New York University Distinction Between Gender and Sex Essay Watch a TED Talk by Tony Porter （）, where he focused on what he calls “The Man Box.” According

New York University Distinction Between Gender and Sex Essay Watch a TED Talk by Tony Porter （）, where he focused on what he calls “The Man Box.” According to Porter, what is The Man Box? What are its core elements? Why are men afraid of getting outside of The Man Box? When Porter says, “my liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman,” what do you think he means by that? Be sure to reference and integrate ppt materials and readings by West and Zimmerman “Doing Gender” and Lorber’s “Night to His Day”. The essay must be 500-600 words.Must cite from the document given. Thanks. Slide 1
Introduction to Sociology
May 20, 2020
Slide 2
Displaying one’s self as
men and women
What kinds of signs do people
“give off ” about their sex category
membership?
Slide 3
Slide 4
Slide 5
Slide 6
Slide 7
Slide 8
Slide 9
Slide 10
Slide 11
Man
or
Woman
How do you decide?
When placing people into a particular sex
category (man or woman), what characteristics
do you look for?
Slide 12
What if you can’t place
people in a sex category?
How does that change the
interaction?
Slide 13
Gender “establishes
patterns of
expectations for
individuals, [gender]
orders the social
processes of daily life,
[gender] is built into
the major social
organizations of
society, such as the
economy, political
ideology, and family”
Slide 14
Gender matters for how we
organize our daily life, and
Gender can have profound
consequences for the life
chances of any individual.
Slide 15
Sex and Gender
This is a critical distinction to
know and understand
Slide 16
Sex
“…is a determination made through
the application of socially agreed
upon biological criteria for classifying
persons as females or males”
Slide 17
Slide 18
Gender
“…is the activity of managing situated
conduct in light of normative
conceptions of attitudes and activities
appropriate for one’s sex category.
Gender activities emerge from and
bolster claims to membership in a sex
category.”
Slide 19
Gender is a familiar part of
our daily lives. It’s taken-forgranted quality is rarely
questioned.
We perform gender almost
automatically, without giving
much thought to it.
As members of society, we are like actors.
We engage in performances for each other.
Slide 20
We think about our actions and imagine
how they will be interpreted by others.
Slide 21
To “do gender” is to align
our behavior with normative
expectations of masculinity
or femininity
Slide 22
Gender is the product of a
social performance that we
put on for one another.
Slide 23
Gender is a social interaction
strategy. Gender is something
we “give off ” about ourselves,
so that other people can read
the signs and know how to
deal with us.
Slide 24
Performing gender is optional;
Being seen by others as a gendered
person is not
Slide 25
Doing gender
becomes
practically
unavoidable
because sexcategory
membership is so
dominant in our
daily encounters.
Slide 26
Doing
gender in
the
morning.
Doing gender is a familiar part of
everyday life
Slide 27
Are we ever not
doing gender?
Slide 28
How is she conforming to gender
expectations?
Slide 29
How is he
conforming
to gender
expectations?
MEN
Slide 30
WOMEN
Slide 31
The early
formation
of a
gendered
identity
Slide 32
A 2014 study in Pediatrics found that
mothers interacted vocally more often
with their infant daughters than with
their infant sons.
Researchers also found that mothers
were more likely to use emotional
words and emotional topics when
speaking with their daughters
Slide 33
A 2017 study found that fathers sing and
smile more to their daughters, and they
use language that is more “analytical”
with their sons.
Slide 34
The Sex Binary
Slide 35
The Gender Binary
Masculine or Feminine
Thinking along the lines of gender
(men and women, boys and girls) is
one of the basic things we look for
when trying to determine who
somebody is
Slide 36
Masculine
Strong
Active
Rugged
Dominant
Powerful
Independent
Feminine
Weak
Passive
Delicate
Submissive
Vulnerable
Dependent
Slide 37
Who is more likely…?
To wear a skirt
To carry a handbag
To comment on people’s clothes
To cry in public
To admit to baking cupcakes
To eat a big meal in public
To write thank you cards for small favors
Slide 38
Who is more likely…?
To deal confidently with auto mechanics
To pick up slack in dull conversation
To walk by themselves at night
To be interested in sports
To take up a lot of space while sitting
To be congratulated for having lots of sex
To be the target of street harassment
Slide 1
Introduction to Sociology
May 18, 2020
Slide 2
What Unites
Us?
What Divides
Us?
Slide 3
Class,
Race,
& Gender
Slide 4
Class, Race, Gender
What’s the point of studying these
things?
Slide 5
Why does this matter?
There are patterns of
advantage and disadvantage
that exist in our society, and
there are invisible perks that
aren’t available to everybody.
Slide 6
But, before talking about gender…
Let’s start with a song
“Walk Like a Man”
by The Four Seasons
Slide 7
An In-Class Exercise
4 Volunteers Needed
Slide 8
Popular Self Help Book in
1990s
Belief that men and women
are just different organisms;
and differences in behavior
is rooted fundamentally in
biology
This offers appeal of easy to
grasp generalizations
Tends to make intuitive
sense at first glance
Slide 9
Sex, Sex Category, and Gender
What’s the difference?
Slide 10
Sex
“…is a determination made through
the application of agreed upon
biological criteria for classifying
persons as females or males”
Slide 11
Slide 12
Sex Category
“…is achieved through application of
the sex criteria…categorization is
established and sustained by socially
required identification displays that
proclaim one’s membership in one or the
other category.”
Can you tell somebody’s sex just
by looking at them
Slide 13
Slide 14
Displaying one’s self as
men and women
What kinds of signs do people
“give off ” about their sex category
membership?
Slide 15
Slide 16
Slide 17
Slide 18
Slide 18
Slide 20
Slide 21
Slide 22
Slide 22
Slide 24
Man
or
Woman
How do you decide?
When placing people into a particular sex
category (man or woman), what characteristics
do you look for?
Slide 25
Slide 25
Slide 27
Slide 26
Slide 29
Slide 30
Slide 31
Slide 32
Slide 33
What if you can’t place people
into a sex category?
Slide 34
How does that change the
interaction?
Does it change the social
interaction with a person if there
aren’t clear-cut signs about the
person’s sex category membership?
Doing Gender
Author(s): Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Gender and Society, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 125-151
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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DOING GENDER
CANDACE WEST
University of California, Santa Cruz
DON H. ZIMMERMAN
University of California, Santa Barbara
The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine
accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical
assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of
important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition
of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the
interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our
remarks is toward theoretical reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions
for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation.
In the beginning, there was sex and there was gender. Those of us
who taught courses in the area in the late 1960s and early 1970s were
careful to distinguish one from the other. Sex, we told students, was
what was ascribed by biology: anatomy, hormones, and physiology.
Gender, we said, was an achieved status: that which is constructed
through psychological, cultural, and social means. To introduce the
difference between the two, we drew on singular case studies of
hermaphrodites (Money 1968, 1974; Money and Ehrhardt 1972) and
anthropological investigations of “strange and exotic tribes” (Mead
1963, 1968).
Inevitably (and understandably), in the ensuing weeks of each
term, our students became confused. Sex hardly seemed a “given” in
AUTHORS’ NOTE: This article is based in part on a paper presented at the Annual
Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, September 1977. For their
helpful suggestions and encouragement, we thank Lynda Ames, Bettina Aptheker,
Steven Clayman, Judith Gerson, the late Erving Goffman, Marilyn Lester, Judith
Lorber, Robin Lloyd, Wayne Mellinger, Beth E. Schneider, Barrie Thorne, Thomas P.
Wilson, and most especially, Sarah Fenstermaker Berk.
