ETS 192Dr. SmythReading a Literary Text throug.docx

ETS 192
Dr. Smyth
Reading a Literary Text through a Theoretical Lens
Due: 2/25/19
“It’s hard for a man to be looked at by a woman. Women are
used to it, of course. But for a man to submit to a woman’s
gaze—it’s-unsettling. Although I believe there is some pleasure
to be had from it. Once you yield.”
– Gerda Wegener
“We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is
actually an internal reality or something that is simply true
about us, a fact about us, but actually it's a phenomenon that is
being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to
say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a
gender from the start.”

-Judith Butler
The Danish Girl (2015), directed by Tim Hooper, portrays a
relationship between a married couple (Einar & Gerda
Wegener), which raises many questions about gender in the
mind of the viewer.
For this assignment, I would like you to consider how gender
works in this text, The Danish Girl, using at least two of the
theoretical texts we read in our first unit. In an effort to
examine how gender stereotypes are reinforced /deconstructed
in The Danish Girl, you will need to place the texts in
conversation with each other, and consider how portrayals of
gender contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Close reading of this visual text and revisiting your earlier
readings will help you craft your response. Please use direct
quotations and avoid mere plot summary. The paper should be
2-3 pages in length, carefully edited, and should include
accurate and consistent MLA citations. It should reflect your
perspective, your voice, and your active, engaged presence.
Guidelines
Craft a creative title.
Adhere to MLA guidelines.
Be sure to ground your reading in theory.
Running head: WHAT WAS THE IMPACT OF THE QING

SECLUSION POLICY
1
PAGE
5
WHAT WAS THE IMPACT OF THE QING SECLUSION
POLICY
What Was The Impact Of The Qing Seclusion Policy
Yinghao Zhu
Saint Francis University
Throughout the majority of its rule, the Qing Empire was known
to be both powerful and self-sufficient in terms of politics and
economy, mostly due to the fact that they continued the legacy
of the previous ruling dynasties and maintained strong trade
relations with the Western world. However, it is during the
reign of the Qing dynasty exactly that China came into formal
contact with the European world for the first time (Patel, 2012).
The economic transactions of China with the Europeans, which
included silks, spices, and other goods that the Europeans
coveted, helped to maintain Qing’s status as the most
economically prosperous nation and gave the empire an upper
hand in dealing with the foreign merchants and traders.

However, as the Western world underwent a tremendous change
in the 19th century, toward the later years of the rule of the
Qing Empire, the isolationist trade policies of the dynasty
undermined its position as the biggest economy and the desire
to preserve the conservative royal system ultimately led to
China’s decline in economic, political, and technological power
as well as repeated humiliation in wars against the West.
The central idea of the “seclusion policy” was China’s
confidence in its own economy and the belief that it was “the
only civilization under heaven” (Qu, 2016), the attitude that it
referred to as Sinocentrism. According to Patel (2012), the Qing
Empire displayed no concern for the potential threat of the
European powers and did not make an effort to be properly
informed of the foreign affairs that did not have an immediate
connection to the Qing Empire itself. The later decision to
restrict all contact with the foreigners came with the fear of
Chinese that the developing capitalist ideas of the Western
world were going to undermine the royal and the feudal system
of the Qing Empire. However, what China failed to predict was
that the policy of seclusion would become an obstacle for
China’s technological, political, and economic development in
the conditions of the changing dynamics within the global
economy and trade relations.
While the West and Europe, in particular, went through a
powerful industrial revolution, China struggled to maintain the
ancient order that stood little chance against the technological
advancements of the West as well as its desire for resources.
The Opium War between China and the West revealed the extent
of China’s lack of technological progress, which made it an
easy target for the steadily technologically and militarily
developing British Empire. The Self-Strengthening movement
failed as China continuously lost against foreign military
attacks. The first Opium War and onwards, China suffered
defeat against the British and the French, mainly due to the

maritime military weakness (Po, 2013). As a result, the late
Qing China is considered to have fallen victim to British
imperialism because of its failure to ensure the strength of their
navy in sea battles.
On the other hand, in modern times, the history of the collapse
of the Qing Empire is being revisited and, according to Patel,
the progress within the last ruling dynasty of China did occur.
Both Patel and Po insist that the focus on China’s inability to
accept the changing reality is selective and that there were
much more serious reasons of Chinese navy’s fall in the Opium
Wars and the ultimate decline of the late Qing’s power. As
such, Patel (2012) argues that in the constricting circumstances
of the traditional conservative political system of China, the
Qing Empire did, in fact, adapt to the changing tide of the
global relations, which is evidenced by the fact that it remained
intact for as long as it did. Among the significant shifts in
China’s consideration for foreign affairs was the establishment
of Zongli Yamen, the formalized political department that was
responsible for handling foreign affairs (Patel, 2012). Patel
asserts that within the context of China’s conservatism and
inward orientation, Zongli Yamen was the significant change
that demonstrated the Qing’s ability to adapt to the changing
dynamics of global relations. Additionally, the Qing
demonstrated the ability to acknowledge and learn from past
mistakes, when it entered a partnership with Britain and adopted
a number of Western trade policies to solidify the trade
relations with Korea, in contradiction to the traditional attitude
of China toward Korea as a tributary nation.
To conclude, it is evident that Qing’s seclusion policy was the
central reason that led to the ultimate demise of China’s royal
system and its decline as a superior economy. The consequences
for China were tremendous, both on a national and international
arena. On the national level, China was forced to reconsider its
political principles and foreign policies. More than that, its

status, confidence, and pride as the nation that had prospered
for thousands of years and was “the only civilization under
heaven” were crushed, when it turned out that the Qing Empire
was weak and defenseless against the rising power of the West.
At the same time, it is possible to state that the far-reaching
consequences of the Seclusion Policy were not entirely
negative. Despite taking a tremendous blow and being reduced
in power, China got the opportunity to assess its real position
on the global arena and become more open to change and
progress, without which the country would not have been able
to keep up with the other countries in the modern times.
References
Patel, R. (2012). A Review of Dissertations: The revisionist
debate of foreign policy in late Qing China. Emory Endeavors
In World History, 4. Retrieved from
http://history.emory.edu/home/documents/endeavors/volume4/P
atel.pdf
Po, C. (2013). Conceptualizing the Blue Frontier: The Great
Qing and the Maritime World in the Long Eighteenth
Century (Ph.D.). Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg.
Qu, J. (2016). Self-Strengthening Movement of Late Qing
China: an Intermediate Reform Doomed to Failure. Asian
Culture And History, 8(2), 148. doi: 10.5539/ach.v8n2p148
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5
"Night to His Day":
The Social Construction of Gender
Judith Lorber .
Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish
talking about water.
Cender is so much the routine ground of everyday activities that
questioning its
taken-far-granted assumptions and presuppositions is like
thinking about whether
the sun will come up.1 Cender is so pervasive that in our
society we assume it is
bred into our genes. Most people find it hard to believe that
gender is constantly
created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social
life, and is the texture
and order of that social life. Yet gender, like culture, is a human
production that de-
pends on everyone constantly "doing gender" (West and
'Zimmerman 1987)

An~ everyone "does gender" without thinking about it. Today,
on the subway, I
saw a well-dressed man with a year-old child in a stroller.
Yesterday, on a bus, I saw
a man with a tiny baby ina carrier on his chest. Seeing men
taking care of small
children in public is increasircgly common-at least in New York
City. But both
men were quite obviously stared at-and smiled at, approvingly.
Everyone was
doing gender-the men who were changing the role of fathers and
the other pas-
sengers, who were applauding them silently. But there was more
gendering going
on that probably fewer people noticed. The baby was wearing a
white crocheted
cap and white clothes. You couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl.
The child in the
stroller was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and dark print pants. As
they started to
leave the train, the father put a Yankee baseball cap 011 the
child's head. Ah, a boy,
I thought. Then I noticed the gleam of tiny earrings in the
child's ears, and as they
got off, I saw the little flowered sneakers and lace-trimmed
socks. Not a boy after
all. Cender done.
Cender is such a familiar part of daily life that it usually takes a
deliberate dis-
ruption of our expectations of how women and men are
supposed to act to pay at-
tention to how it is produced. Cender signs and signals are so
ubiquitous that we
usually fail to note them-unless they are missing or ambiguous.
Then we are un-

comfortable until we have successfully placed the other person
in a gender status;
otherwise, we feel socially dislocated....
From" 'Night to His Day': The Social ComtLlction of Gender,"
in Paradoxes or Gender, pp. 13-36.
Copyright 1994. Reprinted by permission of Yale University
Press.
5 Lorber! "Night to His Day" 55
For the individual, gender construction starts with assignment to
a sex categorYI
on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth Z Then
babies are dressed orl
adorned in a way that displays !Iw category because parents
don't want to be con-,
stantly askee; whether their baby IS a girl or a boy. A sex
category becomes a gender
status through naming, dress, and the use of other gender
markers. Once a child's
gender is evident, others treat those in one gender differently
from those in the
other, and the children respond to the different treatment by
feeling different and
behaving differently. As soon as they can talk, they start to
refer to themselves as
members of their gender. Sex doesn't corne into play again until
puberty, but by
that time, sexual feelings and desires and practices have been
shaped by gendered
norms and expectations. Adolescent boys and girls approach and
avoid each other
in an elaborately scripted and gendered mating dance. Parenting
is gendered, with
different expectations for mothers and for fathers, and people of

