 Constructing natural gender, from this module onwards, we will be talking about gender in terms of sociology. In these discussions, you will often hear the term construction as reconstruction, deconstruction, etc. And even you will hear the term social market. I would explain these terms on their place. Now we start our talk how we construct even our natural gender in society. Society is not given, society itself is dynamic. Humans make it. It is not something that exists on its own, number one. And number two, it is not something that is static, it is dynamic. Because humans are dynamic, they make society, the society is also dynamic. This is called construction. Society is constructed by humans. They make it. They build it. Gender likewise, gender two is not given. It is constructed. Who constructs it? People constructed. The social environment, the social culture, the social norms, people constructed through these things. Our classification as male and female starts right from our naming ceremony. When a child is named soon after the birth, the definition of gender starts from there. Definition itself is, you can say, a synonym of construction, a similar word for construction. When you say, I define this thing, in other words, you construct that concept. So how our natural gender is constructed, it begins from our naming ceremony. We have sex-exclusive names. For girls, we have separate names. For males, we have separate names. Names are not interchanged for either sex. In childhood, infancy to puberty period is called childhood. In puberty means by the age of 12 or 13, our parents and relatives groom us as a boy or girl. See how the process of construction goes on. First we are named. Second in childhood, our grooming starts and grooming is done by our parents, elder siblings and our relatives and we are groomed as boy and as girl. By the age of 3, we look upon others in ourselves as men and women. We are conscious of our gender and it happens right at the age of 3. We are conscious of our own gender and we are also conscious of gender of others around us and we treat them as our elders treated us as boy and girl. We treat them in the same way. Even how they groom, when they purchase gifts for us, even baby gifts and clothing, they are coded as for boys and for girls. Even in department stores and toy shops, when you visit with your parents, you will have tags over there. These toys are for boys, these toys are for girls and even when you are shopping toys, you make different choice. Your parents and even the shopkeeper or salesperson interrupts you that this is not for boys and this is not for girls. Not only this, colors are specific for girls and boys. Color coding for sex of the baby, this is also very common. One example I would give you after this task, I stop you here to think, make a list of those things and colors. You are any relative gave to a newborn on the first birthday and then predict what I would be saying about color coding right now. Here is after your task, then you should watch this clip in US and Europe. In the second half of 20th century, pink color was attached with girls and women because it is attached with delicacy with softness and fashion ability and blue color was associated with boys and males as a sign of knowledge, intelligence, power and strength and masculinity. These are not natural meanings of colors, you would agree. Do you think pink means delicate? Do you think blue means strength or masculinity? Never. These meanings are assigned by the society. These are not natural colors. This is called color coding for gender. We code these colors as males color and females color and it is construction of the culture. The cultural practice with the passage of time is taken as reality. I have said that these are not actual meanings of these colors but when it happens over the years and even over the generations, what happens? People take them as real meaning of these colors. This process of making things real by cultural practices is called naturalization. When we take it reality, the color coding it influences our talk, our thinking about a boy and a girl. Now it does not stop here that you naturalize something. This naturalization gradually grips, has control over our thinking about our conception of a girl and a boy. We conclude on the basis of this talk. From our childhood starts the process of lifelong gendering. This is construction of natural gender as we said in the beginning. From naming ceremony to grooming as boy and girl. From there we came to naturalization of colors, color coding. So this shows that definition or construction of gender starts from our infancy and goes on throughout the life. Others around us socialize as how to be a girl and how to be a boy and socialization. This is a common term in sociology, in language and gender, in study of sociolinguistics. Socialization is very important concept and it means to know the proper way of doing, saying and thinking that is acceptable in a society. The right way of doing things in simpler words is called socialization. And socialization you know it also takes place through interaction and interaction involves language, again language is involved. For others around us, they socialize us, they in a way unconsciously train us, groom us that how as a boy we would behave and how as a girl we would behave. Similarly, we learn how to interact with others keeping in view their gendered attributes. How a boy meets a girl and how a girl meets a boy. This is learned through socialization at home. This is a two ways of socializing. First we learn gender difference from our parents, from our elders and then we continue it, we do it with others. This process needs some reflection on your part as well and that would be possible when you will do this task. Recount, you will narrate, recount means in form of a story. Some event when your parents, teachers treated boys and girls differentially. Differentially means taking boys different from girls while they talked with you, while they suggested plays, games, while they told stories and while they offered food. So how they treated you differentially as boy and girl. This would help you to understand this point of view that how society builds our natural gender from infancy to our puberty.