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Michelle Laney
Professor Ditch
English 114A
23 September 2014
There are many misconceptions of gender and sex, such as the two being confused with
one another. Sex is what an individual is born with, either being female or male. Gender is
femininity or masculinity that the individual performs. In western society, being a feminine male
or masculine female is rather frowned upon. In the readings Night to His Day: The Social
Meanings of Gender by Judith Lorber and Rethinking Womens Biology by Ruth Hubbard,
the authors both share a common idea on how gender is constructed; they both share a common
theme of: parenting, pop culture, and culture. Being a Latina female with unorthodox parents
who was raised in a society which is influenced by the media everyday, I can relate to these
common ideas.
The controversy of gender construction is based on the perspective of conformists and
nonconformists. Conformists of the western society have an ideal theory that men are masculine
and women are feminine., this is problematic to nonconformists. Nonconformists are accepting
to masculine women and feminine men. ... our concept of ourselves is socially constructed and
political because our societys interpretation of what is what is not normal and naturally affects
what we do Thus norms are self-fulling prophecies that do not merely describe how we are
but prescribe how we should be (47). Ruth Hubbard uses this to explain how Western society
views nonconformity and how some people in society naturally adapt to this way of thinking. As
I was growing up, I never understood gender construction. Ive had cousins and family friends
that were nonconformists so I never questioned it. It was always a familiar thing for some males

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to be feminine and some to be masculine, and vice versa for females.

Parenting is one of the few, but crucial, aspects of gender construction. It is one of the
earliest stages of gender identification, as parents, they have an idea of what they want their child
to be like; they modify the childs attributes towards their desired gender. Judith Lorber explains
in Night to His Day: The Social Meanings of Construction, Most parents create a gendered
world for their newborn by naming, birth announcements, and dress. Childrens relationship with
same-gendered and different gendered caretakers structure their self-identifications and
personalities through cognitive development, children extract and apply to their own actions the
appropriate behavior for those who belong in their own gender Many feminist parents who
want to raise androgynous soon lose their children to pull the gendered norms (25). That being
said, Lorber agrees that parenting is a crucial part of influencing children to act a certain way
based on the parents views. Luckily, my parents raised both sexes in the family. Growing up
with two older brothers, I always followed in their footsteps when it came to playing in mud,
throwing back and forth footballs and dressing as a tomboy. My parents never told me that
what i was doing was nonconforming but rather they accepted it and never second guessed my
gender.
Social media is another major influence on gender construction in western society;
children, teens and even adults are easily manipulated with things in media. Society adapts their
daily lives with things they find attractive in social media; that includes women being more
feminine and men being more masculine. In the reading Rethinking Womens Biology by
Ruth Hubbard, she quotes Different societies have different standards of beauty for women, and
many of these involve differences in desirable weight In our society changes in style not just
of clothing but of body shape are generated, at least in part, because in entire industries depend

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on our liking of the way we look so that we will buy the products that promise to change it (48).