halo5356

Biology of Sex and Gender

Garbacik’s overall main point in this chapter is that people shouldn’t be set into a gender right when they are born into this world. Biology has less to do with gender because gender can be more identified with how someone feels inside and not only to do with their biological makeup. Sex has to do with ones biological makeup while gender refers to the behaviors and roles that are usually attributed to males and females. Many peoples genders do not match what society says they are supposed to. She supports this overall claim by stating that most government documentation doesn’t allow for people to check any other box than male or female as if gender is assigned at birth even though many people do not see themselves as simply male or female. Western society is seen as much more culturally rigid when it comes to gender while many other cultures have long noted that there are more than two genders. She supports this claim by bringing up the Navajo culture that has had in their culture the ability for a person to be both a boy and a girl.

I liked that Garbacik used the text boxes that really popped on the page to show different supporting stories and definitions that grabbed the readers attention. I like that the boxes are different colors because that helped me navigate over the page and drew my attention to them so I would want to read them.

I didn’t find really any weaknesses with her arguments and the information that she listed was honest and effective. I liked her examples about other cultures and how we as a Western society have this barrier up where we don’t allow people to have more than one gender and how that is behind the times.

I found it interesting that transgender people have been documented from the 1800s, previously before reading this book I had no idea that was going on back then. This was recorded by a scientists who was interested in people who he believed wanted to change the genitals they were born with to those of the other sex. This chapter is mainly focused on the history of transgender people and how it has changed throughout time. I found it truly horrifying that in some countries homosexuality is punishable by torture and death even to this day! Gender identity disorder has found its way into the psychological DSM which is a list of psychological problems, this is also feel is wrong. Being a transgender individual is not a disease of the mind it is just a part of what makes that person who they are. Being transgender shouldn’t be in the DSM because the DSM is for mental disorders that cause the individual suffering from them distress.

The issue being presented in this chapter is that we are only willing as a society on a whole to define very few gender identities and that leaves many people feeling left out or that the way they feel is “wrong” and “not legit”. The author discusses a woman named Butler who says that gender is a “cultural fiction” which I agree with. It seems like gender is just a way to further try to categorize people and yet we don’t have enough definition to what gender really is and we limit people to just being male or female and thats so far off from how people really feel. It was also proposed in this chapter that queer may be best described as a position rather than a identity. This somewhat makes sense after it is explained as the true definition of queer being someone that reject what is considered normal and people who identify as being queer are rejecting the notion that being heterosexual is “normal”.

Original: Hazing is defined as the imposition of strenuous, often humiliating, tasks as part of a program of rigorous physical training and initiation. Hazing has become a huge problem in the United States. Many fatalities have occurred due to hazing, breaking up so many families. Organizations that are usually associated with hazing are fraternities, sororities, as well as athletic groups.
I have decided to view this social problem through the conflict theory approach. The conflict theory approach is based off the works of Karl Marx. This theory puts emphasis on the role of coercion and power for the purpose of providing social order. Inequality exists because those in power keep what they have to themselves and the rest of the people don’t have enough and are subsequently controlled by these elite in power. I would like to view this problem through a non-Marxist view because hazing has little to do with economic factors.

New: Hazing is defined as the imposition of strenuous, often humiliating, tasks as part of a program of rigorous physical training and initiation. Hazing has become a huge problem in the United States. Many fatalities have occurred due to hazing, breaking up so many families. Organizations that are usually associated with hazing are fraternities, sororities, as well as athletic groups.
There have been many horrible stories of hazing sensationalized by the news. These stories shock the world and makes those who perpetrate these hazing actions look terrible. Our very own school has had an issue with hazing in a fraternity that led to the death of a college freshman in 2004. Gordie Bailey died as a result of hazing at the hands of his fraternity elders in which the young boys were forced to drink extreme amounts of alcohol throughout the night and Bailey was left passed out on the ground of the fraternity. While passed out Gordie was drawn on by his brothers instead of taken to the hospital.

I think me adding in the personalized story in the second revision makes it more of a personalized experience into the details of that specific hazing incident while in the original I was just stating facts and trying to render plain information about the issue.

Original: All anyone could talk about last year was the Kony 2012 video and how it touched so many Americans into action. But what has really been done? Kony is still out on the loose and to what it appears we are no closer to catching him. Based on the readings I’ve done on the subject, the United States has teamed up with the philanthropists who made the Invisible Children video that opened our eyes to the Kony problem to begin with. These unconventional alliances have helped us get troops into Uganda without causing a huge media outburst. The problem is that our troops are not allowed to get involved with any actual combat they must sit idly by while people are injured and murdered. The United States government has only sent American troops to Uganda to train the Ugandan troops to fight Kony and his men.

New: All anyone could talk about last year was the Kony 2012 video and how it thrust so many Americans into action. The issue I have with the Kony project is how little has actually been done with the amount of money being taken in by the organization. Kony is still out on the loose and to what it appears we are no closer to catching him. Based on the readings I’ve done on the subject, the United States has teamed up with the philanthropists who made the Invisible Children video that opened our eyes to the Kony problem to begin with. These unconventional alliances have helped us get troops into Uganda without causing a huge media outburst. The problem is our troops are not allowed to get involved with any actual combat they must sit idly by while people are injured and murdered. The United States government has only sent American troops to Uganda to train the Ugandan troops to fight Kony and his men.

After reading the original piece out loud I felt some fine tuning and word choice changes were needed. I’ve never thought to physically read my work out loud before but it really helps you read the paper as your audience would be reading it and helps you to find and fix any mistakes that take away from the papers purpose.

The comic in the beginning of the chapter really captures what a protest would be thought of to look like and shows the struggle the LGBT community faces when trying to get the equal rights an recognition they deserve in the community. The group of LGBT members fighting for these rights have made some progress but still face so much discrimination in their path. This chapter focuses on the fact that all of these groups of people whose sexual identities were not being accepted into society banned together to try to make a change in our world. Reading about the hardships faced by the LGBT community makes me so sad. I know about the majority of the struggles from the news and horrible cases of mistreatment of the LGBT community that has been coming to light. I hope that the world is able to just accept people for who they are some day and that this violence and discrimination against people just because they feel differently than others will come to an end.

I think it’s important that the author points out that we have no evidence about how sexuality existed in the beginning of our time. We only know that males and females had to have been together to procreate but we don’t know if other kinds of sexual relationships were present during that time. Garbacik tells a story of a typical heterosexual relationship but tries to make it clear that the “normal” relationship that people usually consider isn’t what all people want out of a relationship and that should be okay. This chapter talks about homophobia and the fact that those who were homosexual were considered at one time in our past to have a mental disorder that made them that way. Essentialist believe that everyone is born the way they are and that people should just accept who they are and leave it at that. Constructionists believe that gender is ever changing and can be one thing at a certain stage in life and a different thing in another. I can see how the constructionist view could be related to people “experimenting” with their sexuality.

This chapter is all about identifying the ways gender is taught intentionally and unintentionally. For example, when someone hands a little girl a barbie doll and everyone smiles at her thats a passive sign to the child that that is a toy she should be playing with. Perhaps when someone hands the little girl an soldier or a truck people have no reaction at all which is also considered a passive way at telling the little girl she shouldn’t want to play with trucks and soldiers. It is interesting when she looks at the mother who is trying to raise her daughter in a gender free home but Garbacik says the child who has been showing more female attributes could just be mimicking what her mother does because she has given into societies gender roles.