Quote:
Originally Posted by LadyShea
Quote:
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SUT JHALLY: Goffman argues that there is nothing natural about gender identity. That is, we don’t just pop out the womb with our gender identities imprinted in our genes; that it is part of a process whereby we learn to take on certain attributes that we think are appropriate to our understanding of ourselves in gendered terms. Therefore, we have to analyze how the society constructs the categories within which we fit. And to understand how that takes place, we have to first make a distinction between the terms “sex” and “gender.”
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Okay, the bolded and underlined above I think are important. What "we think" is appropriate for our gender, and how the gender categories are constructed. |
Okay, here's the thing.
His
underlying premise is that gender identity does not exist except as a learned role.
So of
course, when he talks about gender identity, he is talking only about the learned role -- because he's denying that gender identity has any other existence!
And that's the claim that is absolutely proven false.
You said he was not talking about individuals being assigned gender identity, but that's
exactly what he was talking about. His premise is that "gender identity" is nothing but being raised to believe that you have a given role in your society.
But that's not true. If you assign people a gender identity which does not match their natural gender identity, they fix it or die.
There is such a thing as a natural gender identity, which does not consist of learned expectations about society, but the sense of self as male or female.