different genders
work at different kinds of jobs. The work adults do as mothers
ar;,1 fathers and as
low-level workers and high-level bosses, shapes women's and
men's life experi-
ences, and these experiences produce different feelings,
consciousness, relation-
ships, skills-ways of being that we call feminine or masculine 3
All of these
processes constitute the social construction of gender.
Cendered roles change-today fathers are taking care of little
children, girls
and boys are wearing unisex clothing and getting the same
education, women and
men are working at the same jobs. Although many traditional
social groups are
quite strict about maintaining gender differences, in other socia!
groups they seem
to be blurring. Then why the one-year-old's earrings? Why is it
still so important to
mark a child as a girl or a boy, to make sure she is not taken for
a boy or he for a
girl? What would happen if they were? They would, quite
literally, have changed
places in their social world.
To explain why gendering is done from birth, constantly and by
everyone, we
have to look not only at the way individuals experience gender
but at gender as a so-
CIal institution. As a social institution, gender is one of the
major ways that human
beings organize their lives. Human society depends on a
predictable division of
labor, a designated allocation of SCarce goods, assigned

responsibility for children
and others who cannot care for themselves, common values and
their systematic
transmission to new members, legitimate leadership, music, art,
stories, garnes, and
other symbolic productions. One way of choosing people for the
different tasks of
society is on the basis of their talents, motivations, and
competence-their demon-
strated achievements. The other way is on the basis of gender,
race, ethnicity-as-
cribed membership in a category of people. Although societies
vary in the extent to
which they use one or the other of these ways of allocating
people to work and to
carry out other responsibilities, every society uses gender and
age grades. Every soci-
ety classifies people as "girl and boy children," "girls and boys
ready to be married,"
and "fully adult women and men," constructs similarities among
them and differ-
ences between them, and assigns them to different roles and
responsibilities.
Personality characteristics, feelings, motivations, and ambitions
flow from these
different life experiences so that the me/nbers of these different
groups become
56 I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class,
Gender, and Sexuality
different kinds of people. The process of gendering and its
outcome are legitimated
by religion, law, science, and the society's entire set of values

....
Western society's values legitimate gendering by claiming that
it all comes
from physiology-female and male procreative differences. But
gender and sex are
not equivalent, and gender as a social construction does not
flow automatically
from genitalia and reproductive organs, the main physiological
differences of fe-
males and males. In the construction of ascribed social statuses,
physiological dif-
ferences such as sex, stage of development, color of skin, and
size are crude
marke,s. They are not the source of the social statuses of
gender, age grade, and
race. Social statuses are carefully constructed through
prescribed processes of
teaching, learning, emulation, and enforcement. Whatever
genes, hormones, and
biological evolution contribute to human social institutions is
materially as well as
qualitatively transformed by social practices. Evcry social
institution has a material
base, but culture and social practices transform that base into
something with qual-
itatively different patterns and constraints. The economy is
much more than pro-
ducing food and goods and distributing them to eaters and
users; family and
kinship are not the equivalent of having sex and procreating;
morals and religions
cannot be equated with the fears and ecstasies of the brain;
language goes far be-
yond the sounds produced by tongue and larynx. No one eats
"money" or "credit";

the concepts of "god" and "angels" are the subjects of
theological disquisitions; not
only words but objects, such as their flag, "speak" to the
citizens of a country.
Similarly, gcnder cannot be equated with biological and
physiological differ-
ences between human females and males. The building blocks of
gender are so-
cially constructed statuses. Western socIeties have only two
genders, "man" and
"woman." Some societies have three genders- men, women, and
berdaches or
hiiras or xaniths. Berdaches, hijras, and xaniths are biological
males who behave,
dress, work, and are treated in most respects as social women;
they are therefore not
men, nor are they female women; they are, in our language,
"male women."4 There
are Mrican and American Indian societies that have a gender
status called manly
hearted Women- biological females who work, marry, and
parent as men; their so-
cial status is "female men" (Amadiume 1987; Blackwood 1984).
They do not have
to behave or dress as men to have the social responsibilities and
prerogatives of hus-
bands and fathers; what makes them men is enough wealth to
buy a wife.
Modern Western societies' transsexuals and transvestites are the
nearcst equiva-
lent of these crossover genders, but they are not
institutionalized as third genders
(Bolin 1987). Transsexuals are biological males and females
who have sex-change

operations to alter their genitalia. They do so in order to bring
their physical
anatomy in congruence with the way they want to live and with
their own sense of
gender identity. They do not become a third gender; they change
genders.
Transvestites are males who live as women and females who
live as men but do not
intend to have sex-change surgery. Their dress, appearance, and
mannerisms fall
within the range of what is expected from members of the
opposite gender, so that
they "pass." They also change genders, sometimes temporarily,
some for most of
their lives. Transvestite women have fought in wars as men
soldiers as recently as
5 Lorber / "Night to His Day" 57
the nineteenth century; some married women, and others went
back to being
women and married men once the war was over.' Some were
discovered when
their wounds were treated; others not until they died. In order to
work as a jazz
musician, a man's occupation, Billy Tipton, a woman, lived
most of her life as a
man. She died recently at seventy-four, leaving a wife and three
adopted sons for
whom she was husband and father, and musicians with whom
she had played and
traveled, for whom she was "one of the boys" (New York Times
1989).6 There have
been many other such occurrences of women passing as men to
do more presti-
gious or lucrative men's work (Matthaei 1982, 192-93).7

Genders, therefore, are not attached to a biological substratum.
Gender
boundaries are breachablc, and individual and socially
organized shifts from one
gender to another call attention to "cultural, social, or aesthetic
dissonances"
(Garber 1992, 16). These odd or deviant or third genders show
us what we ordinar-
ily take for granted-that people have to learn to be women and
men ....
For Individuals, Gender Means Sameness
Although the possible combinations of genitalia, body shapes,
clothing, manner-
isms, sexuality, and roles could produce infinite varieties in
human beings, the so-
cial institution of gcndcr depends on the production and
maintenance of a limited
number of gender statuses and of making the members of these
statuses similar to
each other. Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and
they have to be
taught to be masculine or feminineS As SImone de Beauvoir
saId: "One is not
born, but rather becomes, :3 woman ... ; it is civilization as a
whole that produces
this creature ... which is described as feminine." (1953, 267).
Children learn to walk, talk, and gesture the way their social
group says gnls
and boys should. Ray Birdwhistell, in his analysis of body
motion as human com-
munication, calls these learned gender displays tertiary sex
characteristics and ar-

gues that they are needed to distinguish genders because
humans are a weakly
dimorphic species-their only sex markers are genitalia (1970,
39-46). Clothing,
paradoxically, often hides the sex but displays the gender.
In early childhood, humans develop gendered personality
structures and sexual
orientations through their interactions with parents of the same
and opposite gen-
der. As adolescents, they conduct their sexual behavior
according to gendered
scripts. Schools, parents, peers, and the mass media guide
young people into gen-
dered work and family roles. As adults, they take on a gendered
social status in
their society's stratification system. Gender is thus both
ascribed and achieved
(West and Zimmerman 1987). ..
Gender norms are inscribed in the way people move, gesture,
and even eat. In
one African society, men were supposed to eat with their "whole
mouth, whole-
heartedly, and not, like women, just with the lips, that is
halfheartedly, with reser-
vation and restraint" (Bourdieu [1980] 1990, 70). Men and
women in this society
learncd to walk in ways that proclaimed their different positions
in the society:
51> I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class,

The manly man, , , stands up straight into the face of the person
he approaches, or
wishes to welcome, Ever on the alert, because ever threatened,
he misses nothing of
what happens around him, , , , Conversely, a well brought-up
woman, , , is expected
to walk with a slight stoop, avoiding every misplaced movement
of her body, her
head or her arms, looking down, keeping her eyes on the spot
where she will next
put her foot, especially if she happens to have to walk past the
men's assembly, (70)
, , , For human beings there is no essential femaleness or
maleness, femininity
or masculinity, womanhood or manhood, but once gender is
ascribed, the social
order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered
norms and expecta-
tions, Individuals may vary on many of the components of
gender and may shift
genders temporarily or permanently, but they must fit into the
limited number of
gender statuses their society recognizes. In the process, they re-
create their society's
version of women and men: "If we do gender appropriately, we
simultaneously sus-
tain, reproduce, and render legitimate the institutional
arrangements. , .. If we fail
to do gender appropriately, we as individuals-not the
institutional arrange-
ments-may be called to account (for our character, motives, and
predisposi-
tions)" (West and Zimmerman 1987, 146).
The gendered practices of everyday life reproduce a society's

view of how
women and men should act (Bourdieu [1980] 1990). Gendered
social arrange-
ments are justified by religion and cultural productions and
backed by law, but the
most powerful means of sustaining the moral hegemony of the
dominant gender
ideology is that the process is made invisible; any possible
alternatives are Virtually
unthinkable (Foucault 1972; Gramsci 1971)9
For Society, Gender Means Difference
The pervasiveness of gender as a way of structuring social life
demands that gender
statuses be clearly differentiated. Varied talents, sexual
preferences, identities, per-
sonalities, interests, and ways of interacting fragment the
individual's bodily and
social experiences. Nonetheless, these are organized in Western
cultures into two
and only two socially and legally recognized gender statuses,
"man" and
"woman."lO In the social construction of gender, it does not
matter what men and
women actually do; it does not even matter if they do exactly
the same thing. The
social institution of gender insists only that what they do is
perceived as different.
If men and women are doing the same tasks, they are usually
spatially segre-
gated to maintain gender separation, and often the tasks are
given different job ti-
tles as well, such as executive secretary and administrative
assistant (Reskin 1988).

