Doing gender

The concept of "doing" gender came from conversations of gender from sociology and gender studies. The specific term "doing gender" was used in Candace West and Don Zimmerman's article by the same title, originally written in 1977 but not published until 1987. West and Zimmerman employ the example of a professional woman in a male-dominated field, through which it becomes apparent that the woman will have to make decisions as to whether or not she should engage in "unfeminine" behavior that would otherwise be an integral part of her identity. Another component of this theory is gendered assessment of behavior. In the above example, the woman is engaging in behavior that will be assessed as either masculine or feminine by her co-workers. According to West and Zimmerman, this woman will be evaluated based on how her actions compare to accountability standards of the sex category she belongs to. Deviations from these expectations do not have an immediate effect on the accountability structure itself. Instead, failures to meet these standards are attributed to the individual rather than to the rigidity of recognized categories. With this theory, West and Zimmerman stress the importance of social interaction in maintaining the gender structure. Because individuals "do" and assess gender in interaction, gender is visible in a wide variety of activities such as conversation. == Foundations ==

The idea that gender is something that individuals actively 'do' was largely inspired by the social psychological approach taken by Erving Goffman in "Gender Display". Goffman theorizes that humans make the assumption that each has an "essential nature," which can be interpreted by reading "natural signs given off or expressed by them". One of the most basic natures that can be assumed from interpreting these signs is one's masculinity or femininity. Not only is gender often determined by others relatively easily, but this determination often establishes the ways in which individuals interact with one another. Goffman asserts that, because we habitually function within such scripts, they are taken to be further evidence of essential natures. He coins the term "gender display" as a way to conceptualize the ways in which individuals act in a gender appropriate manner. However, these performances are optional and vulnerable to disturbance, as inappropriate gender display can just as easily be invoked as socially accepted ones. Goffman asserts that there is a "scheduling" of gender displays around activities, so that the activities themselves are not interrupted by gender displays. For instance, colleagues may interact in a gendered manner during their lunch hour, rather than while they are working together on a project. West and Zimmerman take issue with this piece of Goffman's perspective, claiming that this masks the ways in which gender displays permeate nearly all social situations in that individuals cannot avoid being interpreted as masculine or feminine. "Doing Gender" also comes into play in individual settings such as emotional, cognitive, or communicational behaviors interpersonally but also appears in interpersonal settings such as peer and familial relationships and their expected outcomes. == Gender as a social transaction ==

In 1987, Deaux and Major proposed a model of social transaction to explain doing gender. In this model, there are three components or determinants for the social behavior of doing gender - the perceiver, the target, and the situation. A perceiver interprets their observations of others through a social filter consisting of their expectations and attitudes. This leads to two types of confirmations. Cognitive confirmation occurs when a perceiver sees things in a way that confirms their preexisting beliefs. Behavioral confirmation occurs when the target changes their behavior based on perceivers’ expectations. Together, these can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, where other people’s beliefs about a person affect their actions toward that person, which in turn reinforce that person’s beliefs about themselves and thus change their behavior in a way that confirms the people’s beliefs. For example, a parent might treat their daughter as fragile and vulnerable because that’s what they were raised to believe about girls. Even if the daughter did not possess either of those qualities at first, she might learn to believe those things about herself and adjust her behavior accordingly, only to confirm the parents’ original belief. A target is the person performing gender. When a target is focused on acting in a way that is consistent with their self-concept, it is referred to as self-verification. Self-presentation is the opposite, where the target is more focused on adjusting their behavior based on the opinions and attitudes of others. Self-enhancement is a type of self-presentation that especially focuses on presenting oneself favorably. Finally, the situation refers to the effect of context on how one does gender. For example, the perception of an “appropriate” outfit can depend on the event, location, and setting. Dressing up for work will likely yield different results than dressing up for a beach party. A perceiver’s gender schema may be activated by the situation, such as when a person is told that a particular toddler is a boy, the perceiver often reaches for cars and robots to play with the toddler, because a common gender schema dictates that boys like to play with those types of toys. A wedding presents a situation in which there tend to be very specific and rigid expectations and pressures relating to gender. == Responses and critiques ==

