Gender is “the way society creates, patterns, and rewards our understanding of femininity and masculinity”.(p.105) It means that gender is what our society tells us how we supposed to act and express ourselves either feminine or masculine. There are three ways to show forces how gender can be shaped, how ones experience is, and therefore how one express gender as an individual. Gender assignment is what is given at birth by our physical body type to be male or female. How we behave and dress is forced by our gender assignment which was given to us when we were born. Gender identity means how ones feels about them self and that gender identity comes from our inside. This may be matching ones gender assignment or not. The third, gender expression …show more content…
David Wexler talks about interesting facts in his article “Shame-O-Phobia” (p.141) about how men feels ashamed carrying around a purse and that men who have experienced something shameful in his early life, they will do everything to do not re experience it again. Another example he brings up is that they made a study about what men would do in certain situation when they get told holding there hands in freezing water. Some were told that the study is about the ability of male sex hormones, some were told it is about female hormones, and the third group was told none of these. The group with the male sex hormones could hold the hand the longest at the freezing water. Weller said,“for some men, their hand could fall off before they would risk the shame of not seeming“man enough” to take it. The characteristics of femininity are to be“soft, passive, domestic, nurturing, emotional, dependent, fearful, and so on.”(p.126). These are all adjectives for a women to do the emotional and domestic work in our society.