If the differences between women and men begin to blur,
society's "sameness
taboo" goes into action (Rubin 1975, 178). At a rock and roll
dance at West Point
in 1976, the year women were admitted to the prestigious
military academy for the
first time, the school's administrators "were reportedly
perturbed by the sight of
mirror-image couples dancing in short hair and dress gray
trousers," and a rule was
established that women cadets could dance at these events only
if they wore skirts
(Barkalow and Raab 1990, 53).11 Women recruits in the U,S.
Marine Corps are re-
quired to wear makeup-at a minimum, lipstick and eye shadow-
and they have
to take classes in makeup, hair care, poise, and etiquette. This
feminization is part
of a deliberate policy of making them clearly distinguishable
from men Marines.
Christine Williams quotes a twenty-five-year-old woman drill
instructor as saying:
"A lot of the recruits who come here don't wear makeup; they're
tomboyish or ath-
letic. A lot of them have the preconceived idea that going into
the military means
they can still be a tomboy. They don't realize that you are a
Woman Marine"
(1989,76-77)12
If gender differences were genetic, physiological, or hormonal,
gender bending
and gender ambiguity would occur only in hermaphrodites, who

are born with
chromosomes and genitalia that are not clearly female or male.
Since gender dif-
ferences are socially constructed, all men and all women can
enact the behavior of
the other, because they know the other's social script: " 'Man'
and 'woman' are at
once empty and overflowing categories. Empty because they
have no ultimate,
transcendental meaning. Overflowing because even when they
appear to be fixed,
they still contain within them alternative, denied, or suppressed
definitions,"
(Scott 1988,49)....
For one transsexual man-to-woman, the experience of living as
a woman
changed hislher whole personality. As James, Morris had been a
soldier, foreign
correspondent, and mountain climber; as Jan, Morris is a
successful travel writer.
But socially, James was superior to Jan, and so Jan developed
the "learned helpless-
ness" that is supposed to characterize women in Western
society:
We are told that the social gap between the sexes is narrowing,
but I can only report
that having, in the second half of the twentieth century,
experienced life in both
roles, there seems to me no aspect of existence, no moment of
the day, no contact,
no arrangement, no response, which is not different for men and
for women, The
very tone of voice in which I was now addressed, the very
posture of the person next

in the queue, the very feel in the air when I entered a room or
sat at a restaurant
table, constantly emphasized my change of status.
And if other's responses shifted, so did my own. The more I was
trea ted as
woman, the more woman I became. I adapted willy-nilly. If I
was assumed to be
incompetent at reversing cars, or opening bottles, oddly
incompetent I found my-
self becoming. If a case was thought too heavy for me,
inexplicably I fouIld it so
myself,. . Women treated me with a frankness which, while it
was one of the
happiest discoveries of my metamorphosis, did imply
membership of a camp, a
faction, or at least a school of thought; so I found myself
gravitating always towards
the female, whether in sharing a railway compartment or
supporting a political
cause, Men treated me more and more as junior, , .. and so,
addressed every day
of my life as an inferior, involuntarily, month by month I
accepted the condition.
I discovered that even now men prefer women to be less
informed, less able, less
talkative, and certainly Jess self-centered than they are
themselves; so I gerrerally
obliged them. (1975,165-66)]1
60 I The Social Construction o(Difference: Race, Class, Gender,
and Sexuality
Gender as Process, Stratification, and Structure

As a social institution, gender is a process of creating
distinguishable social statuses
for the assignment of rights and responsibilities. As part of a
stratification system
that ranks these statuses unequally, gender is a major building
block in the social
structures built on these unequal statuses.
As a process, gender creates the social differences that define
"woman" and
"man." In social interaction throughout their lives, individuals
learn what is ex-
pected, see what is expected, act and react in expected ways,
and thus simultane-
ously construct and maintain the gender order: "The very
injunction to be a
given gender takes place through discursive routes: to be a good
mother, to be a
heterosexually desirable object, to be a fit worker, in sum, to
signify a multiplicity
of guarantees in response to a variety of different demands all at
once" (Butler
1990, 145). Members of a social group neither make up gender
as they go along
nor exactly replicate in rote fashion what was done before. In
almost every en-
counter, human beings produce gender, behaving in the ways
they learned were
appropriate for their status, or resisting or rebelling against
these norms,
Resistance £lDd rebellion have altered gender norms, but so far
they have rarely
eroded the statuses.
Gendered patterns of mteraction acquire additional layers of

gendered sexual-
ity, parenting, and work behaviors in childhood, adolescence,
and adulthood.
Gendered norms and expectations are enforced through informal
sanctions of
gender-inappropriate behavior by peers and by formal
punishment or threat
of punishment by those in authority should behavior deviate too
far from socially
imposed standards for women and men ....
As part of a stratification system, gender ranks men above
women of the same
race and class. Women and men could be diffcrent but equal. [n
practice, the
process of creating difference depends to a great extent on
differential evaluation,
As .f';ancy Jay (1981) says: "That which is defined, separated
out, isolated from all
else is A and pure. Not-A is necessarily impure, a random
catchall, to which noth-
ing is external except A and the principle of order that separates
it from Not-A"
(45). From the individual's point of view, whichever gender is
A, the other is Not- G~:
A; gender boundaries tell the individual who is like him or her,
and all the rest are ~,
,::;
unlike. From society's point of view, however, one gender is
usually the touch-
stone, the normal, the dominant, and the other is different,
deViant, and subordi-
nate, In Western society, "man" is A, "wo-man" is Not-A.
(Consider what a society

would be like where woman was A and man NotA)
The further dichotomization by race and class constructs the
gradations of a
heterogeneous society's stratification scheme. Thus, in the
United States, white is
A, African American is Not-A; middle class is A, working class
is Not-A, and
"African-American women occupy a position whereby the
inferior half of a series
of these dichotomies converge" (Collins 1990, 70). The
dominant categories are
the hegemonic ideals, taken so for granted as the way things
should be that white is
not ordinarily thought of as a race, middle class as a class, or
men as a gender. The
5 Lorber I "Night to His Day" 61
characteristics of these c::ltegories define the Other as that
which lacks the valuable
qualities the dominants exhibit.
In a gender-stratified society, what men do is usually v::llued
more highly than
wh8t women do because men do it, even when their activities
are very similar or
the same. In different regions of southern India, for example,
harvesting rice is
men's work, shared work, or women's work: "Wherever a task is
done by women It
is considered easy, and where it is done by [men] it is
conSIdered difficult"
(Mencher 1988, 104). A gathering and hunting society's survival
Llsually depends

on the nuts, grubs, ::Ind small animals brought in by the
women's foraging trips,
but when the mcn's hunt is successful, it is the occasion for a
celebration,
Conversely, bec::luse they are the superior group, white men do
not have to do the
"dirty work," such ::IS housework; the most inferior group does
it, usually poor
women of color (Palmer 1989) ... ,
Societies vary in the extent of the inequality in social status of
their women and
men members, but where there is inequality, the status "woman"
(and its atten-
dant behavior and role allocations) is usually held in lesser
esteem than the status
"man," Since gender is also intertwined with a society's other
constructed statuses
of differential evaluation-race, religion, occupation, class,
country of origin, and
so on-men and women members of the favored groups
comm::lnd more power,
more prestige, and more property than the members of thc
disfavored groups
Within many social groups, however, men are advantaged over
women. The more
economic resources, such as educ::ltion and job opportunities,
are available to a
group, the more they tend to be monopolized by men. In poorer
groups that have
few resources (such as working-c1::1ss Mrican Americans in the
United States),
women and men are more nearly equ::ll, and the women may
even outstrip the

men in education ::Ind occupational status (Almquist 1987).
As a structure, gender divides work in the home and in
economic production,
legitimates those in authority, and organizes sexuality and
emotional life (Connell
1987, 91-142). As primary parents, women significantly
influence children's psy-
chological development and emotiol18l attachments, in the
process reproducing
gender. Emergent sexuality is shaped by heterosexual,
homosexual, bisexual, and
sadomasochistic patterns that are gendered -different for girls
and boys, and for
women and men-so that sexual statuses reflect gender statuses.
Wnen gender is a major componcnt of structured inequality, the
devalued gen-
ders have less power, prestige, and economic rewards than the
valued genders. In
countries that discouwge gender discrimination, many m::ljor
roles are still gendered;
women still do most of the domestic labor and child rearing,
even while doing full-
time paid work; women and men are segregated on the job and
each does work con-
sidered "appropriate"; women's work is usually paid less than
men's work. IvIen
dominate the positions of authority and leadership in
government, the military, and
the law; cultural productions, religions, and sports reflect men's
interests.
In societies that create the gre~test gender difference, such as
Saudi Arabia,
women are kept out of sight behind walls or veils, have no ciVil

