My recent scholarly articles
Recent scholarly articles written by Brian Herrera give a brief analysis of the problem of gender identity, cultural paradigm, correlation of these discourses as basic categories in the historiography of both U.S. and Western researchers. An attempt is made to identify the main criteria of sexual self-identification of a person and their interpretation in the practices of various cultures.
Gender studies as ontological concepts operate with a number of basic categories, including the category of gender identity.
The problem of gender identity of a person since the middle of the twentieth century becomes an actively debated topic in microtheory. This is due to the following points: in everyday life, gender differences are perceived as fundamental, and there is a prejudice that a person comes into the world with a predetermined biological program. They have to carry out their life in male or female guises.
Back in the 30s of the previous century, the field studies of American ethnologists Margaret Mead and later Kessler and McKen have shown that there are societies where, if necessary, a child is consciously indoctrinated with a gender other than biological.
Thus, primitive societies in the regions of the southern seas of the Indian Ocean decide for themselves what gender the child will have, depending on whether there are enough hunters in the family.
If a male child does not appear in the family, then the girl begins to be brought up according to the male type, and she subsequently develops a type of behavior corresponding to the male. These studies once again speak in favor of the social determinism of sex.
But still, we have a question “Nature or culture”:
- What is the original reason for the existence for many centuries of such a model of social relations between men and women, in which one sex arrogated to itself the right to speak and act (and thereby represent its interests) on behalf of the “second” gender?
- Can the universality of biological difference explain the universal practice of subordination of women in patriarchal culture, is there a causal determination here?
- Why is the feminine, as a rule, identified with the natural principle, with that which is subject to control and management, while the masculine is perceived as an instance of culture and social order, as an independent and autonomous principle?
These questions are still asked by most theorists working on gender studies today, although, at first glance, they seem to be at least archaic in nature.
Being a Professor of Theater, Brian Herrera studied these problems through the U.S. popular entertainment and performance prism. In his latest scholarly articles, the essay writer assumes that giving a socio-gender identity to an individual is a complex process that includes upbringing, mastering roles, fulfilling social expectations, vocational training, and much more. It turns out that sex differentiation is a universal characteristic. Can the human individual choose this universal belonging themselves? Undoubtedly, the individual does not choose the primary gender, but what does it mean to be a man or a woman in this or that society? Modern microtheory tries to answer this question.
