The term gender emerged around the year 1970s and is apparently subjectivity’s feature. It implies a cultural representation and understanding of how it feels being either a woman or a man. Further, gender is the culturally and socially constructed attitudes, personalities and even behaviours linked to one sex in the society and promoted by the institutionalized gender symbolism and gender structures. It is worth noting that gender identity is not entirely fixed but highly fragmented and created within the larger society thus resulting to numerous discourses which allow an individual to understand diverse kinds of masculinity and femininity considered as being unstable 1 . One of the critics Butler in her analysis developed a limit of the social constructionist account of gender.’ This theory deconstructs the gender binary where gender and sex are considered as being created and constructed through repetitive performance of oneself and other people towards them. Based on such argument, it can be argued that gender identities are primarily performances that tend to gin authority via reiterative practices. Margaret Atwood, in her novel, “Oryx and Crake” has culturally and socially constructed gender as shown through both female and male characters based on the constructed stereotypes of masculinity and femininity.
In her story, Margaret Atwood highlights the artificially of masculinity and instability that results to the porous sexual and gender boundary 2 . Arguably, she seems to have negated essentialism when she argued that along with gender, colour, sex, height, and skin are in fact artificial construct thus they are unstable. She focused on the effect of the society in addition to the psychology discourse of both genders that fashions it based on the identified norms and mould of femininity and masculinity 3 . In her narration, Atwood explains Oryx and Jimmy’s characters and how psyche’s conditioning of a child occurs during their childhood based on the gender binaries as determined by sex differences. On the one hand, Jimmy is evidently represented by his father in a constructed masculinity stereotype. Atwood brings such concept out when she stated that, Jimmy’s father often gave him tools to make him practical 4 . Therefore, she emphasized that being practical is apparently related to the notion of masculinity while any display of both tears and emotions is associated with feminine traits. Such an idea is seen through Jimmy at the time when his mother departed. Despite the intense pain that he was going through, he tried so hard to refrain from crying.
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Atwood further brings out a clear difference between feminine and masculine gender when Jimmy’s father expressed his views and eluded the temperament of women to be similar to unstable weather condition. In this case, women are apparently stereotypes as being whimsical and mysterious while men are on the other hand believed to be stable and firm. Another instance when Jimmy’s father commented on the aspect of gender was when he called one of his lab technicians as “his right- hand man” (Oryx and Crake 59). With this statement, he tends to construct an idea of masculinity as being authoritative and exempt all men from any form of weakness. At the same time, he projects men as being entirely in control of their emotion and highly practical and view women as being highly sentimental and emotional who are not able to adopt a logical approach.
Atwood goes further to bring out another contributing factor in the gender construction, particularly gender stereotyping which is propagated by the media culture. Stereotyping merely is a process of reducing an individual to a specific set of exaggerated and negative traits 5 . Often, the media representation in most instances tends to promote the sexual objectification of women body. Media presents women’s body as a form of the sexual object that is readily available for men’s consumption while men are brought out as being consumers 6 . Jimmy first encountered Oryx in a pornographic site. Such sexual identity presents Oryx as a form of object ready for sexual satisfaction is evident throughout the story. Consequently, Jimmy is seen to be trapping women into using love’s pretence and manipulated their emotions of being idealistic, generous and even caring where he first present himself as being ‘tender-hearted. In one of his statement, Jimmy emphasized a notion of sexual stereotyping of women as inferior and passive when arguing with Crake when he stated that men often do not prefer fat women. On most occasions, Jimmy seems to be accustomed to seeing women as vulnerable, imperfect and weak and therefore, their beauty did not seduce him.
Media mostly depicts constricted and unfeasible standards of female’s sexual beauty and further connect the same standards to the worth and sexiness of women 7 . For instance, Oryx, the key woman character is a child pornographic star and was introduced into the business by her mother due to poverty. In the process, she suffers sexual and gender exploitation. Based on Oryx life’s story, it can be seen that women report increased cases of sexual objectification compared to men, and the idea of sexual objectification emerged as one of the unique factors of daily experiences of sexism 8 . Oryx was forced to become a sexual commodity where she was exploited sexually by different men and paid in a monetary form in return. Arguably, women self-reported about the sexual objectification are widely and empirically connected to adverse psychological results. Oryx, later on, becomes acquainted with women’s job during her childhood and all women roles seem to be related to her body. The other destined role for women is to be married and produce children.