rights, and often
cultural ::Ind emotional world of their own (Bernard 1981) But
even in
societies with less rigid gender boundaries, women and men
spend much of their
time with people of their own gender because of the way work
and family are orga-
nized. This spatial separation of women and men reinforces
gt:ndered different-
ness, identity, and ways of thinking and behaving (Coser 1986),
Gender inequality-the devaluation of "women" and the social
domination of
"men" -has social functions and a social history. It is not the
result of sex, procre-
ation, physiology, anatomy, hormones, or genetic
predispositions, It is produced
and maintained by identifiable social processes and built into
the general social
structure and individual identities deliberately and purposefully.
The social order
as we know it in Western societies is organized around racial
ethnic, class, and
gender inequality. I contend, therefore, that the continuing
purpose of gender as a
modern social institution is to construct women as a group to be
the subordinates
of men as a group, The life of everyone placed in the status
"woman" is "night to

his day-that has forever been the fantasy, Black to his white.
Shut out of his sys-
tem's space, she is the repressed that ensures the system's
functioning" (Cixous and
Clement [1975] 1986,67).
NOTES
I, Gender is, in Erving Goffman's words, an aspect of Felicity's
Condition: "any
arrangement which leads us to judge an individual's. , . acts not
to be a manifestation of
strangeness, Behind Felicity's Condition is our sense of what it
is to be sane" (1983, 27).
Also see Bern 1993; Frve 1983, 17-40; Goffman 1977,
2, In cases of a~biguity in countries with modern medicine,
surgery is usually per-
formed to make the genitalia more clearly male or female.
3. See Butler 1990 for an analySIS of how doing gender is
gender Identity,
4. On the hijras of India, see Nanda 1990; on the xaniths of
Oman, Wikan 1982,
168-86; on the American lndian berdaches, W. L. Williams
1986, Other societies that have
similar institutionalized third-gender men are the Koniag of
Alaska, the Tanala of
Madagascar, the Mesakin of Nuba, and the Chukchee of Siberia
(Wikan 1982, 170),
5. Durova 1989; Freeman and Bond 1992; Wheelwright 1989.
6. Gender segregatiol~ of work in popular music still has not
changed very much, ac-

cording to Groce and Cooper 1990, despite considerable
androgyny in some very popular
figures. See Garber 1992 on the androgyny. She discusses
Tipton on pp. 67-70,
7, In the nineteenth century, not only did these women get men's
wages, but they also
"had male privileges and could do all manner of things other
women could not: open a
bank account, write checks, own property, go anywhere
unaccompanied, vote in elections"
(Faderman 1991,44),
8. For an account of how a potential man-to-woman transsexual
learned to be femi-
nine, see Garfinkel 1967, 116-85,285-88, For a gloss on this
account that points out how,
throughout his encounters with Agnes, Garfinkel failed to see
how he himself was con-
structing his own masculinity, see Rogers 1992.
9, The concepts of moral hegemony, the effects of everyday
activities (praxis) on
thought and personality, and the necessity of consciousness of
these processes before politi-
cal change can occur are all based on Marx's analysis of class
relations,
10. Other societies recognize more than two categories, but
usually no more than three
or four (Jacobs and Roberts 1989).
11. Carol Barkalow's book has a photograph of eleven first-year
West Pointers in a math

class, who are dressed in regulation pants, shirts, and sweaters,
with short haircuts. The cap-
tion challenges the reader to locate the only woman in the room.
12. The taboo on males and females looking alike reflects the
U.S. militJ';'s homopho-
bia (Berube 1989). If you can't tell those with a penis from
those with a vagina, how are you
going to determine whether their sexual interest is heterosexual
or homosexual unless you
watch them having sexual relations?
13. See Bolin 1988, 149-50, for transsexual men-to-women's
discovery of the dangers
of rape and sexual harassment. Devor's "gender blenders" went
in the opposite direction.
Because they found that it was an advantage to be taken for
men, they did not deliberately
cross-dress, but they did not feminize themselves either (1989,
126-40).
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6
The Socia~ Construction
of Sexual ity
Ruth Hubbard
There is no "natural" human sexuality. This is not to say that
our sexual feelings
are "unnatural" but that whatever feelings and activities our
society interprets as
sexual are channeled from birth into socially acceptable forms
of expression.
Western thinking about sexuality is based on the Christian
equation of sexual-

ity with sin, which must be redeemed through making babies.
To fulfill the
Christian mandate, sexuality must be intended for procreation,
and thus all forms
of sexual expression and enjoyment other than heterosexuality
are invalidated.
Actually, for most Christians nowadays just plain
heterosexuality wdl do, irrespec-
tive of whether it is intended to generate offspring.
From Ruth Hubbard, The Politics of Women's Biology.
Copyright © 1991 by Rutgers, The State
University. Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University
Press.
These ideas about sexuality set up a major contradiction in what
we tell chil-
dren about sex and procreation. We teach them that sex and
sexuality are about
becoming mommies and daddies and warn them not to explore
sex by them-
selves or with playmates of either sex until they are old enough
to have babies.
Then, when they reach adolescence and the entire culture
pressures them into
heterosexual activity, whether they themselves feel ready for it
or not, the more
"enlightened" among us tell them how to be sexually (meaning

heterosexually)
active without having babies. Surprise: It doesn't work very
well. Teenagers do
not act "responsibly" -teenage pregnancies and abortions are on
the rise and
teenage fathers do not acknowledge and support their partners
and babies.
Somewhere we forget that we have been telling lies. Sexuality
and procreation
are not linked in societies like ours. On the contrary, we expect
youngsters to be
heterosexually active from their teens on but to put off having
children until they
are economically independent and married, and even then to
have only two or,
at most, three children.
Other contradictions: This society, on the whole, accepts
Freud's assumption
that children are sexual beings from birth and that society
channels their polymor-
phously perverse childhood sexuality into the accepted forms.
Yet we expect our
children to be asexual. We raise girls and boys together more
than is done in marlY
societies while insisting that they rrust not explore their own or
each other's sexual
parts or feelings.
What if we acknowledged the sep::Jration of sexuality from
procreation and en-
couraged our children to express themselves sexually if they
were so inclined?
What if we, further, encouraged them to explore their own
bodies as well as those
of friends of the some and the other sex when they felt like it?

They might then be
able to feel at home with their sexuality, have some sense of
their own and other
people's sexual needs, and know how to talk about sexuality and
procreation with
their friends and sexual partners before their ability to procreate
becomes an issue
for them. In this age of AIDS and other serious sexually
transmitted infections,
such a course of action seems like essential preventive hygiene.
Without the em-
barrassment of unexplored and unacknowledged sexual needs,
contraceptive needs
would be much easier to confront when they arise. So, of
course, would same-sex
Jove relationships.
Such a more open and accepting approach to sexuality would
rnake life easIer
for children and adolescents of either sex, but it would be
especially advantageous
for girls. VI/hen a boy discovers his penis as an organ of
pleasure, it is the same
organ he is taught about as his organ of procreation. A girl
exploring her pleasur-
able sensations finds her clitoris, but when she is taught about
making babies, she
hears about the functions of the vagina in sex and birthing.
Usually, the clitoris
goes unmentioned, and she doesn't even learn its name until
much later.
Therefore for boys there is an obvious link between
procre::ltion and their own
pleasurable, erotic explorations; for most girls, there isn't.
6 Hubbard / The Social Construction of Sexuality 67

Individual Sexual Scripts
Each of us writes our own sexual script out of the range of our
experiences. None
of this script is inborn or biologically given. We construct it oul
of our diverse life
situations, limited by wh::lt we are taught or what we can
imagine to be permissible
and correct. There is no unique female sexual experience, no
male sexual experi-
ence, no unique heterosexual, lesbian, or gay male experience.
'I'Ve take the expe-
riences of different people and sort and lump them according to
sociully
significant categories. When I hear generalizations about the
sexuu] experience of
some particular group, exceptions immediately come to mind.
Except that I refuse
to call them exceptions: They are part of the range of our sexual
experiences. Of
course, the similar circumstances in which members of a
particular group find
themselves will give rise to group similarities. But we tend to
exaggerate them
when we go looking for similarities within groups or differences
between them.
This exaggeration is easy to see when we look at the dichotomy
between "thc
heterosexual" and "the homosexual." The concept of "the
homosexual," along
with many other human typologies, originated toward the end of
the nineteenth
century. Certain kinds of behavior stopped being attributed to
particular persons

::md came to define them. A persoll who had sexual relations
with someone of the
S::lme sex became a certain kind of person, a "homosexual"; a
person who had sex-
ual relations with people of the other sex, a different kind, a
"heterosexu::ll."
This way of categorizing people obscured the hitherto ::lccepted
fact that many
people do not have sexual relations exclusively with persons of
one or the other sex.
(None of us has sex with a kind of person; we have sex with a
person.) This catego-
rization created the stereotypes that were popularized by the sex
reformers, such as
Havelock Ellis ond Edward Carpenter, who biologized the
"difference." "The ho-
mosexual" became ::l person who is different by nature and
therefore should not be
made responsible for his or her so-called deviance. This
definition served the pur-
pose of the reformers (although the laws have been slow to
change), but it turned
same-sex love into a medical problem to be treated by doctors
rather tha n punished
by judges -an improvement, perhaps, but not acceptance or
liber::ltion....
Toward a Nondeterministic Model of Sexuality
... Some gay men and lesbians feel that they were born
"different" and have al-
ways been homosexual. They recall feeling strongly attracted to
ITlembers of their
own sex when they were children and udoJescents. But many
womer:. who live

with men and think of themselves as heterosexual also had
strong affective and
erotic ties to girls and women while they were growing up. If
they were now in lov-
ing relationships with women, they might look back on their
earlier loves as proof
• "0 eJVCWI loonstruction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender,
and Sexuality
that they were always lesbiafls, But if they are now involved
with men, they may be
tempted to devalue their former feeliflgs as "puppy love" or
"crushes,"
Even withifl the preferred sex, most of us feel a greater affinity
for certain
"types" than for others, Not any man or woman will do, No Ofle
has seriously sug-
gested that something ifl our inflate makeup makes us light up
ifl the presence of
only certain women or men, "lYe would think it absurd to look
to hormone levels
or any other simplistic biological cause for our preference for a
specific "type"
within a sex, In fact, scientists rarely bother to ask what in our
psychosocial experi-
ence shapes these kinds of tastes anc! preferences, "lYe assume
it must have some-
thing to do with our relationship to our parents or with other
experiences, but we
do not probc deeply unless people prefer the "Wroflg" sex,
Then, suddenly, scien-
tists begin to look for specific causes.

