The thing that first hopped off the page for me while reading Lorber’s article was her description of the relationship between sex category and gender. Lorber writes, “Gender construction starts with assignment to a sex category on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth” (55). To me, this screams the difference between gender and biological sex, a point Lorber makes early on about “doing gender” (Lorber 54). One’s sex may be the result of what one’s genitalia look like, but one’s gender “is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social lie, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Lorber 54). This suggests that gender is something fluid, something apart from biology. This raises a question about what women’s sexuality really is; is it their genitals or their gender? What makes a woman a woman? If a man gets gender reassignment surgery to become a woman, his genitals will reflect woman, even if his genes don’t.
If we base gender on genitals, then the surgery has effectively changed the gender of the individual. What about individuals in transition? Do they not get to claim their new gender until the change is complete? What about intersexed individuals who may have both sets of genitalia – are they therefore deprived of a sex category? How does that influence their gender? It seems in their cases, gender would entirely be based on social constructs, which seems to render the role of genitals in the construction rather irrelevant. If genitals are not an essential part of gender, then what is? What makes a woman a woman? This last question is critical to the very nature of women’s studies and must be answered, if not addressed, in order to clarify the purposes of women’s studies.
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"“The Social Construction of Gender” by Judith Lorber".
- Lorber, Judith. “’Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender.” Paradoxes of Gender.
New Haven, Connecticut: Yale UP, 1994.
