Media Effects and Gender Discussion Topic

The Social Construction of Gender, in Sociology by Boundless, is used under the terms of the Creative Commons

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2014, boundless.com

1

The Social Construction of Gender

Social constructivists propose that there is no inherent truth to gender; it is

constructed by social expectations and gender performance.

Learning Objective

 Explain Judith Butler's concept of gender performativity

Key Points

 Social constructionism is the notion that people's understanding of reality is

partially, if not entirely, socially situated.

 Gender is a social identity that needs to be contextualized.

 Individuals internalize social expectations for gender norms and behave

accordingly.

Terms

 social constructionism

The idea that social institutions and knowledge are created by actors within the

system, rather than having any inherent truth on their own.

 Gender performativity

Gender Performativity is a term created by post-structuralist feminist philosopher

Judith Butler in her 1990 book Gender Trouble, which has subsequently been

used in a variety of academic fields that describes how individuals participate in

social constructions of gender.

 essentialism

The view that objects have properties that are essential to them.

Social Constructionism

The social construction of gender comes out of the general school of thought entitled

social constructionism. Social constructionism proposes that everything people "know"

or see as "reality" is partially, if not entirely, socially situated. To say that something is

socially constructed does not mitigate the power of the concept. Take, for example,

money. Money is a socially constructed reality. Paper bills are worth nothing

independent of the value individuals ascribe to them. The dollar is only worth as much

2

as value as Americans are willing to ascribe to it. Note that the dollar only works in its

own currency market; it holds no value in areas that don't use the dollar. Nevertheless,

the dollar is extremely powerful within its own domain.

These basic theories of social constructionism can be applied to any issue of study

pertaining to human life, including gender. Is gender an essential category or a social

construct? If it is a social construct, how does it function? Who benefits from the way

that gender is constructed? A social constructionist view of gender looks beyond

categories and examines the intersections of multiple identities and the blurring of the

boundaries between essentialist categories. This is especially true with regards to

categories of male and female, which are viewed typically as binary and opposite.

Social constructionism seeks to blur the binary and muddle these two categories, which

are so frequently presumed to be essential.

Judith Butler and Gender Performativity

Judith Butler is one of the most prominent social theorists currently working on issues

pertaining to the social construction of gender. Butler is a trained philosopher and has

oriented her work towards feminism and queer theory. Butler's most known work is

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, published in 1991, which

argues for gender performativity. This means that gender is not an essential category.

The repetitious performances of "male" and "female" in accordance with social norms

reifies the categories, creating the appearance of a naturalized and essential binary.

Gender is never a stable descriptor of an individual, but an individual is always "doing"

gender, performing or deviating from the socially accepted performance of gender

stereotypes. Doing gender is not just about acting in a particular way. It is about

embodying and believing certain gender norms and engaging in practices that map on

to those norms. These performances normalize the essentialism of gender categories.

In other words, by doing gender, we reinforce the notion that there are only two mutually

exclusive categories of gender. The internalized belief that men and women are

essentially different is what makes men and women behave in ways that appear

essentially different. Gender is maintained as a category through socially constructed

displays of gender.

Doing gender is fundamentally a social relationship. One does gender in order to be

perceived by others in a particular way, either as male, female, or as troubling those

categories. Certainly, gender is internalized and acquires significance for the individual;

some individuals want to feel feminine or masculine. Social constructionists might argue

that because categories are only formed within a social context, even the affect of

gender is in some ways a social relation. Moreover, we hold ourselves and each other

3

for our presentation of gender, or how we "measure up." We are aware that others

evaluate and characterize our behavior on the parameter of gender. Social

constructionists would say that gender is interactional rather than individual—it is

developed through social interactions. Gender is also said to be omnirelevant, meaning

that people are always judging our behavior to be either male or female.