Because of our recent history and political experiences,
feminists tend to reject
simplistic, causal models of how our sexuality develops, Many
women who have
thought of themselves as hetcrosexual for much of their life and
who have been
marricd and have had children have fallen in love with a woman
(or women)
when they have had thc opportunity to rethink, refeel, and
restructure their lives.
The society in which we live chanflels, guides, and limits our
imaginatiofl in
sexual as well as other matters. Why some of us give ourselves
permission to love
people of our own sex whereas others cannot even imagifle
doing so is an iflterest-
ing question, But I do not think it will be amwered by
measuring our hormone
levels or by trying to unearth our earliest affectional tics, A:s
women begin to speak
freely about our sexual experiences, we are getting a varied
range of iflformation
with which we can reexamine, reevaluate, and change ourselves,
Lately, increas-
ing numbers of women have begun to acknowledge their
"bisexuality" -the fact
that they can love women and men in :succession or
simultaneously, People fall in
love with individuals, not with a sex, Gender fleed not be a
significant factor in our
choicc, although for some of us it may be,

Doing Gender
Candace West; Don H. Zimmerman
Gender and Society, Vol. 1, No. 2. (Jun., 1987), pp. 125-151.
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D O I N G G E N D E R
C A N D A C E W E S T
Uniuersity of California, Santa Cruz
DON H. Z I M M E R M A N
Uniuersity of California, Santa Barbara
T h e purpose of t h i s article is t o advance a new
understanding of gender as a routine
accomplishment embedded i n cvcryday interaction. T o d o so
entails a critical
assessment of existing perspectives on sex and g e n h and the
introduction of
important distinctionsamongsex, sex c a t c g o ~ y , and
gender. W e argue that recognition
of the analytical i n d c p u i m c e of these c o n c e p b is
essential for understanding the

interactional work involved i n being a gendered person i n
society. T h e thrust of our
remarks is toward theoretical reconccptualiration, but we c o n s
i h fruitful dircctiom
for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation.
I n the beginning, there was sex a n d there was gender. Those
of us
w h o taught courses i n the area in the late 1960s a n d early
1970s were
careful to distinguish one from the other. Sex, we told students,
was
what was ascribed by biology: anatomy, hormones, a n d
physiology.
Gender, we said, was a n achieved status: that which is
constructed
through psychological, cultural, and social means. T o
introduce the
difference between the two, we drew o n singular case studies
of
hermaphrodites (Money 1968, 1974; Money and Ehrhardt 1972)
and
anthropological investigations of "strange and exotic tribes"
(Mead
1963, 1968).
Inevitably (and understandably), in the ensuing weeks of each
term, o u r students became confused. Sex hardly seemed a
"given" in
A U T H O R S ' N O T E : T h i s article is based i n part o n
a paperpresented at the Annual
Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago,
September1977. For thetr
helpful suggestions and encouragement, w e thank Lynda
Ames, Betttna Aptheker,

Stcucn Clayman, J u d i t h G o s o n , the late E w i n g G o f
f m a n , Marilyn Lester, J u d t t h
Lorber, R o b i n L l o y d , W a y n e Melltnger, Beth E. S c h
n e i d o , Banie T h o r n e , Thornasp.
Wilson, and most espectally, Sarah Fenstermaker Berk.
GENDER & SOCIETY. Vol. I No. 2. Junc 1987 125.151
0 1987 Sodologists for Worncn in Sodcty
126 GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987
the context of research that illustrated the sometimes ambiguous
and
often conflicting aiteria for its ascription. And gender seemed
much
less an "achievement" in the context of the anthropological,
psycho-
logical, and social imperatives we studied-the division of labor,
the
formation of gender identities, and the social subordination of
women by men. Moreover, the received doctrine of gender
socialization
theories conveyed the strong message that while gender may be
"achieved," by about age five it was certainly fixed, unvarying,
and
static-much like sex.
Since about 1975, the confusion has intensified and spread far
beyond our individual classrooms. For one thing, we learned
that the
relationship between biological and cultural processes was far
more
complex-and reflexive-than we previously had supposed (Rossi
1984, especially pp. 10-14). For another, we discovered that

certain
structural arrangements, for example, between work and family,
actually produce or enable some capacities, such as to mother,
that we
formerly associated with biology (Chodorow 1978 versus
Firestone
1970). In the midst of all this, the notion of gender as a
recurring
achievement somehow fell by the wayside.
Our purpose in this article is to propose an
ethnomethodologically
informed, and therefore distinctively sociological,
understanding of
gender as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment.
We
contend that the "doing" of gender is undertaken by women and
men
whose competence as members of society is hostage to its
production.
Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual,
interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular
pur-
suits as expressions of masculine and feminine "natures."
When we view gender as an accomplishment, an achieved
property
of situated conduct, our attention shifts from matters internal to
the
individual and focuses on interactional and, ultimately,
institutional
arenas. In one sense, of course, it is individuals who "do"
gender. But
it is a situated doing, carried out in the virtual or real presence
of
others who are presumed to be oriented to its production. Rather

than
as a property of individuals, we conceive of gender as an
emergent
feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a
rationale for
various social arrangements and as a means of legitimating one
of the
most fundamental divisions of society.
T o advance our argument, we undertake a critical examination
of
what sociologists have meant by g e n d e r , including its
treatment as a
role enactment in the conventional sense and as a "display" in
Goffman's (1976) terminology. Both g e n d e r role and g e n d
e r d i s p l a y
W e s t , Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 127
focus on behavioral aspects of being a woman or a man (as
opposed,
for example, to biological differences between the two).
However, we
contend that the notion of gender as a role obscures the work
that is
involved in producing gender in everyday activities, while the
notion
of gender as a display relegates it to the periphery of
interaction. We
argue instead that participants in interaction organize their
various
and manifold activities to reflect or express gender, and they are
disposed to perceive the behavior of others in a similar light.

T o elaborate o u r proposal, we suggest at the outset that
important
but often overlooked distinctions be observed among sex, sex
category, and gender. Sex is a determination made through the
application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for
classifying
persons as females or males.' T h e criteria for classification
can be
genitalia at birth or chromosomal typing before birth, and they
do
not necessarily agree with one another. Placement in a sex
category is
achieved through application of the sex criteria, but in everyday
life,
categorization is established and sustained by the socially
required
identificatory displays that proclaim one's membership in one or
the
other category. In this sense, one's sex category presumes one's
sex
and stands as proxy for it in many situations, but sex and sex
category
can vary independently; that is, it is possible to claim
membership in
a sex category even when the sex criteria are lacking. Gender,
in
contrast, is the activity of managing situated conduct in light of
normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for
one's sex category. Gender activities emerge from and bolster
claims
to membership in a sex category.
We contend that recognition of the analytical independence of
sex,
sex category, and gender is essential for understanding the
relation-

ships among these elements and the interactional work involved
in
"being" a gendered person in society. While our primary aim is
theoretical, there will be occasion to discuss fruitful directions
for
empirical research following from the formulation of gender
that we
propose.
We begin with a n assessment of the received meaning of
gender,
particularly in relation to the roots of this notion in presumed
biological differences between women and men.
PERSPECTIVES ON SEX AND GENDER
In Western societies, the accepted cultural perspective on
gender
views women and men as naturally and unequivocally defined
categories of being (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 116-18) with
distinctive
psychological and behavioral propensities that can be predicted
from
their reproductive functions. Competent adult members of these
soci-
eties see differences between the two as fundamental and
enduring-
differences seemingly supported by the &vision of labor into
women's
and men's work and a n often elaborate differentiation of
feminine

and masculine attitudes and behaviors that are prominent
features of
social organization. Things are the way they are by virtue of the
fact
that men are men and women are women-a division perceived to
be
natural and rooted in biology, producing in turn profound
psycho-
logical, behavioral, and social consequences. T h e structural
arrange-
ments of a society are presumed to be responsive to these
differences.
Analyses of sex and gender in the social sciences, though less
likely
to accept uncritically the naive biological determinism of the
view
just presented, often retain a conception of sex-linked behaviors
and
traits as essential properties of individuals (for good reviews,
see
Hochschild 1973; Tresemer 1975; Thorne 1980; Henley 1985).
T h e
"sex differences approach" (Thorne 1980) is more commonly
attrib-
uted to psychologists than to sociologists, but the survey
researcher
who determines the "gender" of respondents on the basis of the
sound
of their voices over the telephone is also making trait-oriented
assumptions. Reducing gender to a fixed set of psychological
traits or
to a unitary "variable" precludes serious consideration of the
ways it
is used to structure distinct domains of social experience
(Stacey and

