Exploring Identity in Contact Zones: Transculturation and Beyond - Essay Sample

Introduction

Contact zones for example cafes and social gathering have been of the essence in appreciating cultural practices, gender practices, and gender roles as well as defining an individual. Moments, when people of different caliber contend for a common goal, are a similar situation can have a greater take on answering the question of who the individual is and what are their cultural, beliefs and what people do with their circumscribed time and space. Holding other factors constant like transculturation, a keen study of people in contact spaces like restaurants is a fundamental take in appreciating oneself. My experience in a certain shopping mall encouraged me to observe and make it a learning experience on people's performance, expression, and behavior towards gender.

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How People Perform and Express Gender

Different people express their gender in different ways. Physical expressions may be used to portray gender. For example peoples, clothing, hairstyle, and social expression like names are among the most common expression of gender. The problem arises as the majority of people assume that there only two genders either male or female (Hunt, 2015). Therefore it is of importance to appreciate that gender does not always match with what a person was assigned at birth and it can always change over time.

Hunt (2015) notes gender expression, most people are likely to change their gender expressions over time based on the circumstances there are in, while a few have the same gender expression all the time. The world seems constant especially to the youth who would want it to conform to their fast-changing instances. With enlightenment taking a better course of humanism which is now taken as common sense that is signified by stable coherent individual, language, and universal foundation of knowledge. There is also a group of people who display gender for theatrical purposes and can, therefore, express different gender identities at different times.

In gender performance what is inscribed in peoples' daily practices, and are done based on cultural norms concerning either masculinity or feminism. Performance can, therefore, be a support tool that sex and gender are completely natural and in a position to change over time, not a restriction to being a woman or a man. Activities that were taking place in the mall also defined what people understood in being a male or female (Higgins, 2018). It was clear that role conflicts existed between different being a male or female assuming there is the only gender present.

Signs and Behaviors People Use in Gender Performance

Following the different domains in gender roles and stereotypes impact different expectations on being either male or female and standard that come along with them. For instance, the female must be keen on their appearance rather than achievements which reveals their relational criteria. Looks dominate the societal judgment regarding female gender which determines their general worth without considering the context where some are irrelevant (Higgins, 2018). When evaluating men, dressing style makeup and looks are not regarded in contemporary society and the worth of a male is only traceable according to their achievements.

Language as a method of expression and describing a reality that exists in the world. It is used in creating reality and social order and in different perspectives and shifts according to gender and social concepts. Non-verbal language like walking style, gestures, sitting position and bending to tie once shoelaces are among the determinants of once perspective on what their gender is and their expected roles.

When women become parents the society perceives them as caring and loving as mothers more than the male partners. Even on a single day observation, it is evident that a female would grab the wrist of the young ones and ensure their safety while a greater percentage of their male companions would only walk along with them and are mostly concerned with the main activity. Though this is just an observation that has no basis sometimes it happens contrary to this stereotype and men are most concerned with the care of their children (Cherland, 2008). The perception of the art of care is gender-biased and should be reviewed.

Cognitive functions cannot be generalized as seen in a single occasion which happens in many societies. It is taken that male is more competent while women are warm which elicit an increase in expectation in men performance than that of women. In critical writing workshops, for example, a teacher would expect higher performance in boys compared to girls.in my opinion I would negate this generalization because performance is an individual thing which has a lot of factors influencing it to example one's personal effort not only the cognitive ability of a member of a certain gender. Performance and failure are more attributed to external circumstances and using then for cognitive function generalization would not eliminate bias.

Cherland (2008) notes assessing gender performance and all that's has pertained to it, it would be wrong to omit communication. Focusing on the related concept of juxtaposition and dissertation prosody male and female behave and communicates differently regarding their bodies and the general events taking place in their environment. Corpus philological methods show regularity in patterns of communication in different genders supporting that women are eloquent and better in communication compared to a male who is so direct and not in a position to soothe by a word of mouth.

Self-Description of Traits and Behavior Concerning Gender Personal Experience

The centrality given to one gender in different communities has always been present from time immemorial. A self-study needs no school to gauge how matters concerning gender influences life and behavioral living of oneself. Though self is an entity that each human is born with and is the most essential in changing the essence of who a person is. The society in shapes an individual in the family and cultural affiliations makes certain discourses available to us so a greater effort is needed in making our beliefs and take concerning gender hold strong despite the external influences.

Personal desire to shape the self is supposed to be a natural, and independent of social influences that close to an impossibility cultural artifacts can be of great use in searching what our view is in a matter concerning gender when we work to organize our desires. The synergistic benefit comes to one's rescues if other members of our social categories have the same social desires. It happened that during my day to day living at home I had to attend the household chores which I found out that the majority of my male colleagues were not comfortable with it as they viewed it as a female kind of task. It may be challenging to conform to personal views activities that affect the general view of gender-related practices. In most cases, a conflict between self and society on physical gender-based identity may prove an end to end issue if one behaves contrary to the allocated gender during birth.

Conclusion

Male and female characters in society should not be discriminated against based on various stereotypes. It should be noted no one has either all male or all female features thus the most important thing is to perform once task to the fullest without allowing external factors to take the better part of you. Men should be allowed to cry, and care for the young ones while a female can act as protectors of the society.

References

Cherland, M. (2008). Harry's girls: Harry Potter and the discourse of gender. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(4), 273-282.

Hunt, S. (2015). Representations of gender and agency in the Harry Potter series. In Corpora and Discourse Studies (pp. 266-284). Palgrave Macmillan, London..

Higgins, E. (2018). A study into the relationship between the lives and performances of drag artists, with close reference to the extent that normative gender expression and the gender binary are subverted (Doctoral dissertation).