The first reading "Doing Gender" by Candace West explains how gender is formed through natural processes that are carried through and brought on by social interactions, experiences, and the culture in which you live. A person does not simply decide whether they want to be male, female, or any other gender. She explains how gender is situational meaning that the gender one identifies themselves with is influenced by the situation they are in. Around the age of five a person usually has a gender with which they identify themselves and this identity impacts their actions, personality, and way of life. The actions of others and interactions with others also determines ones gender.
The second reading "Gender Outlaw" by Kate Bornstein focuses on a set of eight "gender rules". The eight rules are based on the idea that gender is fixed and there are only two, male and female. She goes on to explain how these "rules" were once used to explain gender but are now irrelevant. She suggests ways to "break the rules". She explains the idea of gender ambiguity, which is the refusal to fall within a pre-set gender role, and the idea of gender fluidity, which is freely moving from one gender to another. She says, "A fluid identity, incidentally, is one way to solve problems with boundaries. As a person's identity keeps shifting, so do individual borders and boundaries. It's hard to cross a boundary that keeps moving!" (Bornstein p.52) Ambiguity and fluidity of her own gender brought her to her gender transformation.
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I think it's interesting how the West and Zimmerman says how by five years old, we already identify with a gender. I would say that by five years old we have an idea of what gender we're being pressured to be, but many people well into their teens, 20s, and beyond don't identify with a gender and/or identify as queer. Is identifying as queer identifying as a gender? I also find it disconcerting how much power we give to "others" to determine our gender at such a young age; starting with our own pregnancy when our parents "expect" a boy or a girl.
I agree with Mali, on the topic that gendering is not decided until later in life. I personally think that gendering starts at around the age of five and continues through a person’s teens. How many of us can remember much of when we were five anyhow? When I think back to elementary school, all of the kids followed the hetero-norm. It wasn’t until junior and senior high that deviation from this norm was noticed.
i feel like gendering may not be decided at five, but it still has a great impact on how we live, act, and carry ourselves around that age. we don't have our gender identified yet, but i agree with you that it definitely begins around that age and is truly realized our found sometime later