Thorne 1985, pp. 307-8).
Taking a different tack, role theory has attended to the social
construction of gender categories, called "sex roles" or, more
recently,
"gender roles" and has analyzed how these are learned and
enacted.
Beginning with Linton (1936) and continuing through the works
of
Parsons (Parsons 1951; Parsons and Bales 1955) and
Komarovsky
(1946, 1950), role theory has emphasized the social and
dynamic
aspect of role consuvction and enactment (Thome 1980; Connell
1983). But at the level of face-to-face interaction, the
application of
role theory to gender poses problems of its own (for good
reviews and
critiques, see Connell 1983, 1985; Kessler, Ashendon, Connell,
and
Dowsett 1985; Lopata and Thorne 1978; Thorne 1980; Stacey
and
Thorne 1985). Roles are s i t u a t e d identities-assumed and
relin-
quished as the situation demands-rather than m a s t e r i d e n t
i t i e s
(Hughes 1945), such as sex category, that cut across situations.
Unlike
most roles, such as "nurse," "doctor," and "patient" or
"professor"
and "student," gender has no specific site or organizational
context.
West, Zimmerman DOING G E N D E R 129

hloreover, many roles are already gender marked, so that special
qualifiers-such as "female doctor" or "male nurse7'-must be
added
to exceptions to the rule. Thorne (1980) observes that
conceptualizing
gender as a role makes it difficult to assess its influence on
other roles
and reduces its explanatory usefulness in discussions of power
and
inequality. Drawing on Rubin (1975), Thorne calls for a
reconceptu-
alization of women and men as distinct social groups,
constituted in
"concrete, historically changing-and generally unequal-social
relationships" (Thorne 1980, p. 11).
We argue that gender is not a set of traits, nor a variable, nor a
role,
but the product of social doings of some sort. What then is the
social
doing of gender? It is more than the continuous creation of the
meaning of gender through human actions (Gerson and Peiss
1985).
We claim that gender itself is constituted through interaction.' T
o
develop the implications of our claim, we turn to Goffman's
(1976)
account of "gender display." Our object here is to explore how
gender
might be exhibited or portrayed through interaction, and thus be
seen
as "natural," while it is being produced as a socially organized
achievement.
GENDER DISPLAY

Goffman contends that when human beings interact with others
in
their environment, they assume that each possesses an "essential
natureM-a nature that can be discerned through the "natural
signs
given off or expressed by them" (1976, p. 75). Femininity and
masculinity are regarded as "prototypes of essential expression-
something that can be conveyed fleetingly in any social
situation and
yet something that strikes at the most basic characterization of
the
individual" (1976, p. 75). T h e means through which we
provide such
expressions are "perfunctory, conventionalized acts" (1976, p.
69),
which convey toothers our regard for them, indicate our
alignment in
an encounter, and tentatively establish the terms of contact for
that
social situation. But they are also regarded as expressive
behavior,
testimony to our "essential natures."
Goffman (1976, pp. 69-70) sees displaysas highly
conventionalized
behaviors structured as two-part exchanges of the statement-
reply
type, in which the presence or absence of symmetry can
establish
deference or dominance. These rituals are viewed as distinct
from but
articulated with more consequential activities, such as
performing
tasks or engaging in discourse. Hence, we have what he terms
the

"scheduling" of displays at junctures in activities, such as the
beginning or end, to avoid interfering with the activities
themselves.
Goffman (1976, p. 69) formulates gender d i s p l a y as
follows:
If gender be defined as the culturally established correlates of
sex
(whether i n consequence of biology or learning), then gender
display
refers to conventionalized portrayals of these correlates.
These gendered expressions might reveal clues to the
underlying,
fundamental dimensions of the female and male, but they are, in
Goffman's view, optional performances. Masculine courtesies
may or
may not be offeredand, if offered, may or may not be declined
(1976, p.
71). Moreover, h u m a n beings "themselves employ the term
'expres-
sion', and conduct themselves to fit their own notions of
expressivity"
(1976, p. 75). Gender depictions are less a consequence of our
"essential sexilal natures" than interactional portrayals of what
we
would like to convey about sexual natures, using
conventionalized
gestures. O u r h u m a n nature gives us the ability to learn to
produce
and recognize masculine a n d feminine gender displays-"a

capacity
[we] have by virtueof being persons, not males a n d females"
(1976, p.
76).
Upon first inspection, it wouldappear that Goffman's
formulation
offers a n engaging sociological corrective to existing
formulations of
gender. In his view, gender is a socially scripted dramatization
of the
culture's i d e a l i z a t i o n of feminine and masculine
natures, played for
a n audience that is well schooled in the presentational idiom.
T o
continue the metaphor, there are scheduled performances
presented
in special locations, and like plays, they constitute introductions
to
or time o u t from more serious activities.
There are fundamental equivocations i n this perspective. By
segregating gender display from the serious business of
interaction,
Goffman obscures the effects of gender o n a wide range of h u
m a n
activities. Gender is not merely something that happens i n the
nooks
a n d crannies of interaction, fitted i n here a n d there a n d
not
interfering with the serious business of life. While it is
plausible to
contend that gender displays-construed as conventionalized
expres-
sions-are optional, it does not seem plausible to say that we
have the

option of being seen by others as female or male.
It is necessary to move beyond the notion of gender display to
consider what is involved in doing gender as a n ongoing
activity
embedded i n everyday interaction. Toward this end, we return
to the
distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender introduced
earlier.
West. Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 131
SEX, SEX CATEGORY, AND GENDER
Garfinkel's (1967, pp. 118-40) case study of Agnes, a
transsexual
raised as a boy who adopted a female identity at age 17 and
underwent
a sex reassignment operation several years later, demonstrates
how
gender is created through interaction a n d at the same time
structures
interaction. Agnes, whom Garfinkel characterized as a
"practical
methodologist," developed a number of procedures for passing
as a
"normal, natural female" both prior to and after her surgery. She
had
the practical task of managing the fact that she possessed male
genitalia and that she lacked the social resources a girl's
biography
would presumably provide i n everyday interaction. In short,
she
needed to display herself as a woman, simultaneously learning

what
it was to be a woman. Of necessity, this full-time pursuit took
place at
a time when most people's gender would be well-accredited and
routinized. Agnes had to consciously contrive what the vast
majority
of women d o without thinking. She was not "faking" what
"real"
women d o naturally. She was obliged to analyze a n d figure o
u t how
to act within socially structured circumstances a n d
conceptions of
femininity that women born with appropriate biological
credentials
come to take for granted early on. As i n the case of others who
must
"pass," such as transvestites, Kabuki actors, or Dustin
Hoffman's
"Tootsie," Agnes's case makes visible what culture has made
invisible-the accomplishment of gender.
Carfinkel's (1967) discussion of Agnes does not explicitly
separate
three analytically distinct, although empirically overlapping,
con-
cepts-sex, sex category, and gender.
Sex
Agnes did not possess the socially agreed upon biological
criteria
for classification as a member of the female sex. Still, Agnes
regarded
herself as a female, albeit a female with a penis, which a woman
ought
not to possess. T h e penis, she insisted, was a "mistake" in

need of
remedy (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 126-27, 131-32). Like other
competent
members of our culture, Agnes honored the notion that there are
"essential" biological criteria that unequivocally distinguish
females
from males. However, if we move away from the commonsense
viewpoint, we discover that the reliability of these criteria is
not
beyond question (Money and Brennan 1968; Money and Erhardt
1972; Money a n d O g u n r o 1974; Money a n d Tucker
1975). Moreover,
other cultures have acknowledged the existence of "cross-
genders"
(Blackwood 1984; Williams 1986) and the possibility of more
than
two sexes (Hill 1935; Martin and Voorhies 1975, pp. 84-107;
but see
also Cucchiari 1981, pp. 32-35).
More central to our argument is Kessler and McKenna's (1978,
pp.
1-6) point that genitalia are conventionally hidden from public
inspection in everyday life; yet we continue through our social
rounds
to "observe" a world of two naturally, normally sexed persons.
It is
the presumption that essential criteria exist and would or should
be
there if looked for that provides the basis for sex categorization.
Drawing o n Garfinkel, Kessler a n d McKenna argue that

