Gender Flaws By Kate Bornstein Analysis

After reading the reading for this week, I started to examine my life through the lenses of gender. Just like stated in the book Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, by Kate Bornstein, I never got asked what I felt like or what I wanted to be in regards to gender, because at birth I was assigned a gender. Therefore, everything that I had access to or ever did revolved around gender roles. Furthermore, as mentioned by Catherine G. Valentine, in The Prism of Gender, we are taught that a real woman is feminine; a real man is masculine and heterosexual; and any deviation is unacceptable and unnatural (3). Therefore, we live in a society that is binary that has taught us that there are only two acceptable sexes, male and female, and …show more content…
It is these expectations that are so embedded in our society that makes it hard for people who do not fit with the expectations to be accepted. With this in mind, the gender structure differentiates opportunities and constrains based on sex and thus has consequences on three dimensions; individual, interactional and institutional (Risman, 13). It affect all the three social structures because it limits the choices of an individual, and even drives them to mask their own identities if they don’t fit in. Like in the case of Lucal, who throughout her life has been forced to prove her identity, because she dressed like a man, but was a woman. In her article, she talks about how she is refer to as a “Sir,” is asked to provide her ID whenever she uses cards as a method of payment, she is judged and criticized when she used a female restroom. Nonetheless, as a way to avoid being uncomfortable, she avoids using rest rooms, does not try on her clothes before purchasing it and she basically has to work around a system that does not see her for who she really is (21-23). Therefore, after reading and witnessing my nephew’s limited options I can say that I had never been expose to people who do not identify with the gender norms, until college, and I can see myself in my nephews eyes, because my options were always limited. I wore headbands, dresses, and lipstick, played with dolls but never with cars or marbles because those were boy’s toys. In my family homosexuality, transgender, and all other nonconforming identities were never part of the conversation. Therefore it all comes down to a cycle where everyone in my family was socialized to believe there are only two sexes, and only two options but the reality is that there is a lot more to