Night To His Day Summary

“Night to his Day” by Judith Lorber addresses the idea that gender is not a biological distinction but is a socially constructed system. We are not born with a masculine or feminine identity just with male and female genitalia; hence gender roles are constructed by humans. Lorber explains that gender construction starts at birth where we are assigned a gender based on our genetaila, and then parents dress the child as the assigned gender to alleviate questions of their child’s sex. From the day that we are born society tells us what a “real girls/boy should looks like, how one acts and how one talks. We are then only recognized by those roles and when we do the opposite we have broken some cardinal rule.
Lorber further explains that gendering is put in place to make clear a dominant and a subordinate. One gender is named as the leader or protector while the other is just that the other. While men and women have the same abilities and are able to do the same jobs we give those jobs different titles. By giving different titles we make it clear one sex is superior to the other hence deserving higher pay, better job positions and overall al better quality of life.
In Western culture we need clear gender lines drawn because according to Lorber “sameness” brings discomfort. It causes concerns that work against our imbedded moral system and …show more content…
I was always set to follow by a different set of rules than my brothers. According to Lorber we are bread to always be “doing Gender”, the public display of meeting societies expectations for our sex. Our clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, even our cars and homes are all ways that we constantly do gender. I have pink license plates on my car and my husband likes big shiny rims. We do these things today as second nature as I could have chosen any license plate but pink is pretty, feminine and makes it evident that a girl owns this