Since there is no handbook or Doing-Gener For Dummies, how do we know what is the correct way to do gender? In addition, who/what has the authority to pronounce our gender enactment as incorrect or flawed?
How different is a sex-change operation that a transsexual undergoes, from the examples Fausto-Sterling includes in "How to Build a Man"?
What is at stake if we do not participate in maintaining "the social institution of gender"(Lorber 22)?
What are some ambiguities of Sandra Bem's experiment which involves "hiding the child's anatomy from all eyes except the parents' and treating the child as neither girl nor boy"(Lorber 24)? How does this experiment compare to those of Dr.Money who 'corrects' newborns genitalia?
What are some advantages of gender bending?
What are some possible ways of "resistance and rebellion" against gender norms (Lorber 32)? What are the consequences of such actions?
The best way to do gender is to do it from birth. As it is, the person who undergoes the transformation should be able to tell whether it is flawed or incorrect. The difference a transsexual who undergoes sex-change operation from the examples of Fausto-Sterling "How to build a man" is that the transexual's operation could be complex because of his/her maturity.
ReplyDeleteThe ambiguity about Sandra Bem's experiment is how the child will feel when he/she grows up. Dr. Money's experiment cannot compare with Bem's experiment since Dr. Money's experiment starts from child birth as the child may not feel the operation when he/she grows up.
Thank you for your input, Monica. While I do agree that Dr. Money's 'experiment' involves physical alterations as well as hormonal ones, I wonder to what extent Bem's experiment has the child's best interest at heart. We should think about the possible obstacles the child might face during the course of the expriment, which is quite long-up until middle school. I also wonder how Bem has/would document the child's progess and development. Lastly, she might be undermining the pervasivness of social gendering.
ReplyDeleteYou should do gender the way you feel it should be done, it should come naturally to you. No one should have authority over how you should carry yourself or how you should look because life would suck. I think doctors who change the sex of the baby because their genitalia doesn't quite live up to expectations is absurd. Let the future adult decide whether it wants to be a man or a woman. These types of operations are forced, in contrast to perhaps a man who wants to be a woman and decides to change his penis to a vagina. Again, it's his choice whether he wants to live as a woman. But then again, as Miss B says, if we do not have a sense of order and prototype of how men and women should act, this world would be chaotic. Certain norms have to be followed so humans can be sane. Imagine living in a world where men only liked men and women only liked women; soon we would all die out because people would be attracted only to the same sex, leaving no room for procreation. Raising the child as neither girl nor boy is kind of silly because why would you want to confuse the child more than it already is. If he is born a boy, parents should raise him like a boy. Now hypothetically speaking, if that boys turns out to be gay, than he was destined to be gay. But at least there were no outside influences that might have leaned him towards homosexuality. Like the boys in the androgynous school who refused to wear makeup; they refused because their inborn traits let them know boys weren't supposed to wear makeup.
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