A couple of weeks ago I completed an intro level psychology course on lifespan development (in fact that was the title of the class). On the last day of class, we played Jeopardy to see how much information we remembered from the class. One of the questions was, "What is gender?" As I'm sure many of you are aware there are many many definitions for gender: there is the incredibly simple and evasive "gender is whatever we decide it is," to the incredibly complicated rundown on how society shapes our view of gender. Both of these answers are correct but the more complicated answer is inevitably the best and most accurate.
I will concede that gender is what we decide it is: we each define ourselves by what we perceive gender to be. However, our perception of gender is shaped by our society. For example, judge the difference between Western European men and American men. By comparison to the rest of the world, Western European men are very effeminate and American men are hyper-masculine. American men often refer to Western European men as "girly" equating their sense of fashion, mannerism, and behavior to being innately feminine. This claim is not incorrect, however, we as a society have reached an understanding that all feminine qualities are distinctly female. This claim is indeed incorrect: women can have masculine traits and be female and men can be feminine while maintaining their maleness.
Running with the idea of masculinity/femininity not being intrinsically male/female, the question then becomes how do we define our gender if not along the lines of femininity and masculinity? This is where it becomes tricky because our decisions about our gender are tied to our genitals: penises = masculine and manhood (thus the euphemism) and vaginas = feminine and womanhood. Gender, however, is the psychological perception of one's societal roles and the behaviors that accompany that role. These roles are everything from sexuality to employment. These roles manifest in women being, traditionally, caretakers of children and the elderly as well as the home, and men working outside the home in the community (in developed civilizations). If one looks back at tribal groups they see that occupational roles are slightly different with women often controlling the economics of the village with men doing the hard labor to support the village.
On the subject of employment, many people do not realize that certain occupations are seen as belonging to certain sexes/genders. Though it is becoming increasingly more common, women are still in the minority in most jobs especially those requiring hard physical labor: there are very few female construction workers, carpenters, electricians, police officers, firefighters, and EMTs. Women are more likely to be found working retail, especially front end (cashiering), waiting tables, doing office work, janitorial work, and in education below the collegiate level. These occupational choices are tied into our societies perception of femininity and masculinity. For example, I'm an English major (focus in Literature) and was a History major before that. The populations in my classes are incredibly different: History classes are occupied predominately by men and English classes are predominately occupied by women. These classes are of course in the upper division since there is usually equivalent students in the lower division classes.
Beyond occupation, there are of course fashions and personal care that belong strictly to one gender. For example, women usually do not shave their faces because most of them do not need to, but if there is unwanted facial hair they tend to wax or pluck. Admittedly shaving is a short term fix and most women are desiring the lasting effects of waxing or plucking. Conversely, on the whole, men do not wear makeup. the idea that makeup is for women is fairly recent (occurring in the last 200 years) and occurred parallel to the rise of the middle class and democratic governments in the West as well as industrialization. Makeup belonged to the upper classes with middle and lower class people not really being able to afford fineries in the way of cosmetics; however, towards the end of the Nineteenth-century cosmetics began to become part of middle-class life. Furthermore in the last fifty or so years, upper middle class and upper-class men have stopped getting manicures. Though very common during the early and middle part of the Twentieth century, manicures fell out of favor and popularity once the sexual revolution of the 1960s began.
Though this has been a long laundry list of things we do not usually take into account when discussing gender, these are all part of our societies gender makeup. We live in a society of 3-5 genders (male, female, trans which can be broken down into trans male and trans female, and gender fluid/queer). Though this classification is somewhat unpopular in today's hyper-sensitive culture, it is an easily debatable topic: since gender, from my stance, is developed by society, someone who is trans has different gender expectations than someone who is not. Furthermore, someone who is trans will not have had the same gender expectations before their transition; therefore, they will not have the experience of having been the gender they are transitioning to.
The topic of gender is a long and confusing discussion that is often oversimplified for ease of use. We as a society have been abusing the term gender and refuse to take an honest look at how we perceive gender. Furthermore, we use gender as a means of attack: we rebuke women for being too masculine and men for being too girly when they do not encompass their traditional roles or societies perceived notion of gender. This unwillingness to be flexible with gender perception could be part of increasing numbers of trans individuals (both transgender and transsexual). If we could expand our notions of gender we could possibly decrease gender confusion in our society and even eliminate some sources of bullying. This is, of course, an idealized concept that would take years of implementation into our personal lives to realize as a society.
