Online Class

Brandon Guthier

Timothy Kubal

Sociology: Sex and Gender

October 9, 2014

Social Construction Discussion

            I can think of quite a few incidents where I can recall gender being "done" in my daily life. For example, I am always the one who is given the task to fill up any holes in our backyard that have been made by our dogs. When I started realizing that nobody else but me was asked to carry out this task every time a hole reappeared, I started telling myself, " I wasn't the one who decided to let the dogs out and not watch them in the first place. Why do I have to pay the consequences for something that I did not do? Why not make the person who is responsible for this fill up the holes instead?" It makes more sense to me now after reading about how gender is sometimes "done" all around us. It is seen as the norm of masculinity for men to perform tasks such as shoveling a patch of dirt into a wheelbarrow and carrying a heavy load of dirt over to the hole to be filled up. Society views this as normal and socially acceptable. They would have a harder time accepting the norm that a woman should perform such tasks. Society might believe that women ought to be more involved with dusting, laundry, and other housecleaning tasks rather than filling up a bunch of dirt holes. Other examples are when I am asked to mow the lawn on the weekends and balance out my own checkbook. Both of these tasks are viewed as something a more masculine person would perform. It has become the norm to see men rather than women mow a lawn, because that is all that society sees. Therefore, society adapts itself to this view and eventually views it as socially acceptable. However, the idea of always allowing a man to balance checkbooks and handle finances is viewed as being socially ostracized. Earlier, Michael Kimmel described in his text that men are seen as being much better at math then women. According to Kimmel, this would lead to women making poor financial decisions that resulted in a man taking over all financial decisions and tasks. However, this surely cannot be the norm for every  woman. Whether the way it is "done" is seen as socially acceptable or socially ostracized, there is no denying the fact that gender is being "done" all around us every minute of every day.