Defining Gender From the Feminist Perspective

¶ … Social Construction of Gender

Media creates meanings about gender by portraying gender in specific terms. Under the guidance of Edward Bernays, the "father of advertising" according to Jones (2000), advertising took on a "male-gaze" perspective that resulted in a particular depiction of gender from a "phallic-centric" point-of-view (Butler, 1990, p. 30). As Boundless (2014) asserts, "gender is a social identity that needs to be contextualized," and insofar as traditional media is concerned, the emphasis on the definition of gender as an object of the "male gaze" reinforces the concept of Mulvey (1975) that the male gaze "projects its fantasy" onto the object in question (p. 6).

This is manifested in our everyday lives: advertisements constantly sexualize gender using the Bernays formula of sex as a means to attract -- but this also serves to define gender in ways that are problematic because sex and gender are different and can identify differently. Yet ads like this one (http://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/detail/28272/1/Magazine-Advert/Coca-Cola/1980s) feature a female model "working out" and quenching her thirst with a diet Coke. This ad suggests that women want to and need to be slim, fit, and attractive so as to satisfy the male gaze -- and that drinking diet Coke can help get them there.

As a Feminist philosopher, Butler writes of the problem of gender identification in Gender Trouble from the Feminist perspective: "The return to biology as the ground of a specific feminine sexuality or meaning seems to defeat the feminist premise that biology is not destiny" (Butler, 1990, p. 30). In other words, Butler asserts that women should be able to rise above their sex "identity" which gets plastered onto their gender by media and become self-fulfilling human beings who are not constrained by a "biology" that is defined by men. Female gender was consistently defined in terms of "phallic cultural conventions" and was thus eternally male-oriented in the past, stereotyping women (as in the diet Coke ad) and putting them at an unfair disadvantage.

This is all changing in the current era, however, as ideas about masculinity and femininity are changing in the West, especially in the media. Superhero films are showing that women such as Black Widow and Super Woman can be strong, dominant, aggressive, independent, empowered, active, rational and outdoors; while men are portrayed in non-traditional ways, showing them to be dependent, disempowered, passive, emotional, and nurturing (films like This is the End come to mind).

Traits that I possess that are currently on both lists are strength and weakness (I possess both and know that about myself) and I can be both active and passive, long to be both indoors and outdoors, and can be both rational and emotional. I think that these are traits that all humans possess regardless of what their gender or sex is. In my own daily life, I see people challenging these lists -- with stay-at-home dads being the nurturer and moms acting as the bread-winner (my neighbors on my street, for instance).