In Professor Vasvari’s class, the class is continuously asked the question of what represents masculinity and femininity and what it means to be either female or male. While both of these ideas are similar, they both discuss different issues. The first question identifies the notion of performativity while the second question reveals the concept of gender identification by either oneself or a community. In class we have been able to identify that there are two types of gender which are related to one’s identity. Gender 2A is the practice of feminine and masculine in social relations, which determines how one’s environment perceives them versus Gender 2B which gives power to the individual to identify their gender in a non-binary system,
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Performativity advocates that one acts a particular gender, rather than being born into a particular gender. While these three terms vastly have to do with the performance of gender, it is important to recognize how they come into conflict with the idea of sex, which identifies one’s gender with the genitalia they are born with. Zimmerman (2000), Lakoff (1990) and Goldberg (2014) all put in perspective the way one’s Gender 2A, 2B, performance and sex all come into conversation. In Zimmerman’s book, Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, she discusses the idea that men and women have been taught to slowly learn how to perform a naturalized definition of what male and female mean. Zimmerman states, “the notion that the appearance of having a natural gender is an …show more content…
Goldberg writes, “Trans women say that they are women because they feel female- that, as some put it, they have women’s brains in men’s bodies. Radical feminist reject the notion of a ‘female brain.’ They believe that if women think and act differently from men it’s because society forces them to” (2014:2). In attempts to empower women, radical feminists have separated the idea of what it means to be female and what the performance of femininity are. Through this ideology, they have come to the conclusion that transgender women are only trying to further perpetuate the idea of femininity because the simplest way to describe one’s reason to transition into being a women is to say that they felt like a women, which contradicts the point made by radical feminists. This has allowed some feminists to not accept men-to-women transitions especially, because they believe that, “by extension, when trans women demand to be accepted as women they are simply exercising another form of male entitlement” (Goldberg 2014:2). Radical feminists show through this idea, that they are refusing to consider Gender 2B, which allows one to create an identity in a non-binary system. They are choosing to follow the idea that one’s sex and gender must be the same thing, which further perpetuates the
Performativity advocates that one acts a particular gender, rather than being born into a particular gender. While these three terms vastly have to do with the performance of gender, it is important to recognize how they come into conflict with the idea of sex, which identifies one’s gender with the genitalia they are born with. Zimmerman (2000), Lakoff (1990) and Goldberg (2014) all put in perspective the way one’s Gender 2A, 2B, performance and sex all come into conversation. In Zimmerman’s book, Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia, she discusses the idea that men and women have been taught to slowly learn how to perform a naturalized definition of what male and female mean. Zimmerman states, “the notion that the appearance of having a natural gender is an …show more content…
Goldberg writes, “Trans women say that they are women because they feel female- that, as some put it, they have women’s brains in men’s bodies. Radical feminist reject the notion of a ‘female brain.’ They believe that if women think and act differently from men it’s because society forces them to” (2014:2). In attempts to empower women, radical feminists have separated the idea of what it means to be female and what the performance of femininity are. Through this ideology, they have come to the conclusion that transgender women are only trying to further perpetuate the idea of femininity because the simplest way to describe one’s reason to transition into being a women is to say that they felt like a women, which contradicts the point made by radical feminists. This has allowed some feminists to not accept men-to-women transitions especially, because they believe that, “by extension, when trans women demand to be accepted as women they are simply exercising another form of male entitlement” (Goldberg 2014:2). Radical feminists show through this idea, that they are refusing to consider Gender 2B, which allows one to create an identity in a non-binary system. They are choosing to follow the idea that one’s sex and gender must be the same thing, which further perpetuates the