Social Construction Of Reality Essay

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Social construction of reality is sometimes difficult to grasp. We sometimes think that meanings are external to us, that they originate out there somewhere, rather than in our social group. What this means is that a lot of the things in our life only exist because we’ve created them. They only exist because we give them validity to exist.

To better understand the social construction of reality, let’s consider pelvic examinations. Henslin and Biggs demonstrates how doctors construct social reality in order to define the examination as nonsexual. It became apparent that the pelvic examination unfolds much as a stage play does.

Scene 1 (the patient as person) In this scene, the doctor maintains eye contact with his patient, calls her by

Before him is a woman lying on a table, her feet in stirrups, her knees tightly together, and her body covered by a drape sheet. The doctor seats himself on a low stool before the woman and says, “Let your knees fall apart” (rather than the sexually loaded “Spread your legs”), and begins the examination.

The drape sheet is crucial in this process of desexualization, for it dissociates the pelvic area from the person: Leaning forward and with the drape sheet above his head, the physician can see only the vagina, not the patient’s face. Thus dissociated from the individual, the vagina is transformed dramaturgically into an object of analysis. If the doctor examines the patient’s breasts, he also dissociates them from her person by examining them one at a time, with a towel covering the unexamined breast. Like the vagina, each breast becomes an isolated item dissociated from the person.

In this third scene, the patient cooperates in being an object, becoming, for all practical purposes, a pelvis to be examined. She withdraws eye contact from the doctor and usually from the nurse, is likely to stare at a wall or at the ceiling and avoids initiating