Gender roles were defined on the basis of man and woman, masculinity/feminist. This interpolates the idea that the woman was not viewed as an object of male desire but rather a companion of his (an imperfect image yielding the binary form of subject). Now in this present age, are we trying to delineate the concept of man/woman differences, the binary nature of their roles into sexual (affiliated to the sexual organs) beings in discussion and totally block out the trans-sexual forms existing between the two? Exactly! We have basically narrowed ourselves into sexual boundaries and abandoned the cultural and social implications of the much wider field of gender. No longer are terms like homosexuality being used that had for so long indicated sex between a man and another man (same being the gender sense of it)but rather the term ’same sex’ used here as an example has emerged and defined the concept into the binary nature in terms of sexual desires. Were there sexual desires that women had towards their fellow women? It would be ethically wrong to say no. The only difference between now and then is that even though they were existent, the society didn’t base them along sexuality lines but rather the relationship between a superior being and an inferior one being the man and woman respectively. This concurs with historian Dror Ze’evi‘s notion that all same sex practices during the earlier times were existent and were all acceptable as human nature. As indicated in the text, these thoughts had different cultural and social implications dissimilar from ones we have today. Nevertheless in the modern era the distinction between man and woman has already taken a rather sexual than gender stint.
In conclusion, valuations based on both sexuality and gender may not be the right yardstick to base analysis but a rather a much deeper subsection of the same would provide reliable information.
REFERENCE
Afsaneh Najmabadi. “Beyond the Americas: Are Gender and Sexuality Useful Categories of Analysis?” Journal of Women's History. 2006. Vol. 18, 1, pp. 11-21. The Johns Hopkins. doi: 10.1353/jowh.2006.0022.