GENDER&SOCIETY,Vol. 1 No. 2, June 1987125-151
0 1987Sociologistsfor Womenin Society
125
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126
GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987
the context of research that illustrated the sometimes ambiguous and
often conflicting criteria for its ascription. And gender seemed much
less an “achievement” in the context of the anthropological, psychological, and social imperatives we studied-the division of labor, the
formation of gender identities, and the social subordination of
women by men. Moreover, the received doctrine of gender socialization
theories conveyed the strong message that while gender may be
“achieved,” by about age five it was certainly fixed, unvarying, and
static-much like sex.
Since about 1975, the confusion has intensified and spread far
beyond our individual classrooms. For one thing, we learned that the
relationship between biological and cultural processes was far more
complex-and reflexive-than we previously had supposed (Rossi
1984, especially pp. 10-14). For another, we discovered that certain
structural arrangements, for example, between work and family,
actually produce or enable some capacities, such as to mother, that we
formerly associated with biology (Chodorow 1978 versus Firestone
1970). In the midst of all this, the notion of gender as a recurring
achievement somehow fell by the wayside.
Our purpose in this article is to propose an ethnomethodologically
informed, and therefore distinctively sociological, understanding of
gender as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment. We
contend that the “doing” of gender is undertaken by women and men
whose competence as members of society is hostage to its production.
Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual,
interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine “natures.”
When we view gender as an accomplishment, an achieved property
of situated conduct, our attention shifts from matters internal to the
individual and focuses on interactional and, ultimately, institutional
arenas. In one sense, of course, it is individuals who “do” gender. But
it is a situated doing, carried out in the virtual or real presence of
others who are presumed to be oriented to its production. Rather than
as a property of individuals, we conceive of gender as an emergent
feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for
various social arrangements and as a means of legitimating one of the
most fundamental divisions of society.
To advance our argument, we undertake a critical examination of
what sociologists have meant by gender, including its treatment as a
role enactment in the conventional sense and as a “display” in
Goffman’s (1976) terminology. Both gender role and gender display
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West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER
127
focus on behavioral aspects of being a woman or a man (as opposed,
for example, to biological differences between the two). However, we
contend that the notion of gender as a role obscures the work that is
involved in producing gender in everyday activities, while the notion
of gender as a display relegates it to the periphery of interaction. We
argue instead that participants in interaction organize their various
and manifold activities to reflect or express gender, and they are
disposed to perceive the behavior of others in a similar light.
To elaborate our proposal, we suggest at the outset that important
but often overlooked distinctions be observed among sex, sex
category, and gender. Sex is a determination made through the
application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying
persons as females or males.’ The criteria for classification can be
genitalia at birth or chromosomal typing before birth, and they do
not necessarily agree with one another. Placement in a sex category is
achieved through application of the sex criteria, but in everyday life,
categorization is established and sustained by the socially required
identificatory displays that proclaim one’s membership in one or the
other category. In this sense, one’s sex category presumes one’s sex
and stands as proxy for it in many situations, but sex and sex category
can vary independently; that is, it is possible to claim membership in
a sex category even when the sex criteria are lacking. Gender, in
contrast, is the activity of managing situated conduct in light of
normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for
one’s sex category. Gender activities emerge from and bolster claims
to membership in a sex category.
We contend that recognition of the analytical independence of sex,
sex category, and gender is essential for understanding the relationships among these elements and the interactional work involved in
“being” a gendered person in society. While our primary aim is
theoretical, there will be occasion to discuss fruitful directions for
empirical research following from the formulation of gender that we
propose.
We begin with an assessment of the received meaning of gender,
particularly in relation to the roots of this notion in presumed
biological differences between women and men.
PERSPECTIVES ON SEX AND GENDER
In Western societies, the accepted cultural perspective on gender
views women and men as naturally and unequivocally defined
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128
GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987
categories of being (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 116-18) with distinctive
psychological and behavioral propensities that can be predicted from
their reproductive functions. Competent adult members of these societies see differences between the two as fundamental and enduringdifferences seemingly supported by the division of labor into women’s
and men’s work and an often elaborate differentiation of feminine
and masculine attitudes and behaviors that are prominent features of
social organization. Things are the way they are by virtue of the fact
that men are men and women are women-a division perceived to be
natural and rooted in biology, producing in turn profound psychological, behavioral, and social consequences. The structural arrangements of a society are presumed to be responsive to these differences.
Analyses of sex and gender in the social sciences, though less likely
to accept uncritically the naive biological determinism of the view
just presented, often retain a conception of sex-linked behaviors and
traits as essential properties of individuals (for good reviews, see
Hochschild 1973; Tresemer 1975; Thorne 1980; Henley 1985). The
“sex differences approach” (Thore 1980) is more commonly attributed to psychologists than to sociologists, but the survey researcher
who determines the “gender” of respondents on the basis of the sound
of their voices over the telephone is also making trait-oriented
assumptions. Reducing gender to a fixed set of psychological traits or
to a unitary “variable” precludes serious consideration of the ways it
is used to structure distinct domains of social experience (Stacey and
Thorne 1985, pp. 307-8).
Taking a different tack, role theory has attended to the social
construction of gender categories, called “sex roles” or, more recently,
“gender roles” and has analyzed how these are learned and enacted.
Beginning with Linton (1936) and continuing through the works of
Parsons (Parsons 1951; Parsons and Bales 1955) and Komarovsky
(1946, 1950), role theory has emphasized the social and dynamic
aspect of role construction and enactment (Thorne 1980; Connell
1983). But at the level of face-to-face interaction, the application of
role theory to gender poses problems of its own (for good reviews and
critiques, see Connell 1983, 1985; Kessler, Ashendon, Connell, and
Dowsett 1985; Lopata and Thorne 1978; Thorne 1980; Stacey and
Thorne 1985). Roles are situated identities-assumed and relinquished as the situation demands-rather than master identities
(Hughes 1945), such as sex category, that cut across situations. Unlike
most roles, such as “nurse,” “doctor,” and “patient” or “professor”
and “student,” gender has no specific site or organizational context.
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West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER
129
Moreover, many roles are already gender marked, so that special
qualifiers-such as “female doctor” or “male nurse”-must be added
to exceptions to the rule. Thorne (1980) observes that conceptualizing
gender as a role makes it difficult to assess its influence on other roles
and reduces its explanatory usefulness in discussions of power and
inequality. Drawing on Rubin (1975), Thorne calls for a reconceptualization of women and men as distinct social groups, constituted in
“concrete, historically changing-and
generally unequal-social
relationships” (Thorne 1980, p. 11).
We argue that gender is not a set of traits, nor a variable, nor a role,
but the product of social doings of some sort. What then is the social
doing of gender? It is more than the continuous creation of the
meaning of gender through human actions (Gerson and Peiss 1985).
We claim that gender itself is constituted through interaction.2 To
develop the implications of our claim, we turn to Goffman’s (1976)
account of “gender display.” Our object here is to explore how gender
might be exhibited or portrayed through interaction, and thus be seen
as “natural,” while it is being produced as a socially organized
achievement.
GENDER DISPLAY
Goffman contends that when human beings interact with others in
their environment, they assume that each possesses an “essential
nature”-a nature that can be discerned through the “natural signs
given off or expressed by them” (1976, p. 75). Femininity and
masculinity are regarded as “prototypes of essential expressionsomething that can be conveyed fleetingly in any social situation and
yet something that strikes at the most basic characterization of the
individual” (1976, p. 75). The means through which we provide such
expressions are “perfunctory, conventionalized acts” (1976, p. 69),
which convey to others our regard for them, indicate our alignment in
an encounter, and tentatively establish the terms of contact for that
social situation. But they are also regarded as expressive behavior,
testimony to our “essential natures.”
Goffman (1976, pp. 69-70) sees displays as highly conventionalized
behaviors structured as two-part exchanges of the statement-reply
type, in which the presence or absence of symmetry can establish
deference or dominance. These rituals are viewed as distinct from but
articulated with more consequential activities, such as performing
tasks or engaging in discour…
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