Atwood being part of the postmodern writers marked the gender category instabilities where both female and males characters seem to transgress gender boundaries believed to be ordained naturally. In several instances, Atwood tries to demonstrate how gender is socially and artificially created within the ideologies of patriarchy 9 . Based on the fact that gender identity is about the performance that one learns through discourse, both male and female characters in this story exhibits the feminine and masculine identities irrespective of their sexes. Such a case is brought up by Atwood through Jimmy and Oryx. Based on Atwood, she believes that gender constructions ultimately place every authority in the patriarchy’s hands. Those kinds of gendered society seemingly segregate females from various vital spheres and even marginalize these women in particular areas considered to be feminine. Gender critics have argued that patriarchy often tend to reinforce a form of temperamental imbalance of the personality traits between sexes and accept cultural programming that is inclined towards operative divisions between feminine and masculine. In the novel, it becomes clear that science seems to be correlated to masculinity and intelligence while art is associated with femininity, suppression, and marginalization.
Atwood further established that gender categorization of femininity and masculinity are not stable and are created culturally in discourse through Jimmy, who despite the fact that he was a man, displayed significant interest in arts, and went on to defend it against masculinity science represented by Crake. Despite being a female, Oryx has been shown to be reasonable and practical in all her approaches compared to Jimmy who seemingly displays sentimental and emotional traits. On the other hand, Jimmy is seen to oppose Crake in each of scientific endeavours, but Oryx tends to encourage Crake’s reasonable and scientific attempts for the overall wellbeing of all humankind. Jimmy further exhibited femininity traits where expressed emotional and sentimental approach toward life.
Gender is, therefore, a construction which apparently conceals its genesis 10 . There is no doer behind the deed, and the subjectivity construction is entirely a procedure of one submitting himself to the culturally established practices and norms. For instance, the Crakers arguably acquired the ideas of gender and sex roles from Snowman 11 . Craker men further illustrate the division of labour at the time when they volunteered to escort Snowman and offer him protection. Based on such an instance, it is evident that they displayed their overall understanding of themselves as being stronger than women thus took over the responsibility of protection. Although they were unaware of the cooking art, the women took the role of cooking the fish that were caught by men according to the instructions of Snowman. Further, women were shown to be more interested in the children as compared to the men. The Craker women are also shown as being sensitive and emotional than the men.
In conclusion, the paper has critically discussed the culturally and socially constructed gender as brought out in the novel “Oryx and Crake” by Atwood as evidenced through her female and male characters. In this analysis, gender is artificially created together with sexuality which is also constructed via social practices and cultural normal through discourse. In her story, Atwood affirms the cultural and social constructions of sex and gender, particularly via Oryx and Jimmy’s characters. Through these characters, Atwood illustrates how gender boundary is unstable and porous where individuals of either sex can merely appropriate both femininity and masculinity. It thus becomes clear that the femininity and masculinity characteristics do not entirely revolve around Oryx and Jimmy since they mirror gender identities of male and female as being overlapped.
Bibliography
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1 Nischik, Reingard M. Engendering Genre: The Works of Margaret Atwood . University of Ottawa Press, 2009.
2 Atwood, Margaret. "Oryx and Crake: A novel. New York: Nan A. Talese." (2003).
3 Alsop, Rachel, Annette Fitzsimons, and Kathleen Lennon. Theorizing gender: An introduction . Polity, 2002.
4 Atwood, Margaret. "Oryx and Crake: A novel. New York: Nan A. Talese." (2003).
5 Szymanski, Dawn M., Lauren B. Moffitt, and Erika R. Carr. "Sexual objectification of women: Advances to theory and research 1ψ7." The Counseling Psychologist 39, no. 1 (2011): 6- 38.
6 Nagel, Joane. "Ethnicity and sexuality." Annual Review of sociology 26, no. 1 (2000): 107-133.
Barker, Chris. Cultural studies: Theory and practice . Sage, 2003.
7 Harper, Brit, and Marika Tiggemann. "The effect of thin ideal media images on women’s self- objectification, mood, and body image." Sex Roles 58, no. 9-10 (2008): 649-657.
8 Atwood, Margaret. "Oryx and Crake: A novel. New York: Nan A. Talese." (2003).
9 Irshad, Shaista. "Gender as a social construct in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake." Academic Research international 2, no. 2 (2012): 585.
10 Webber, Andrew J. "Mann's man's world: gender and sexuality." The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann (2002): 64-83.
11 Atwood, Margaret. "Oryx and Crake: A novel. New York: Nan A. Talese." (2003).