"female"
and "male" are cultural events-products of what they term the
"gender attribution processm-rather than some collection of
traits,
behaviors, or even physical attributes. Illustratively they cite
the child
who, viewing a picture of someone clad in a suit and a tie,
contends,
"It's a man, because he has a pee-pee" (Kessler and McKenna
1978, p.
154). Translation: "He must have a pee-pee [an essential
character-
istic] because I see the insignia of a suit and tie." Neither initial
sex
assignment (pronouncement at birth as a female or male) nor the
actual existence of essential criteria for that assignment
(possession of
a clitoris and vagina or penis and testicles) has much-if
anything-
to do with the identification of sex category in everyday life.
There,
Kessler and McKenna note, we operate with a moral certainty of
a
world of two sexes. We do not think, "Most persons with
penises are
men, but some may not be" or "Most persons who dress as men
have
penises." Rather, we take it for granted that sex and sex
category are
congruent-that knowing the latter, we can deduce the rest.
Sex Categorization
Agnes's claim to the categorical status of female, which she
sustained by appropriate identificatory displays and other
character-

istics, could be discredited before her transsexual operation if
her
possession of a penis became known and after by her surgically
constructed genitalia (see Raymond 1979, pp. 37, 138). In this
regard,
Agnes had to be continually alert to actual or potential threats
to the
security of her sex category. Her problem was not so much
living u p
to some prototype of essential femininity but preserving her
catego-
rization as female. T h i s task was made easy for her by a very
powerful
resource, namely, the process of commonsense categorization in
everyday life.
West. Zimmerman / DOING GENDER 133
T h e categorization of members of society into indigenous
cate-
gories such as "girl" or "boy," or "woman" or "man," operates in
a
distinctively social way. T h e act of categorization does not
involve a
positive test, i n the sense of a well-defined set of criteria that
must be
explicitly satisfied prior to making a n identification. Rather,
the
application of membership categories relies o n a n "if-can"
test in
everyday interaction (Sacks 1972, pp. 332-35). T h i s test
stipulates that
if people can be seen as members of relevant categories, then
categorize t h e m that way. T h a t is, use the category that

seems
appropriate, except in the presence of discrepant information or
obvious features that would rule out its use. T h i s procedure
is quite in
keeping with the attitude of everyday life, which has us take
appearances at face value unless we have special reason to
doubt
(Schutz 1943; Garfinkel 1967, pp. 272-77; Bernstein 1986).3 It
should
be added that it is precisely when we have special reason to
doubt that
the issue of applying rigorous a i t e r i a arises, but it is rare,
outside
legal or bureauaatic contexts, to encounter insistence o n
positive
tests (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 262-83; Wilson 1970).
Agnes's initial resource was the predisposition of those she
encountered to take her appearance (her figure, clothing, hair
style,
a n d so on), as the undoubted appearance of a normal female.
Her
further resource was our cultural perspective o n the properties
of
"natural, normally sexed persons." Garfinkel (1967, pp. 122-28)
notes
that in everyday life, we live in a world of two-and only two-
sexes.
T h i s arrangement has a moral status, in that we include
ourselves and
others in it as "essentially, originally, in the first place, always
have
been, always will be, once and for all, in the final analysis,
either
'male' or 'female"' (Garfinkel 1967, p. 122).

Consider the following case:
T h i s issue reminds me of a visit I made to a computer store a
couple of
years ago. T h e person w h o answered my questions was truly
a
salesperson. I c o u l d not categorize h i m / h e r a s a w o m
a n o r a m a n . What
did I look for? ( 1 ) Facial hair: She/he was smooth skinned, b
u t some
m e n have little o r n o facial hair. ( T h i s varies by race,
Native Americans
a n d Blacks often have none.) ( 2 ) Breasts: She/he was
wearing a loose
s h i r t that h u n g from his/her shoulders. And, as m a n y
women w h o
suffered t h r o u g h a 1950s' adolescence know to their s h a m
e , women are
often flat-chested. (3) Shoulders: H i d h e r s were small a n d
r o u n d for a
m a n , broad for a woman. ( 4 ) Hands: L o n g a n d slender
fingers,
knuckles a bit large for a woman, small for a m a n . ( 5 )
Voice: Middle
range, unexpressive for a w o m a n , not a t all the
exaggerated tones some
gay males affect. (6) Eiis/her treatment of me: Gave off n o
signs that
would let me know if I were of the same o r different sex as
this person.
T h e r e were not even any signs that he/she knew h i d h e r

sex would be
difficult to categorizeand I wondered about that even as I did
my best to
hide these questions so I would not embarrass him/her while we
talked
of computer paper. I left still not knowing the sex of my
salesperson,
a n d was disturbed by that unanswered question (child of my
culture
that I am). (Diane Margolis, personal communication)
What can this case tell us about situations such as Agnes's (cf.
Morris 1974; Richards 1983) or the process of sex
categorization in
general? First, we infer from this description that the computer
salesclerk's identificatory display was ambiguous, since she or
he was
not dressed or adorned in a n unequivocally female or male
fashion. It
is when such a display fails to provide g ~ o u n d s for
categorization that
factors such.as facial hair or tone of voice are assessed to
determine
membership in a sex category. Second, beyond the fact that this
incident could be recalled after "a couple of years," the
customer was
not only "disturbed" by the ambiguity of the salesclerk's
category but
also assumed that to acknowledge this ambiguity would be
embar-
rassing to the salesclerk. Not only d o we want to know the sex
category of those around us (to see it at a glance, perhaps), but
we
presume that others are displaying it for us, in as decisive a
fashion as
they can.

Gender
Ag-nes attempted to be "120 percent female" (Garfinkel 1967,
p.
129), that is, unquestionably in all ways and at all times
feminine. She
thought she could protect herself from disclosure before and
after
surgical intervention by comporting herself in a feminine
manner,
but she also could have given herself away by overdoing her
performance. Sex categorization and the accomplishment of
gender
are not the same. Agnes's categorization could be secure or
suspect,
but did not depend on whether or not she lived u p to some
ideal
conception of femininity. Women can be seen as unfehinine, but
that
does not make them "unfemale." Agnes faced a n ongoing task
of
being a woman-something beyond style of dress (an
identificatory
display) or allowing men to light her cigarette (a gender
display). Her
problem was to produce configurations of behavior t h a ~
would be
seen by others as normative gender behavior.
West. Zimmerman 1 DOING GENDER 135
Agnes's strategy of "secret apprenticeship," through which she
learned expected feminine decorum by carefully attending to her

fiance's criticisms of other women, was one means of masking
incompetencies a n d simultaneously acquiring the needed
skills
(Garfinkel 1967, pp. 146-147). It was through her fiance that
Agnes
learned that sunbathing o n the lawn in front of her apartment
was
"offensive" (because it p u t her o n display to other men). She
also
learned from his critiques of other women that she should not
insist
o n having things her way and that she should not offer her
opinions
or claim equality with men (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 147-148).
(Likeother
women i n o u r society, Agnes learned something about power
in the
course of her "education.")
Popular culture abounds with books and magazines that compile
idealized depictions of relations between women a n d men.
Those
focused o n the etiquette of dating or prevailing standards of
feminine
comportment are meant to be of practical help in these matters.
However, the use of any such source as a manual of procedure
requires the assumption that doing gender merely involves
making
use of discrete, well-defined bundles of behavior that can
simply be
plugged into interactional situations to produce recognizable
enact-
ments of masculinity a n d femininity. T h e man "does" being
masculine by, for example, taking the woman's arm to g ~ ~ i d
e her
across a street, a n d she "does" being feminine by consenting

to be
guided a n d not initiating such behavior with a man.
Agnes could perhaps have used such sources as manuals, but,
we
contend, doing gender is not so easily regimented (Mithers
1982;
Morris 1974). Such sources may list and describe the sorts of
behaviors
that mark or display gender, but they are necessarily incomplete
(Garfinkel 1967, pp. 66-75; Wieder 1974, pp. 183-214; Z
'immennan
a n d Wieder 1970, pp. 285-98). And to be successful, marking
or
displaying gender must be finely fitted to situations and
moddied or
transformed as the occasion demands. Doing gender consists of
managing such occasions so that, whatever the particulars, the
outcome is seen a n d seeable in context as gender-appropriate
or, as
the case may be, gender-inappropriate, that is, accountable.
GENDER AND ACCOUNTABILITY
As Heritage (1984, pp. 136-37) notes, members of society
regularly
engage in "descriptive accountings of states of affairs to one
another,"
and such accounts are both serious a n d consequential. These
descriptions name, characterize, formulate, explain, excuse,
excoriate,

or merely take notice of some circumstance or activity a n d
thus place
it within some social framework (locating it relative to other
activities, like and unlike).
Such descriptions are themselves accountable, a n d societal
mem-
bers orient to the fact that their activities are subject to
comment.
Actions are often designed with a n eye to their accountability,
that is,
how they might look and how they might be characterized. T h e
notion of accountability also encompasses those actions
undertaken
so that they are specifically unremarkable a n d thus not worthy
of
more than a passing remark, because they are seen to be i n
accord with
culturally approved standards.
Heritage (1984, p. 179) observes that the process of rendering
something accouqtable is interactional i n character:
[This] permits actors to design their actions in relation to their
circumstances so as to permit others, by methodically taking
account of
circumstances, to recognize the action for what it is.
T h e key word here is circumstances. O n e circumstance that
attends
virtually all actions is the sex category of the actor. As
Garfinkel
(1967, p. 118) comments:
[Tlhe work and socially structured occasions of sexual passing
were

obstinately unyielding to [Agnes's] attempts to routinize the
grounds
of daily activities. T h i s obstinacy points to the
omnireleuance of sexual
status to affairs of daily life as an invariant but unnoticed b a c
k g ~ o u n d
in the texture of relevances that compose the changing actual
scenes of
everyday life. (italics added)
If sex category is omnirelevant (or even approaches being so),
then a
person engaged in virtually any activity may be held
accountable for
performance of that activity as a w o m a n or a m a n , a n d
their incum-
bency i n one or the other sex category can be used to
legitimate or
discredit their other activities (Berger, Cohen, a n d Zelditch
1972;
Berger, Conner, a n d Fisek 1974; Berger, Fisek, Norman, a n d
Zelditch
1977; Humphreys a n d Berger 1981). Accordingly, virtually
any
activity can be assessed as to its womanly or manly nature. And
note,
to "do" gender is not always to live u p to normative
conceptions of
femininity or masculinity; it is to engage i n behavior at the
risk of
gender assessment. While it is individuals w h o d o gender,
the
West. Zimmerman 1 DOING GENDER 137

enterprise is fundamentally interactional and institutional in
char-
acter, for accountability is a feature of social relationships and
its
idiom is drawn from the institutional arena in which those
relation-
ships are enacted. If this be the case, can we ever not do
gender? Insofar
as a society is partitioned by "essential" differences between
women
and men and placement in a sex category is both relevant and
enforced, doing gender is unavoidable.
RESOURCES FOR DOING GENDER
Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys
and women and men, differences that are not natural, essential,
or
biological. Once the differences have been constructed, they are
used
to reinforce the "essentia1ness"of gender. In a delightful
account of
the "arrangement between the sexes," Goffman (1977) observes
the
creation of a variety of institutionalized frameworks through
which
our "natural, normal sexedness" can be enacted. T h e physical
features of social setting provide one obvious resource for the
expression of our "essential" differences. For example, the sex
segregation of North American public bathrooms distinguishes
"ladies" from "gentlemen" in matters held to be fundamentally
biological, even though both "are somewhat similar in the
question
of waste products and their elimination" (Goffman 1977, p.
315).

'These settings are furnished with dimorphic equipment (such as
urinals for men or elaborate grooming facilities for women),
even
though both sexes may achieve the same ends through the same
means (and apparently do so in the privacy of their own homes).
T o
be stressed here is the fact that:
T h e functioning of sex-differentiated organs is involved, but
there is
nothing in this functioning that biologically recommends
segregation;
t h a t arrangement is a totally cultural m a t t e r . . . toilet
segregation is
presented as a natural consequence of the difference between
the sex-
classes when in fact it is a means of honoring, if not producing,
this
difference. (Goffman 1977, p. 316)
Standardized social occasions also provide stages for evocations
of
the "essential female and male natures." Goffman cites
organized
sports as one such institutionalized framework for the
expression of
manliness. There, those qualities that ought "properly" to be
associated with masculinity, such as endurance, strength, and
com-
petitive spirit, are celebrated by all parties concerned-
participants,

who may be seen to demonstrate such traits, and spectators, who
applaud their demonstrations from the safety of the sidelines
(1977, p.
322).
Assortative mating practices among heterosexual couples afford
still further means to create and maintain differences between
women
and men. For example, even though size, strength, and age tend
to be
normally distributed among females and males (with
considerable
overlap between them), selective pairing ensures couples in
which
boys and men are visibly bigger, stronger, and older (if not
"wiser")
than the girls and women with whom they are paired. So, should
situations emerge in which greater size, strength, or experience
is
called for, boys and men will be ever ready to display it and
girls and
women, to appreciate its display (Goffman 1977, p. 321; West
and
Iritani 1985).
Gender may be routinely fashioned in a variety of situations
that
seem conventionally expressive to begin with, such as those that
present "helpless" women next to heavy objects or flat tires.
But, as
Goffman notes, heavy, messy, and precarious concerns can be
constructed from a n y social situation, "even though by
standards set
in other settings, this may involve something that is light, clean,
and
safe" (Goffman 1977, p. 324). Given these resources, it is clear

that a n y
interactional situation sets the stage for depictions of
"essential"
sexual natures. In sum, these situations "do not so much allow
for the
expression of natural differences as for the production of that
difference itself" (Goffman 1977, p. 324).
Many situations are not clearly sex categorized to begin with,
nor is
what transpires within them obviously gender relevant. Yet any
social encounter can be pressed into service in the interests of
doing
gender. Thus, Fishman's (1978) research on casual
conversations
found an asymmetrical "division of labor" in talk between
hetero-
sexual intimates. Women had to ask more questions, fill more
silences, and use more attention-getting beginnings in order to
be
heard. Her conclusions are particularly pertinent here:
Since interactional work is related to what constitutes being a
woman,
with w h a t a w o m a n is, t h e idea that it is work is
obscured. T h e work is
not seen as w h a t w o m e n do, but as part of w h a t they
are. ( F i s h m a n
1978, p. 405)
We would argue that it is precisely such labor that helps to
constitute
the essential nature of women a s women in interactional
contexts

West, Zimmerman :DOING GENDER 139
(West and Zimmerman 1983, pp. 109-11; but see also Kollock,
Rlumstein, and Schwartz 1985).
Individuals have many social identities that may be donned or
shed, muted or made more salient, depending on the situation.
One
may be a friend, spouse, professional, citizen, and many other
things
to many different people-or, to the same person at different
times.
But we are always women or men-unless we shift into another
sex
category. What this means is that our identificatory displays
will
provide an ever-available resource for doing gender under an
infinitely diverse set of circumstances.
Some occasions are organized to routinely display and celebrate
behaviors that are conventionally linked to one or the other sex
category. O n such occasions, everyone knows his or her place
in the
interactional scheme of things. If an individual identified as a
member of one sex category engages in behavior usually
associated
with the other category, this routinization is challenged. Hughes
(1945, p. 356) provides an illustration of such a dilemma:
[A] young woman . . . became part of that virile profession,
engi-
neering. T h e designer of a n airplane is expected to g o u p
on the
maiden flight of the first plane built according to the design. H
e [sic]

then gives a dinner to the engineers and workmen who worked o
n the
new plane. T h e dinner is naturally a stag party. T h e young
woman in
question designed a plane. Her co-workers urged her not to take
the
risk-for which, presumably, men only are fit-of the maiden
voyage.
They were, i n effect, asking her to bea lady instead of a n
engineer. She
chose to be an engineer. She then gave the party and paid for it
like a
man. After food and the first round of toasts, she left like a
lady.
On this occasion, parties reached an accommodation that
allowed a
woman to engage in presumptively masculine behaviors.
However,
we note that in the end, this compromise
permitteddemonstration of
her "essential" femininity, through accountably "ladylike"
behavior.
Hughes (1945, p. 357) suggests that such contradictions may be
countered by managing interactions on a very narrow basis, for
example, "keeping the relationship formal and specific." But the
heart of the matter is that even-perhaps, especially-if the
relation-
ship is a formal one, gender is still something one is
accountable for.
T h u s a woman physician (notice the special qualifier in her
case) may
be accorded respect for her skill and even addressed by an
appropriate
title. Nonetheless, she is subject to evaluation in terms of

normative
conceptions of appropriate attitudes and activities for her sex
category and under pressure to prove that she is an "essentially"
feminine being, despite appearances to the contrary (West 1984,
pp.
97-101). Her sex category is used to disaedit her participation
in
important clinical activities (Lorber 1984, pp. 52-54), while her
involvement in medicine is used to disaedit her commitment to
her
responsibilities as a wife and mother (Bourne and Wikler 1978,
pp.
435-37). Simultaneously, her exclusion from the physician
colleague
community is maintained and her accountability as a woman is
ensured.
In this context, "role conflict" can be viewed as a dynamic
aspect of
our current "arrangement between the sexes" (Goffman 1977), a
n
arrangement that provides for occasions on which persons of a
particular sex category can "see" quite clearly that they are out
of
place and that if they were not there, their current troubles
would not
exist. What is at stake is, from the standpoint of interaction, the
management of our "essential" natures, and from the standpoint
of
the individual, the continuing accomplishment of gender. If, as
we

have argued, sex category is omnirelevant, then any occasion,
conflicted or not, offers the resources for doing gender.
We have sought to show that sex category and gender are
managed
properties of conduct that are contrived with respect to the fact
that
others will judge and respond to us in particular ways. We have
claimed that a person's gender is not simply an aspect of what
one is,
but, more fundamentally, it is something that one does, and does
recurrently, in interaction with others.
What are the consequences of this theoretical formulation? If,
for
example, individuals strive to achieve gender in encounters with
others, how does a culture instill the need to achieve it? What is
the
relationship between the production of gender at the level of
interaction and such institutional arrangements as the division
of
labor in society? And, perhaps most important, how does doing
gender contribute to the subordination of women by men?
RESEARCH AGENDAS
T o bring the social production of gender under empirical
scrutiny,
we might begin at the beginning, with a reconsideration of the
process through which societal members acquire the requisite
categorical apparatus and other skills to become gendered
human
beings.

West, Zimmeman / DOING GENDER 141
Recruitment to Gender Identities
T h e conventional approach to the process of becoming girls
and
boys has been sex-role socialization. In recent years, recurring
problems arising from this approach have been linked to
inadequacies
inherent i n role theory per se-its emphasis on "consensus,
stability
and continuity" (Stacey and Thorne 1985, p. 307), its ahistorical
and
depoliticizing focus (Thorne 1980, p. 9; Stacey and T h o m e
1985, p.
307), and the fact that its "social" dimension relies on "a
general
assumption that people choose to maintain existing customs"
(Connell 1985, p. 263).
In contrast, Cahill(1982,1986a, 1986b) analyzes the experiences
of
preschool children using a social model of recruitment into
normally
gendered identities. Cahill argues that categorization practices
are
fundamental to learning and displaying feminine and masculine
behavior. Initially, he observes, children are primarily
concerned
with distinguishing between themselves and others on the basis
of
social competence. Categorically, their concern resolves itself
into the
opposition of "girlhoy" classification versus "baby"
classification
(the latter designating children whose social behavior is

ETS 192Dr. SmythReading a Literary Text throug.docx

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