This week's topic: "Undoing Gender" by Sozanne Youssouf

This week’s class topic was entitled Undoing Gender. The lecture slides described this concept as for how gender is a performance. It exists because we are enacting it. Hence, there is no key relationship between a certain body and a certain gender.

The term undoing gender itself makes individuals reflect on gender and sexuality as a whole, it makes us critically question how can we undo something to which we’ve been conditioned to our whole lives?

By “doing gender”, it’s typically mimicking the stereotypes of these gender roles. For instance, the contrast of color usage; pink is made for girls and blue is for boys. Similarly to outfits made for each gender; dresses for girls and pants for boys.

The performative nature of gender exists because of the fact that the term gender is often defined by the gender binary. The gender binary is defined as a system that classifies gender and sex into simply two categories. The binary depends on the idea that biology itself consistently distinguishes between females and males and determines what is masculine and feminine (Hird, 2000).

The concept of “undoing gender” is linked with individuals who identify as non-binary/genderqueer. A non-binary person is undoing gender by not subscribing to things being marketed towards certain sex. They express themselves and their identity freely.

Given that our society has these specific gender roles set up for women and men. By performing these acts you are “doing” gender and adhering to societal norms and stereotypes. Many individuals feel compelled to these gender roles and perform in order to conceal how you feel, it could be for the individual’s own safety at times. However, by “undoing” gender, you are resisting these gender stereotypes and focusing more on your identity as a person rather than these labels society has established.

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