Notes

We are surrounded by gender lore from the time we are very small. It is ever-present in
conversation, humor, and conflict, and it is called upon to explain everything from driving styles
to food preferences. Gender is embedded so thoroughly in our institutions, our actions, our
beliefs, and our desires, that it appears to us to be completely natural. The world swarms with
ideas about gender – and these ideas are so commonplace that we take it for granted that they are
true, accepting common adage as scientific fact. As scholars and researchers, though, it is our job
to look beyond what appears to be common sense to find not simply what truth might be behind
it, but how it came to be common sense. It is precisely because gender seems natural, and beliefs
about gender seem to be obvious truths, that we need to step back and examine gender from a
new perspective. Doing this requires that we suspend what we are used to and what feels
comfortable, and question some of our most fundamental beliefs. This is not easy, for gender is
so central to our understanding of ourselves and of the world that it is difficult to pull back and
examine it from new perspectives.1 But it is precisely the fact that gender seems self-evident that
makes the study of gender interesting. It brings the challenge to uncover the process of
construction that creates what we have so long thought of as natural and inexorable – to study
gender not as given, but as an accomplishment; not simply as cause, but as effect; and not just as
individual, but as social. The results of failure to recognize this challenge are manifest not only
in the popular media, but in academic work on language and gender as well. As a result, some
gender scholarship does as much to reify and support existing beliefs as to promote more
reflective and informed thinking about gender.

Sex and gender
Gender is not something we are born with, and not something we have, but something we do
(West and Zimmerman 1987) – something we perform (Butler 1990). Imagine a small boy
proudly following his father. As he swaggers and sticks out his chest, he is doing everything he
can to be like his father – to be a man. Chances are his father is not swaggering, but the boy is
creating a persona that embodies what he is admiring in his adult male role model. The same is
true of a small girl as she puts on her mother’s high-heeled shoes, smears makeup on her face
and minces around the room. Chances are that when these children are grown they will not
swagger and mince respectively, but their childhood performances contain elements that may
well surface in their adult male and female behaviors. Chances are, also, that the girl will adopt