Introduction
The term gender is one of the basic terminologies which have been given general definitions which encompass all aspects of humanity, for instance, age, being male or female, sex among others. When this is analyzed in relation to this context it is used to refer to the sexual identity. Sex therefore can be used as a term which refers to either human females or males in regard to individual biological features which are mainly: chromosomes, sex organs, hormones and other physical features that might be present on the human body (Haraway, 1991).
In today’s society, normally these features are used to categorically determine most of the people’s identities and this relates to sex. In many cases, this term has been used to put a difference between people of opposite biological entities socially and even in the culturally-natured societies. According to the research conducted by Gartens (1996) on gender distinctions and sex, he concluded that the two factors are more or less the same in regard to the differentiation between consciousness and the mind.
Main Discussion
According to his research Gartens (1996), accounts for some feminist theories which actually attempt to define and destroy the sex/gender. He concludes that gender is a conceptual tool which is gained through hegemony. The feminist theory on the other hand relates sex or gender to as biological, anatomical, or physiological body in relation to the body’s genes.
The feminist the theory therefore defines, Maleness and femaleness as a form of sexual category taps the behavioral manifestation of a traditionally based, ethnically shared fantasy about male and female biologics, and by this sex and gender are not subjectively linked (Gatens, 1996). This indicates that the connection between the female body and femininity is not arbitrary in the same way the symptom is not arbitrarily related to its etiology. Personal identity is a gendered identity that is understood to be absolutely separate from one’s bodily sex (Jackson, 1998). At the birth of children their social characters are seen as the same but only come to differ with time as the male and female child grow.
According to an interview conducted by Walsh, Gaten it confirms to his argument that sex is wrongly viewed as an exclusively natural and thus unchangeable category he stipulates that there are no neutral bodies (Gatens, 2004). In addition, Socialization process has been found to act on neutral and passive bodies which have high chance of leading to behaviorism in any human being and is more likely to occur in animals than human beings. Therefore, this signifies that the male transsexual experience of female identity if expected to be different a female who is therefore not transsexual. According to the author, human being view on sex is based on biological understanding which seems to be historical and cultural ideologies.
According to the empirical study conducted by Gatens (2004), he argues that sex and gender are allied with distinction between the biological and the social factors. This therefore implies that the body and mind are key areas when it comes to human decision-making since they normally reinforce implementation of uncritical dualisms. As earlier stated the body should not be treated as a neutral, biological ground on which female and male identities are socially inscribed, and to take to account of the fact our understanding of the body is already shaped and differentiated by the imaginary (Bordo, 1992). If thinking is essentially embodied and if we think somehow reflects our bodies as we imagine them, what metaphysical model will capture this insight and at the same time accommodate sexual difference.
As a body of men from which women excluded, but as a body composed of differing parts. Women supposedly conserve energy (being anabolic) and this makes them submissive, conventional, slothful, unstable and impassive in politics. The masculine nature of men motivates their energy, eagerness, passion thus giving them a taste of politics and social matters.Sex and gender are allied with the distinctions between the biological and the social, and the body and the mind, in a way that reinforces these uncritical dualisms. Bodily difference between men and women will ensure that there are differences between their minds. This does change with the way people imagine themselves and the world in which they live.
Gatens says that a rational polity will take account of the differences between citizens which shape their ways of striving to preserve themselves. It has been argued that masculine and feminine forms of behavior are not arbitrary inscriptions on an indifferent consciousness which is joined to an indifferent body. To speak of acquiring a particular gender and its intimate relation to biology as lived in a social and historical context. It has been argued also that masculinity and femininity do not differ with regard to the sexes in terms of quantity only, but also qualitatively (Gatens, 2004).
The male transsexual can be understood only if we first understand the genesis of the primitive ego on the other hand female transsexual cannot be symmetrical. The relation of the female infant to the mother’s body is not and cannot be problematic in the same way. The female transsexual is much more likely to be a reaction against oppression, that is, against the socially required forfeit of activity that was once enjoyed and socially tolerated. The transsexuals know very clearly that the issue is not one of gender but one of sex.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this dissymmetry between the sexes is reflected in feminist musings on whether women are excluded from certain professions because they are prestigious or whether those professions are prestigious because women are excluded. The implication being that it is not what is done or how it is done but who does it that determines social value. The problem is not how to socialize women to femininity and men to masculinity but how their behaviors will be applied in the interconnection of social connotation and the vaporizing of the male in regard to the female (Haraway, 1991). This type of vaporization is at the core of the representation of relations of sexual difference as relations of superiority and inferiority.
Reference
Bordo S (1992): “Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern Bodies” Feminist Studies, , Publisher spring.
Gatens, M (1996): “The Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction”, Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality, London, Routledge.
Gatens, M (2004): Twenty years since “A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction”: a conversation with Moira Gatens. [Interview by Walsh, Mary. ] [online]. Australian Feminist Studies, v. 19, no.4.
Haraway D. (1991): ‘Gender’ for a Marxist Dictionary: The Sexual Politics of a Word” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women, Routledge, New York
Jackson S (1998): “Theorising Gender and Sexuality”, Stevi Jackson and Jackie Jones, (eds), Contemporary Feminist Theories, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.