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Copy of Doing Gender - West and Zimmerman (1987)
Doing Gender - West & Zimmerman (1987)
Common misconceptions
Western society sees the binary of sex/gender as fundamental and enduring.
Fallacies
"Structural arrangements of society are presumed to be responsive to these differences." (128)
Discussion question
Discuss
On page 137, they discuss male/female bathrooms as an example of something presented as a natural consequence of the difference between the sexes, when in fact it is a means of honoring, if not producing, this difference. What are some other examples of this in our society? What are the specific consequences related to each example?
Gender is NOT a role
Gender isn’t a role (that notion diminishes the act of production), nor is it a display (that notion diminishes the interactional component), but rather it is an expression of the combination of the organized activities within an interaction.
Gender
"Gender is not a set of traits, nor a variable, nor a role, but rather the product of social doings of some sort." (129)
Gender is constituted through interaction
Interaction
Goffman (1976) posits that when people interact with one another, natural signs are expressed, fleeting though they may be, that "strike at the most basic characterization of the individual." (129)
"Goffman sees displays as two-part exchanges of the statement-reply type in which the presence or absence of symmetry can establish deference or dominance." (129)
Gender depictions
Depictions
“Gender depictions are less a consequence of our ‘essential sexual natures’ than interactional portrayals of what we would like to convey about sexual natures, using conventionalized gestures. Our human nature gives us the ability to learn to produce and recognize masculine and feminine gender displays—‘a capacity we have by virtue of being persons, not males and females’” (130)
Mad Men
Video
What elements of this interaction display what West and Zimmerman are talking about?
Gender and accountability
Account-ability
"Actions are often designed with an eye to their accountability, that is, how they might look and how they might be characterized. The notion of accountability also encompasses those actions undertaken so that they are specifically unremarkable and thus not worthy of more than a passing remark, because they are seen to be in accord with culturally approved standards." (136)
Legitimization/Discreditation
More
“If sex category is omnirelevant (or even approaches being so), then a person engaged in virtually any activity may be held accountable for performance of that activity as a woman or a man, and their incumbency in one or the other sex category can be used to legitimate or discredit their other activities.” (136)
Question
How can we connect this concept of accountability to the 'Shit Girls Say' videos?
Learning from a young age
"Being a 'girl' or a 'boy' then, is not only being more competent than a 'baby', but also being competently female or male, that is, learning to produce behavioral displays of one's 'essential' female or male identity." (142)
Categorization
"New members of society come to be involved in a self-regulating process as they begin to monitor their own and others' conduct with regard to its gender implications." (142)
Discreditation of the female physician
Female Physician
"Her sex category is used to discredit her participation in important clinical activities, while her involvement in medicine in used to discredit her commitment to her responsibilities as a wife and mother." (140)
Allocation of action
Incumbency into sex catgories is relevant for allocation of action.
Allocation of action
Example of the distribution of household and child-rearing tasks.
How else in our society do we see an allocation of action based on sex categories? What socially accepted attributes of each sex category does this allocation reflect? Any linguistic attributes?
Question
Sex and Sexuality
Sexuality
With sex and sexuality, one must recognize a person before you can begin to erotically enjoy them. Even if you want to be viewed as lesbian, you must first be recognizable as a female.
Class input
Were there any elements of this reading that you found problematic, disagreed with, or found particularly englightening/interesting/important?
A few Slack posts
Slack
Bridget: Experience in a daycare with gender reinforcement of children as young as 2
Angela: Difference between 'unfeminine' and 'non-female'
Emma: Gender as ideology
Adam: Internal vs. external perspective of gender performance/display
Hannah: When, if ever, are men discredited in a specific context due to their sex category?
Faith: We can't help but try to distinguish the category for ambiguous-looking people
Nina: Agnes is constantly learning how gender is created through interaction. (Is she any different than a cisgender woman?
What's the main point?
Overview
“Our purpose in this article is to propose an ethnomethodologically informed, and therefore distinctively sociological, understanding of gender as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment." (126)
Main point continued
Continued
"We contend that the 'doing' of gender is undertaken by women and men whose competence as members of society is hostage to its production. Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine ‘natures.’”
What do they mean by accomplishment?
Yes, people 'do' gender, but they do it in a space with others who perceive it and have expectations about it.
Accomplishment
Not so much internal within an individual, but interactional/institutional.