Gender in Society "...everyone "does gender without thinking about it" (Judith Lorber, "Paradoxes of Gender, p.13). When I was young I did not think about my gender role. I did not think about the day to day events in my life that effected my gender. When I look back I can find so many ins...

Gender Play is a book that deals with a common theme throughout sociological literature in an attempt to create a new perspective of gender as it relates to children. Barrie Thorne, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California who is well known for her involvement in gender stu...

Potential in the Perfect Balance of Fantasy and Reality In her 1998 Seattle Weekly article, "You Get Me Closer to God," Lauren Goodlad discusses the media's exploitation of sadomasochism and society's inability to accept it as the norm. She believes that in such a sexually...

Is It a Boy or a Girl? On the surface, people tend to look at gender as a very defineable yes or no matter and fail to see the variations that exist. Underneath the surface there exists a minority group who experience gender dysphoria: unhappiness or discomfort experienced by one whose sexual orga...

When I first opened Seeing and Writing, I stumbled upon a picture, a picture of bare-shouldered woman. At first glance, I was sure that it was a picture of a woman, but after I read the subtitle, I realized that it is the self-portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe. Robert Mapplethorpe was a famous Amer...

Masculinity is a topic that has been debated in our society extensively, through research as well as in informal settings. Many wonder what it means to be masculine, and if we can really assign a definition to such a term. After all, shouldn't ones own perception determine what is masculine. This wo...

"On any given Sunday you're going to win or lose. The point is-can you win or lose like a man?" This quotation from Oliver Stone's "Any Given Sunday" is not only responsible for the film's title; it relates to the movie's theme of what it means to be a man....