Social construction is a theory that knowledge and aspects of the world around us are not real and of themselves, only exists because we give them reality through social agreements, such as gender and sexuality. Society created the role of gender and created an emphasis on the difference between the two perceived genders. Social construct also created the idea of sexuality. Sexuality reflects society’s expectations which were created in relation to the perceived opposite sex, same sex, or both. Social construction of gender and sexuality has occurred for many centuries and is still seen to this day through some cultural institutions such as families and education.
Gender and sexuality expectations vary within cultures. Colonial times really illustrate this in particular, especially when the shift in today’s current societal views on gender and sexuality are taken into consideration. Social construction differs from society to society and it has been happening for centuries now. There have been times during times of colonization when the colonizers come across a society who are completely different than their own, such as when Cortés came across the Aztecs in 1519, and saw them as sodomites and sinful (Moguel, Ritchie, Whitlock, 3).
Also, in the 16th century when Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, a Spanish conquistador, traveled to Panama and came across Indigenous people of Quaraca and upon arrival, came across men dressed as women and engaged in sexual relations with each other” (Moguel, et al. 1), Balboa’s reaction was to order forty of them to be thrown to his hunting dogs to be killed. This shows how since the conquistadors were going to new lands and coming across new society views, in able to conquest the land they had to get rid of what they didn’t like. Colonizers would push their social construct to the natives by forcing the European gender and sexual norms. A way that Euro-American culture has been enforced to societies is through the educational institute, an example being the Native American boarding schools.
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The native American boarding schools was one of the many ways that the whites enforced their culture onto Native Americans, the purpose of it was for the children to be a part of the changing society and be educated in the majority culture. In the boarding schools, Indians were forbidden to dress, speak their native language. As a result, children lost touch with their family, culture and traditions. Gender socialization begins immediately as the baby is born and is continued through one’s life. We as a culture, have developed and defined the roles of gender over centuries, determining what is appropriate for the two perceived genders. Children have been taught their roles since they were young, by doing so children are being aware that boys and girls are different from each other.
In the book, Redefining Realness by Janet Mock, she mentions how during her elementary years, when she was still Charles, she would play game sessions of Truth or Dare, with an elementary friend named Marilyn, she (Charles) was dared to wear a dress and run across the park. While he was doing the dare, he got caught by his sibling who then told the grandma, who ended up hitting him, and grandma then told mom, who ended up giving him a lecture. Janet Mocks’s mom told Janet, back then being Charles, that he’s not supposed to be wearing dresses (Mock 21). This shows how his mom was just telling him how things were supposed to be, the way the mother learned in though the world, her learning was that expressing femininity openly is wrong and inappropriate. This clearly shows an example of how families, parents are contributing to the social construct of gender. I have been able to see examples on how families contribute to the construction of gender first hand at my prior job as a babysitter in which there was a two-year-old boy that had two older sisters, one being four and the other six.
The dad of the boy, step-dad of the girls, refused to let him play dolls with his sisters because “boys do not play with girl toys” and instead he would go and buy him “role” toys, such as a fireman, police officers and he would also buy him cars. The parent was projecting gender behaviors and attitudes at home based on his own learned belief. Colonial times showed that social construction has been happening for centuries now and that cultures provide different categories…and labels for framing sexual and effective experiences (Vance 30).This means that each culture is different from one another just as seen when the Native Americans had more nuanced and fluid ideas of gender and sexuality but had been whitewashed to fit into the boxes society had created and found acceptable at the time and now white culture is slowly moving back towards a more fluid idea of both gender and sexuality.
An example of gender fluidity is how a lot of Native Americans had the idea of a “two- spirit” gender, someone who identified as neither male or female but both, is comparable to today’s idea of being non-binary. Because of the Native Americans having what we now consider to be modern ideas, like how they were accepting of different sexualities and genders, is an example on how we have moved back and forth in regard to cultures and time periods. Even though social construction on gender and sexuality still occurs at cultural institutions such as at home, family and schools is still seen to this day, we need to find a way to appropriately respond to the social construction theory. Social Construction have shifted back and forth in regards of culture and time periods; just as how Native Americans back in the 16th century accepted different sexualities and genders and they were gender fluidity, society in the 21st century are also beginning to accept gender fluidity and different sexualities and genders.
