My social DE-construction of gender!

I have several issues with this segment regarding sociological perspective of sex and gender roles of human beings. First off, I have an issue with the sociological belief that sex AND gender roles are socially constructed. Gender roles, I can agree, have evolved to be what they are based on influence from society. However, sex as a variable that can be altered and shaped by society is untrue. I am not talking about drag queens and other types of subcultures; these individuals seem to use the fact that their sexual assignment is fluid as entertainment and in fact flaunt their overlapping sexual identity. Rather, I am referring to the concept of "transgender"; that a human being can decide they should be a different sex and go on to have a surgical transformation to become the opposite sex. Physiologically, there are 2 sexes, male and female. These sexes exist from conception and carry with them certain biological traits that no surgeon can recreate; internal sexual features which carry the sole purpose of reproduction cannot be reassigned. To say that socialization can create a "sex" is rather ridiculous.

I think there are great evolutionary forces at work that have helped to shape what our current gender roles rather than simply social forces. One of the primary issues that the text addresses regards women's domesticated roles in many societies world wide. Sociologists argue that children are socialized from the beginning to adhere to roles of women caring for children, cooking, cleaning and nurturing, where as boys learn to explore, play sports, and intellectualize.

Now if we examine the roles of men and women as they relate to the science of human beings, we find many scientific and biological explanations for the current gender roles. For thousands of years, human babies were born to women. Due to the fact that infants remain inherently helpless for a relatively long period of time, woman have been designed to nurture these babies by breastfeeding. Until "recent" advances in technology and science which allow women to bottle feed, feed formula, pump and store breast milk, etc, there was no option for the nurturing of infants than to remain with them constantly to provide such nourishment. It was critical that the males were able to physically carry the weight of supporting the primitive family, including hunting, farming, and defending against predators. If we look at gender roles from this perspective, we can deduce that evolution has had much to do with the shaping of modern gender roles. Even though nowadays women have more options regarding care of their infants in the early years, the "subordinate" domestic roles that women have assumed since the dawn of mankind that were ESSENTIAL for the survival of the human race have not been so quick to adjust to the new technology. It like trying to change something that has always been a certain way; the change takes conditioning and practice. More and more women are working away from the home than ever before. This trend will continue to grow and the "traditional" roles of women will also adjust in time. Contrastingly, the role of the male human has remained static and has not been fundamentally tested or changed. Accordingly, women have encountered resistance from males regarding the change of gender roles.

This slow evolution of gender roles can also be used to explain why so many women work in the lowest paying, unskilled jobs as compared to men. Because of the slow evolution of women's rights, for example, the right to education, women had previously only been able to obtain such jobs that required little to no educational qualification. Even though this educational gap has lessened significantly in our country, many nations are slower to change and the women continue to seek out easily obtainable jobs that do not require as much preparation and separation from their families to secure.

That being said, I do not necessarily believe that the above explanation clearly explains gender roles in all human societies. Some, like the book mentions, have evolved in such a way that male and female roles are reversed in comparison to modern American society's. In contrast to the above theory, it is interesting that the societies that exhibit marked differences from our society are isolated tribes with few ties to the modern world.