PHIL 202, Gender Issues
Essay Assignment 1- Topic 2
October 13, 2017 Viewpoints on gender have evolved with greater scientific understanding and general education. As awareness grows, broader terminology is developed, and as terminology has grown, language further educates society. However, the problematic male and female binary viewpoint still lingers today and contributes to the complexity of gender attribution.
Kessler and McKenna’s text The Primacy and Gender Attribution explores our unconscious need to attribute someone into one of two categories, male or female.
We make a gender attribution, deciding if someone is male or female, every time we encounter a person. This gender attribution is more than a simple inspection, …show more content…
Historical views on sex and gender have been engrained into our unconscious thoughts, which help form our limited binary gender attribution. Aristotle notes that the gender is plain to our senses (Aristotle, Generation, p.371). Aristotle views gender as being one or the other, as male or female. Aristotle defines biological sex categories and functions noting the male is able to concoct to take shape and discharge semen, to create offspring. The female is one who receives the semen, but is unable to cause semen to take shape or to discharge it (Aristotle, Generation, p.385-387). Aristotle describes in his writings that one sex is able (male), the other unable (female) (Aristotle, Generation, p.389). Aristotle has the heterosexual view that the body gets formed to its ability and fit, with the male and female parts the opposite of each other, an with the ability it possesses also differs in the instrument is possesses. (Aristotle, Generation, p. 389). Aristotle considers only two sexes, in his biological descriptions of sex and gender. Attribution is made based on appearances based on these ideologies. Sexual orientation is also identified with a heterosexual view of how a male/female “fit” …show more content…
Terms have expanded from LGB to LGBT, for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender then expanded to LGBTQ .A further inclusive term is used today, to mean all of the communities included in the “LGBTTTQQIAA is now used (Lesbian, Gay. Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Two-spirited, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Ally, as well as Pansexual, Agender, Gender Queer, Bigender, Gender Variant and Pangender)(Ok2bme.ca). Clearly, gender is personal, complex and fluid. Orientation and gender identity is rapidly changing and evolving. Gender attribution though seems to be still grounded in a dichotomous viewpoint. Expanded terminology has not yet educated society enough to give way to our notioned view of gender and sex.
Our notion of gender as a dichotomy still is present today. Viewpoints on gender have evolved and terminology has expanded rapidly since. Aristotle’s limited notions, science limited, even radical notion at time, relied on traditional and primary notions of sex and gender. Gender attribution is long rooted in traditional notions of sex and gender, as seen in Aristotle’s writings. There continues to be an unconscious categorization that do not match with evolving understanding of gender the problematic male and female binary viewpoint still lingers today and contributes to the complexity of gender