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Essay / Being different: sexual orientation and gender
Everything you know and are used to is considered normal. Anything that you are not used to and that is new to you is considered the other. The Oxford English Dictionary defines otherness as “the quality or fact of being different.” Zygmunt Bauman defines otherness as the central way in which societies establish categories of identity. He says that the other is necessary to have order. Types of otherness are ethnicity, race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national identity, and cultural identity. Two of them are race and gender. Society is structured around these two othernesses, sexual orientation and gender. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Sexual orientation is defined as a person's gender identity in relation to the gender they are attracted to; being heterosexual, homosexual, asexual or bisexual. Normal people in this case would be heterosexuals. Homosexual or bisexual people would be considered like everyone else in society. In the article “Homosexuality: A Call to Otherness,” author Elizabeth Scalia says that some people have spent their entire lives being normal, but in the eyes of others, homosexuals have become the other. Asexual people would be the other because they have no feelings towards anything or anyone. In the eyes of a heterosexual person, the asexual person would be the other. In the article, the author states that "...some of us have spent our entire lives emphasizing our identity, and now you denounce our 'otherness'..." In the eyes of homosexuals, they are normal and everyone around of them would. be the other. In the Lexington Herald Leader there was an article about a t-shirt company refusing to print t-shirts for a gay/lesbian group. This would be an example of othering because the t-shirt company is the normal and the gay/lesbian group is the other. The other is discriminated against because religious people think it is against their religion or because some people think that a couple is just one man and one woman, nothing more, nothing less. But, as Scalia said, the gay couple could have spent their entire lives being gay and considered themselves the norm. But all of a sudden, people come up to them and tell them that they are the others. According to Bauman, the other is necessary for the normal to have power. Heterosexuals who have lived their entire lives as heterosexual may judge the person as homosexual or bisexual. They would be more powerful than homosexuals. But if everyone was heterosexual, then there would be no other people and heterosexuals would have no power. Gender is something closely related to sexual orientation. Gender has become an important part of society because of how people perceive certain genders. Gender is defined as the behaviors and attitudes that a group of people consider appropriate for their men and women. In chapter 7 of the book, Ender's Game, Petra would be considered the Other because she is a girl. Petra says the boys put her on the bunk by the door so she wouldn't start a rebellion. This shows Petra as the other as she could be part of the outside group wanting to take control of everyone. In real life, the widespread idea that men are superior is another example of otherness. In an article titled “Female Discrimination in the Workplace,” one example is that women are not selected for jobs requiring a lot of physical labor because their.