How Gender Operates Within The Setting Of An Olivia Vacation

31/10/2014 Assignment 1 – Minor Essay OPOL216 – Sex and Gender Matters Allysen Stewart 32579398 Assignment 1 – Minor Essay OPOL216 – Sex and Gender Matters This essay will critically discuss how gender operates within the setting of an Olivia Vacation (https://www.olivia.com), drawing from personal experiences from a recent trip to a Hawaiian Resort. The paper will focus on personal observations of the underlying forces involved in the reproduction and disruption of gender relations, and their resulting effects (Atwell, 2014). By focusing on the gender roles within a lesbian environment, the paper will examine topics from the course material that deliberate sex and gender, gender and nature, sexuality,†¦show more content†¦Trans people suffer from gender dysphoria, which accompanies Gender Identity Disorder (GID) where they feel that their emotional and psychological identity is in opposition to the biological sex they were assigned at birth (Wilchins, 2004; Furnham Sen, 2013). Gender is socially constructed, signifying processes and practices of conduct (doing, undoing and re-doing gender) (West Zimmerman, 1987; Deutsch, 2007; West Zimmerman, 2007) based on an assigned sex category (Hird, 2000; Risman, 2004; Connell, 2010). Sex, in contrast, refers to the biological differences between men and women (chromosomes, hormones and genitalia) (Harding, 1996; Hird, 2000). According to Wittig (1992), lesbians are categorised sexually as women, yet they abandon the heteronormative assumptions associated with the female identity (Hird, 2000, Bobel Kwan, 2011). An example of this is the social assumption that a girl will grow up and marry a man. Heteronormativity suggests that people fall into distinct gender roles (man and woman) (Woodruffe-Burton Bairstow, 2013), challenging the essentialist view of sexuality being biologically determined (Morton, Postmes, Haslam Hornsey, 2009) while implying the social construction of homosexuality (DeLamater Hyde, 1998; Fuss, 1989). Within the lesbian community, distinct gender roles still exist and are visibly adopted by members, as was evident during my Olivia experience. In the book, Persistence (Coyote Sharman, 2011), one of