Gender Identity In Allan G. Johnson's The Gender Knots

Gender roles and societal roles are generally accepted and not often thought about. These roles are not thought about because it’s not something that people feel the need to understand. People tend to believe what society tells them since gender is a concept that has been around for hundreds of years. In his book The Gender Knots, Allan G. Johnson writes, “masculinity and femininity make up “gender roles” (65). Johnson claims that “In the simplest sense, masculinity and femininity are cultural ideas about who men and women are and who they’re supposed to be” (61). Therefore men and women have the roles they are supposed to play and they have a certain way they are supposed to play it. Patriarchy feeds on the fact that there are differences, …show more content…
Johnson reasons that, “given the importance of gender identity in patriarchal societies, attacking people as being insufficiently masculine or feminine can do a lot to control them because it both challenges their sense of who they are and makes them feel like outsiders” genuinely affects people because when someone is told that they are not man or woman enough it creates a sense of inadequacy leaving them vulnerable to be controlled through their gender identity (68). In Kit Tsui’s story A Chinese Banquet, the speaker is made to feel like she is deficient by her mother because her mother tells her that she feels like her daughter is not doing anything with her life, job wise or marriage wise because in her culture she should be married since she is in her late twenties (180). Johnson acknowledges that “what is culturally valued is associated with masculinity and maleness, and what is devalued is associated with femininity and femaleness, regardless of the reality of men’s and women’s lives” so no matter how well you are doing in life men will be valued more than women(64). Her mother’s views on what a women is supposed to do and who she is supposed to be with makes it impossible for her to tell her mother that she is gay and that is the reason she is not married. Johnson’s belief that “ideas about gender affects how others perceive and treat them” is shown throughout A Chinese Banquet (65). Johnson’s The Gender Knot gives the insight that because of her culture it …show more content…
In both Kit Tsui’s story A Chinese Banquet and Jamaica Kincaid’s story Girl the elder women were oppressing the younger women. In A Chinese Banquet the mother oppresses her daughters’ sexuality and makes her feel the need to hide that part of herself. In Girl the elder woman oppresses the younger woman’s spirit, making her feel defensive and unconfident. A patriarchal society is supposed to be a society controlled by men where they oppress women but in truth women oppress other women more than