Defining the master statuses: gender and sexuality Douglas Fleming University of Ottawa

 Race, sex and class can be classified as “master statuses” (Marshall, 1994): hierarchical positions that overpower or dominate other identities.  There are two basic ways that the construction of these “master statuses” can be perceived: 1) constructionist (which acknowledges that human perception will construct categories of race, sex or class) or 2) essentialist (which takes the position that these categories exist independent of human perception.  In western culture, dualism appears to be “natural”.

 One might think that gender would be unproblematic, especially in comparison with race.  However, the difficulty is that sexuality is not (certainly in humans) very straight forward.  Complications involving cultural and psychological proclivities are common, given the fact, as is often said, that the brain is the largest sex organ we possess.  Hence the distinction between physical sexual attributes and gender.

As Lemonick (1992) has noted, about one person in 20,000 are genetically of a different sex than their outward appearance would suggest. There have been several cases in which prominent Olympic athletes, quite regardless of performance drug usage, have been reclassified in terms of their sex. Men generally have greater upper body strength, larger muscle mass and joint structures, thicker skin and lower awareness thresholds of injury. Women, on the other hand, seem to have greater tolerance for pain and better long-term physical endurance.

Even though men have heavier brains, women have over three times as many neuron connections between the right and left brain hemispheres and thus seem to make more efficient use of both. This might explain the fact that men are better able to concentrate on activities making use of the right hemisphere and that women generally have fewer problems multitasking.

When considering behavior, the differences between men and women are difficult to classify in terms of being biologically determinate. How much is due to nature and how much to nurture? John Gray, the author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus contends that the sexes approach problem-solving differently.

Women, at least in the west, usually prefer collaborative approaches and are very concerned with their relationship with people involved in problem-solving processes. In other words, women tend to pay greater attention to process than product. Men, on the other hand, focus on goal competition and their own independent competence in these processes. In other words, men tend to view product as being more important than process or the interpersonal aspects inherent within collaboration.

Gray contends that women and men have different orientations towards authority. Men will more easily assume dominance but are less likely then women to challenge agreed- upon hierarchies.

Gender, as opposed to sex, is the way in which one sees one’s own sexual role. Needless to say, social influences have a big role to play in this important aspect of self-perception. One’s physical sex might very well be clear enough from birth (although many would dispute this). However, gender is learned.

 People who do not fit into the binary division of gender are subject to pressures to conform.  Gay men, lesbian women, bisexuals or transgendered people behave sexually outside the dominant norm within society and are thus commonly subject to pressures to conform to preconceived notions of what constitutes gender.  This binary division also promotes the attitude that sexual identity and behavior should be consistent and clearly demarcated against an opposite.  The extension of binary definitions of gender leads to the commonly held belief that all lesbians can be classified as being “butch” or “fem”. In this way, gender norms are simply transferred.

The genders are also organized hierarchically, in which the masculine is usually set up as the norm against which the feminine is negatively contrasted. As Beasley (2005) notes, the fact that the masculine is accorded higher value than the feminine can be demonstrated linguistically. Feminine equivalents (“spinster” as opposed to “bachelor”, for example) are usually interpreted negatively. Feminine names often contain diminutives (“waitress”, as opposed to “waiter”).

The battles over ‘politically correct’ terminology occur because some contend that making a conscious effort at using PC words is a way of ‘conscious-raising’ that hopefully affects attitudes AND behaviors. Breaking linguistic conventions is difficult, given the constructionist nature of language. However, as some of my cognitively-challenged students have told me, using ‘politically correct’ is not enough in itself. Some of them even said that, in fact, politically correct use of language can simply be a way of hiding one’s attitudes and so continue to act in a discriminatory manner anyway: “talking the talk but not walking the walk”.