Topic: Engendered

Prompt:  "What is gender anyway? It is certainly more than the physical details of what's between our legs. History and science suggest that gender is more subtle and more complicated than anatomy. (It's separate from sexual orientation, too, which determines which sex we're attracted to.) Gender helps us organize the world into two boxes, his and hers, and gives us a way of quickly sizing up every person we see on the street. "Gender is a way of making the world secure," says feminist scholar Judith Butler, a rhetoric professor at University of California, Berkeley. Though some scholars like Butler consider gender largely a social construct, others increasingly see it as a complex interplay of biology, genes, hormones and culture." (Re)Thinking Gender

In gender studies, "cisgender" and "cissexual" describe related types of gender identity where an individual's self-perception of their gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth.  Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook define cisgender as a label for "individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity," complementing transgender.  Most of us are "cisgendered" and therefore have never struggled with or been exposed to a diverse gender experience.  We are therefore, cis-male and/or cis-female. 

Question: It is complicated, and grows more so every day.  In our daily lives, what defines gender?  What defines male and female?  Is there a middle ground, a gender spectrum?  What specific elements make up uniquely male or uniquely female?

Readings and Links

(Re)thinking Gender: What Makes Us Male or Female? - The Daily Beast. (n.d.). The Daily Beast. Retrieved September 5, 2011, from http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2007/05/21/rethinking-gender.html 

'I'm a Girl' -- Understanding Transgender Children - ABC News. (n.d.). ABCNews.com: Daily News, Breaking News and Video Broadcasts - ABC News. Retrieved September 5, 2011, from http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3088298&page=1

Gay Or Straight? - 60 Minutes - CBS News. (n.d.). Breaking News Headlines: Business, Entertainment & World News - CBS News. Retrieved September 5, 2011, from http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1391768n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox