Masculinity and Femininity: CSS Gender Studies Solved Answer

Short answer

Masculinity and femininity are the traits a person portrays, and the theoretical debate over their origin ends in an asymmetric verdict. The natural sciences hold the narrow ground honestly, bodies differ, strength differs, infants differ.

Outline for quick revision

1. Introduction
2. Defining masculinity and femininity
3. The natural-sciences position: masculinity and femininity as natural realities
4. The social-sciences position: R.W. Connell’s framework
5. The verdict of the debate: natural or social reality?
6. Where traditional gender roles come from
7. Conclusion

1. Introduction

Every society carries in its head a picture of what a “real man” and a “real woman” look like, sound like, and are permitted to do, and the discipline’s task is to ask where those pictures came from. Masculinity and femininity are the names of those pictures. The question this answer settles, through the theoretical debates and real-life evidence, is whether the pictures are painted by nature or by society: whether a man is aggressive and a woman is gentle because their bodies decree it, or because their societies trained it. The discipline’s answer, developed below, is that the traits are socially constructed, and the strongest proof comes from the theory of R.W. Connell, who showed that even our definition of masculinity collapses under its own logic.

2. Defining Masculinity and Femininity

In the simplest working definitions, masculinity means the kind of manly traits a person portrays, and femininity means the kind of female traits a person portrays. If a man deepens his voice and adopts the behaviors his society associates with men, he is performing masculinity; if he speaks delicately and adopts the behaviors associated with women, femininity has entered his conduct. