Gender Inequalities And Discrimination Of Gender Minorities

If my one of my family members asks me, “what did you learn in your women’s studies class about sex and gender?” I will reply like this: “I learned that women have been discriminated by men, and we must fix these problems between women and men”. Also, I will mention intersex-people and other people who are sexual minorities about their discrimination in the society. Many women have fought against discrimination between men and women that many women experience. The female identity is different according to each culture and their customs, but many cultures are based on a patriarchal culture where men have more power than women. Women have experienced domination of men in the form of jobs, education, sexuality and reproductive choice. American women have strived to overcome these stereotypes and have gained a position of near equality to men's in many societal constructs. In the many nations like United States today, men and women enjoy almost equal social standing. Women have rights on voting, can have a business they want, hold political office and have a full spectrum of rights like men do. Also, women have reproductive and social rights to divorce, abortion and birth control. Of course, they can wear whatever they choose. Laws are in place protecting them from sexual assault and physical abuse. There are, however, media constructions of gender that portray clear stereotypes of men and women. Women are portrayed in the media as sexual objects: thin, large breasted, quiet, demure and shy. Even though they hold powerful jobs and play valuable roles in a variety of social constructs, the paradigm of the housewife prevails. In this essay, I will talk about basic definitions from our textbook, brief history of how western culture has traditionally discussed gender inequalities, film about sexual minorities such as intersex-people.

There is an important difference between “Sex” and “Gender”. “Sex” refers to what we are biologically we are differentiated based on the anatomy we are born with, “gender” is what it means to be a girl or boy. The words “masculine” and “feminine” are used to describe the clothes men and women should look, the way they should wear, the way how they should behave in lifetime. “The interplanetary theory” is mentioned during class. The interplanetary theory of gender is about that men and women are so different that we basically come from separate planets and do not have common thing at all. This theory originated from the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” by Dr. John Gray which from the title one can infer that the author is saying men and women are just different and because of this we can never completely understand the other sex. Kimmel on page 15 of his book states that “The interplanetary theory of gender is important not because its right – in fact, it is wrong far more often than it is right-but because, as a culture, we seem desperately to want it to be true.” We should get rid of the idea that men and women are from different planets and look at men and women as neighbors because there are more similarities between the two then there are differences.

“The stereotypes imply not only that female biological processes are less worthy than their male counterpart but also that women are less worthy than men.” As mentioned above, people who lived in western culture before have these stereotypes which is completely wrong. There is no less worthy genders in the world. Every roles of genders are very important to each other, and it will be disaster if one of genders is missing. Women and men are both important and need each other for their success. I said the word, ‘success’ for breeding because the basic purpose of the life of people and all other creatures is breeding.

After I watched the film, Intersexion, I shocked at how people can be cruel to others who are biologically different. Of course, I understand that many people can be surprised or awkward to people who have different look from majority. However, we should respect and understand their simple physical differences. For intersex-people, nothing is different from us except one little thing: genital. Their thoughts, ideas, moralities, appearances, and personalities are not different from us. Although intersex-people have no difference from others, they have been treated wrongly by people who have certain wrong ideas such as psychologist, John Money. As an example of this case, I will talk about David Reimer-case at this moment. David Reimer was born in 1965 as the same twin boy. By the age of eight months, David and his brother each had minor medical problems related to penis, and the doctor decided to treat the problem as a circumcision. The doctor circumcised David in an inappropriate way and accidentally burned all of David's penis. At the advice of professor John Money, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University, David's parents agreed to make him a woman through surgery, hormones and psychotherapy. For years, John Money has argued that David has been identified as a "real" girl of female identity. Money has used this example to enhance the approach to sexual intercourse, which is an approach that is still used in most U.S. and developed countries with sexual anatomical characteristics, not both related to parenting and nurturing. As it turned out, Don was lying. He knew that Brenda had never been happy as a child, and as soon as David discovered what had happened to him, David rediscovered the social identity of a boy.

David Reimer's example has been used by proponents of the "adult" theory as proof that they are right. No one has the right to say that a particular gender is worth more than another. Also, we cannot determine their proper identity. Their identity must be determined on their own. There is no perfect or solid proof in John Money's theory. Gay, sex, homosexual, and other sexual people should all be treated the same person. They all have their own personality, morality, and all other ideas as all humans have. It doesn't matter to smart scientists or psychologists. It is not a scientist or everyone else but a concern for him or her. I am not saying that people should not help sexual minorities, but that we should respect and understand their choices and consequences.