In one example, a person may have a penis and scrotum, but may be a female (with XX chromosomal sexual identity and with normal female sexual organs internally). When that person reaches puberty, "his" breasts may enlarge to ordinary female proportions, and "he" may begin to menstruate, passing menstrual blood through "his" penis6. In addition, this person may have always accepted a gender identity that is consistent with "his" external genitalia or with "her" internal genitalia. When the true sex of the individual becomes revealed at puberty, the individual and/or the community will be forced to reconsider what gender role is to be considered appropriate. Biological conditions that cause a person's physiological sex to be not easily determined are collectively known as intersex.
Another example is to consider transgender people, some who refuse to adhere to one set of gender roles or to transcend the scheme of gender roles completely, regardless of their physiological sex. Transsexualism also exists, where a person who is born as one sex and is brought up in that sex, but has gender identity of the opposite sex and wishes to live and does live according to the gender roles associated with that sex.
When we consider these more unusual products of nature's inventiveness, the simple picture that we saw originally, in which there was a high degree of consistency among external genitalia, gender identity, and gender role, then dissolves into a kind of jigsaw puzzle that is difficult to put together correctly. The extra parts of this jigsaw puzzle fall into two closely related categories, atypical gender identities and atypical gender roles.
In Western society, there is a growing acceptance of intersexed and transgendered people. However, there are some who still do not accept these people and may even react violently and persecute them: this kind of negative value judgment is sometimes known as transphobia.
Nevertheless, such incidents are rare. For the vast majority of people their gender is commensurate with their genitalia.
Gender roles and feminism:
Most feminists argue that traditional gender roles are oppressive for
women. They assume that the female gender role was constructed as an opposite
to an ideal male role, and helps to perpetuate patriarchy.
For approximately the last 100 years women have been fighting for equality (especially in the 1960s with second-wave feminism and radical feminism, which are the most notable feminist movements) and were able to make changes to the traditionally accepted feminine gender role. However, most feminists today say there is still work to be done.
Numerous studies and statistics show that even though the situation for women has improved during the last century, discrimination is still widespread: women earn a smaller percentage of aggregate income than men, occupy lower-ranking job positions than men and do most of the housekeeping work. Some women, such as the editors of the Independent Women's Forum, dispute this claim. They argue that women actually earn 98 cents on the dollar when factors such as age, education, and experience are taken into account. However, feminists believe these factors are not independent of gender. In fact, gender socialization informs the kind and length of education women receive, as well as the age in which women enter the workplace and the time spent working. Opponents counter that, regardless of what forces influence these factors, the evidence of wide-spread discrimination against working women is quite weak.
Furthermore, there has been a perception of Western culture, in recent times, that the female gender role is dichotomized into either being a "stay at home mother" or a "career woman". In reality, women usually face a double burden: the need to balance job and child care deprives women of spare time. Whereas the majority of men with university educations have a career as well as a family, only 50 percent of academic women have children. The double burden problem was introduced to scientific theory in 1956 by Myrdal and Klein in their work "Women's two roles: home and work," published in London.
When feminism became a conspicuous protest movement in the sixties critics oftentimes argued that women who wanted to follow a traditional role would be discriminated against in the future and forced to join the workforce. This has not proven true. At the beginning of the 21st century women who choose to live in the classical role of the "stay at home mother" are acceptable to Western society. There is not complete tolerance of all female gender roles — there is some lasting prejudice and discrimination against those who choose to adhere to traditional female gender roles (sometimes termed being a "girly girl"), despite feminism not being about the choices made but the freedom to make that choice.
