The Social Construction of Sexuality and Gender Article

The Social Construction of Sexuality and Gender - Article ExampleThe assortment of men and women into two binary groups is a universal phenomenon which in many another(prenominal) societies favors men thus creating proponent imbalances and gender inequalities. In Britain as well as throughout much of the world, notions of sexuality and gender rent historically been for granted and perceived to be natural. According to Jeffrey Weeks, We learned very early on from many sources that natural sex is what takes place with members of the opposite sex...The well-disposed processes through which this is taking place are complex. and the implications are clear, theyre the ones we still live with. In the first place, there is the assumption of a sharp tubercle between the sexes, a dichotomy of interest, even an antagonism (the battle of the sexes, which can only be precariously bridged. Men are men and women - and rarely the twain shall meet (Weeks, 1990, 13).Accordingly, while the sex o f an individual is ingrained and established at birth, gender and human sexuality are now understood to be molded by social forces and socially constructed concepts with important societal ramifications. Social constructivism is the belief that certain ideas, beliefs, behaviors, and concepts are socially constructed and shaped by environmental factors. The argument that gender roles were socially electropositive did not appear in scholarly literature until the 1940s with Kleins The Feminine Character and thus began an exploration into the arbitrariness of the social categories of male and female. Influential scholars such as Judith Butler, Jeffrey Weeks, and Michel Foucault have sought to shed light onto the socially prescribed nature of gender categorization, and onto the lives men and women throughout the world with an eye to the in the ramifications of the sexual and gender binary.