The concept of doing gender has been critiqued by scholars who assert that it does not take human agency and acts of resistance into account. A 2009 article by Kristen Schilt and Laurel Westbrook expands upon West and Zimmerman's initial framework for "doing gender" by emphasizing how it is impacted by heteronormativity. They found that heterosexual norms were disrupted when biological sex and "doing gender" differed, due to the perception of a natural way to be male or female. The argument that arose based on these findings was that biological sex instructs people on how they should do gender. He also discusses how people are taught to use physical appearance, such as secondary sex traits, to determine other people's gender. Catherine Connell presented the idea of "redoing gender" as well as "doing transgender" in her work, "Doing, Undoing or Redoing Gender? Learning from the Workplace Experiences of Transpeople". Connell posits that trans people may redo gender by altering normative ideas of gender in their interactions, but may simultaneously participate in the doing of gender in other ways. Connell coins the term "doing transgender" in order to provide a way to examine how trans people must make sense of the disconnect between sex, gender and sex category, which they may obscure or actively express in interactions. Hollander describes orientation as self-accountability to biological sex. Assessment is explained as the process of measuring an individual's way of doing gender in comparison to their sex. Hollander states that assessment holds people accountable to themselves and others. The third part is enforcement, which is when someone is actively held accountable to societal norms. The author references West and Zimmerman's and Hollander's focus on accountability. She states that their proposed systems of accountability are used to justify the argument that "doing gender" is compulsory, however, Darwin contends that they fail to consider the impact of social change. Additionally, she critiques the focus on the gender binary in the original framework and other responses. The author furthers Connell's framework by focusing on nonbinary gender identities rather than binary transgender identities. Darwin suggests that using the term "transgender" to encompass both binary and nonbinary transgender people fails to account for their different experiences in society, particularly in regards to the gender binary. She argues that binary transnormativity prevents authentic gender expression for nonbinary individuals. Through her research, Darwin concluded that there are a multitude of ways one may "do nonbinary gender", largely due to the many different nonbinary gender identities. She discovered that some nonbinary individuals intentionally use conflicting binary gender signals to fluctuate between these binary categories. Much of Darwin's studies focused on genderqueer individuals, who she deemed disruptive to the accountability component of the "doing gender" framework. She argued that genderqueer people refute the belief that everyone holds themselves accountable to the gender binary. Nordmarken proposes the idea that social interactions are not only significant in "doing gender", but also in "undoing gender". In drawing upon West and Zimmerman and Barbara Risman, he acknowledged their argument that for gender to truly be undone would be for it to have no meaning. Both articles suggest that reproductive expectations associated with biological sex would remain intertwined with gender identity. Due to this, they discuss the idea of "redoing gender" instead. Nordmarken critiques these works for failing to consider "doing gender" outside of a hegemonic framework, which excludes populations who do not hold themselves accountable to binary ideals. The author explored "doing gender" through a "queer trans paradigmatic" lens where he observed people being allowed to inform others of their identity, rather than having others making assumptions based on body-related cues. In particular, he reported the impact of pronouns on "doing gender". He suggested that using pronouns de-emphasize people's accountability to gender-related social standards, lessening the importance of gender norms and assumptions. He references the replacement of the body by pronouns for doing and interpreting gender as the queering of "doing gender". Nordmarken's focus on pronouns has added another layer of accountability to the "doing gender" framework where individuals are held accountable for proper pronoun usage. This directly opposes accountability to societal norms, providing a more collaborative, fluid approach to the "doing gender" framework. == Doing difference ==

Doing difference is a concept They sought to extend the idea of gender as an ongoing interactional process into the realms of race and class by asserting that the intersection of these three categories could not be thought of in strictly a mathematical or hierarchical sense. Perhaps overt racism and classism (and sexism) is less apparent today in these institutions, but the tendency remains for those in positions of power to view the world in a way that discounts the experience of marginalized groups. The central theme of "difference" in this article intends to illustrate how the concepts of race and gender have been falsely conceived as biologically bound predictors of behavior and aptitude among those who of a certain skin color or sex. They explain that being part of racially or ethnically marginalized communities can lead to conflicting gender expectations from society and their own cultural values. The authors state that white society manufactures and normalizes racialized gender stereotypes for non-white populations. They reference how the aggressive images associated with Black women lead to the belief that they are not feminine enough, whereas the submissive representation of Asian women results in their hyperfeminization. The authors suggest that white dominance is reinforced using these derogatory representations of racialized individuals to manipulate them into "doing gender" in a way that emulates the idealized, white standards. Pyke and Johnson (2003) conducted a study with one section focused on how Asian American women do gender differently depending on their setting. These respondents viewed white femininity as the standard, with many citing mainstream guidelines which frequently glorify white femininity compared to Asian femininity. The authors also discovered how the hypermasculine representation of Asian men allow white men to be viewed as less oppressive. Pyke and Johnson (2003) focused on the influence internalized oppression has on how racially and ethnically marginalized populations "do gender". West and Fenstermaker (1995) state that social science research has rendered dubious any claim that race can simply be conflated with color; gender with genitalia; class with paycheques. The authors acknowledge that class appears less prone to ideas about natural social differentiation, but argue that within capitalist societies, it is often assumed that one's economic situation acts as a direct indication of one's capacity to achieve, further engraining sexist and racist assumptions. Given the general observation that powerful groups display heavy reliance on these ideas of natural subordination, many liberationist thinkers have concluded that this essentialism would be a prime rhetorical vehicle to subvert. Thus, the deconstruction of role theory and functionalism within sociology was a central theme from the 1960s onward. This still left a somewhat gaping theoretical vacuum, one that continues to be felt by people struggling with the challenge of fundamentally altering their social cosmology. Social constructionism has assumed the major explanatory role in these discussions by positing that the meanings of these supposedly ascribed statuses are in fact situationally dependent on the sort of social context in which we employ them. That is, race, class, and gender aren't just objective scientific facts, but dynamic processes of culturally constructing cues for moral behavior (for which one can be held personally accountable) in a particular circumstance. It is these constantly occurring processes, not a divinely decreed grand plan, which reproduces social structure. Individuals "do difference" when they acknowledge (knowingly or unknowingly) how their categorization renders them socially accountable to acting in a particular way in a situation. However, when individuals recalibrate "doing difference" to produce alternative ways to conceptualize interaction patterns, it amounts to social change. ==See also==