or non-binary gender identities.

Activity 1: ‘Riddle Me This, Cisman’

Ask your students to take out a piece of paper, on which they’ll write the answer to a riddle you are about to ask. They are not to answer aloud. They will have two minutes to consider an answer. Then ask them the following- being careful to use the phrasing provided:

‘A father and son are driving together when they have an accident. The father dies instantly, but his son is taken by ambulance to the hospital. At the hospital, the nurses wheel the boy into the emergency operating room, and begin preparing for surgery. The surgeon enters the room, looks down at the boy and says ‘I cannot operate on this boy. He is my son. ...How is this possible?”

Give them two minutes to write down their answers, and then allow them to discuss their solutions as a group. The Answer: the surgeon is the boy’s mother.

Activity 2: ‘Act Like a Lady!’

Invite a group of students to the front of the room to improvise a scene. Whisper in each student’s ear a character trope from popular movies, for example- a gangster, a villain, a superhero, a spy. Let them play out the scene as they wish for a few moments.

Give each of the characters a specific gender identity and let them return to improvising the scene. If a student has already adopted a gender performance in the first scene then change their gender in this one. If they had no gender performed then give them one to add to their character. Let the scene play out for a moment.

Once the scene is over, let the student performers discuss how they chose to integrate gender into their performance. Then allow the class to discuss whether the gender performances changed their understanding of the characters.

Activity 3: Distinction Memories

Organize students into small groups of four or five, and then ask them to discuss their earliest memories of knowing the distinction between the sexes. After they have all shared with their group (5-7 minutes), ask them to recall memories of puberty and how they viewed different sexes at that time. Let this discussion go on for another 5-7 minutes, before asking each group to then summarize some of their conversation to share with the entire class.

Buchbinder, D. (1994). Masculinities and identities. Melbourne University Press.

Butler, J. (1991). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity (1st ed.). Routledge.

Chodorow, N. J. (2014). Femininities, masculinities, sexualities: Freud and beyond. University Press of Kentucky.

De Beauvoir, S. (1949). The second sex. Knopf.

Dreger, A.D., & Herndon, A.M. (2009). Progress and politics in the intersex rights movement: Feminist theory in action. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 15(2), 199-224.

Fausto-Sterling, A. (1993). The five sexes. The Sciences, 33(2), 20-25

Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). The five sexes, revisited. The Sciences, 40(4), 18-23

Germano, M. (2019, March 27). Women are working more than ever, but they still take on most household responsibilities. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiegermano/2019/03/27/women-are-working-more-than-ever-but-they-still-take-on-most-household-responsibilities/#f0bffef52e9e

Gill, R., & Scharff, C. (Eds.). (2013). New femininities: Postfeminism, neoliberalism and subjectivity. Springer.

Gimenez, M. E. (2018). Marx, women, and capitalist social reproduction. Brill.

Godfrey, N. (2017, July 31). The stay-at-home dad syndrome. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nealegodfrey/2017/07/31/the-stay-at-home-dad-syndrome/#2e52c3a71e2c

Greenwood, E. (2017). Gendered communication styles in the workplace. XULAneXUS, 14(2), 1.

Halberstam, J. (1998). Female masculinity. Duke University Press.

Intersex Human Rights Australia. (2019, Aug. 5). Intersex population figures. http://ihra.org.au/16601/intersex-numbers/

Kimmel, M. (2013). Angry white men: American masculinity at the end of an era. Hatchette, UK.

Kimmel, M. S., Hearn, J., & Connell, R. W. (Eds.). (2004). Handbook of studies on men and masculinities. Sage Publications.

Pluretti, R., Lingel, J., & Sinnreich, A. (2015). Toward an “other” dimension: An essay on transcendence of gender and sexuality. ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 72(4), 392–399.

Stryker, S. (1998). The transgender issue: An introduction. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 4(2), 145-158.

Tobin, C. T. (2017). Sexuality and Sexual Behavior. In R. W. Summers (Ed.), Social psychology: How other people influence our thoughts and actions: Vol 1. (pp. 315-332). Greenwood.

West, C. & Zimmerman, D.H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender & Society, 1(2), 125-151.

Wheeler, A. (2019, September 17). Merriam-Webster dictionary adds ‘they’ as nonbinary pronoun. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/17/merriam-webster-they-nonbinary-pronoun

Ally: Allies are people who support the queer community, even though they come from outside that community.

Androgyny: Relating to someone who does not perform any gender identity

Cisgender: Relating to someone who performs their gender identity in a fashion where their gender identity matches their birth sex according to the normative gender binary

Drag King/Queen: Someone who dresses as their opposite gender, but does not identify as transgender

Female: a person with two X chromosomes and reproductive organs typically associated with childbearing (vagina, uterus, ovaries and breasts).

Femininity: The performance of socially constructed traits and behaviors that indicate the gender of woman

Gender Fluidity: Relating to those who perform any or all gender identities at different times

Gender Pronouns: Pronouns that refer back to a binary gender of man or woman

Intersex: used to describe a person who has a combination of male and female reproductive organs (such as a penis and ovaries)

Male: a person with an X and Y chromosome pair and reproductive organs typically associated with fertilizing female eggs (penis, scrotum and testicles)

Masculinity: The performance of socially constructed traits and behaviors that indicate the gender of a man

Sex: a biological classification of human beings based on their reproductive organs and functions

Sex Category: The sex assignment that we assign to other people we meet in casual interactions, without knowing their actual sex

Transgender: Relating to someone whose performance of socially constructed traits indicates a non-normative gender identity, where their gender does not match their birth sex according to the normative gender binary

Transsexual: Relating to people undertaking a sexual re-assignment surgery, whether they are pre-op (preparing to), partial (in process of surgeries), or post-op (having completed all surgeries)

Multimedia 1: Watch the following clip for a new perspective on how we view biological sex. How have you been taught since childhood about it? Think about how this clip challenges your ideas.

The way we think about biological sex is wrong | Emily Quinn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stUl_OapUso

Multimedia 2: A recent news video discusses a difficult decision parents have to make occasionally. These types of decisions are often made in private, and without input of the person actually having the surgery due to age. What ethical implications may happen in these situations?

CNN Article/Video: She's 7 and was born intersex. Why her parents elected to let her grow up without surgical intervention https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/10/us/intersex-surgeries-gothere/index.html

Multimedia 3: Check out the following infographic for information on how illness can affect people of different sexes.

Infographic on Sex and Gender and how they Affect Health https://orwh.od.nih.gov/sites/orwh/files/docs/SexGenderInfographic11x17_508_Final_2.pdf

Multimedia 4: A TedX talk about gender identity in society indicates how different societies view gender differently. The speaker discusses how social traits and gender identity come to rule people’s lives in many cases.

Beyond Sex: A talk about gender identity in society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTUdI9up9pc

Multimedia 5: Butler discusses gender as being performative, meaning behaviors produce a series of effects. The speaker discusses gender as being developed over time, and within a person, produced and reproduced over time.

Judith Butler: Your Behavior Creates Your Gender https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7o2LYATDc