Media: A Gendered Institution

According to conventional codes of gender, 

we categorize ourselves as males or females based on the two sex and gender distinction as we are brought up to be one or the other. 

And we are led to believe this is the “natural” order and the norm, because this is the institution in which we live in.

As Bell Hooks suggests, mass media in itself is a gendered institution because it reinforces the interlocking system of oppression of class, race and gender (Aronson, Kale, Kimmel, 2011, pp. 241). This is accomplished through the bombardment of constructed images of “reality” in our everyday lives.

So, in a sense we are institutionalized by the images we see that tells us how we should perform our roles in order to conform to the social constructions as masculine and feminine.

We are institutionalized by images of media through constructions of gender and we have interned these images as offering us models of what manhood and womanhood is (Aronson, Kale, Kimmel, 2011, pp. 241). Because media continues to reproduce gender inequalities by presenting these inequalities to us as the natural order of existing gender differences (Aronson, Kale, Kimmel, 2011, pp. 241).

-Angus Yeung

-Aronson, A., Kale, A., & Kimmel, M. S. (2011). The Gendered Media. The Gendered Society Reader: Canadian Edition, 241-271.

Codes of Gender [image]. Retrieved from http://genderqueer.tumblr.com

Institution [image]. Retrieved from http://heroesrising.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/underoak-tells-it-like-it-is/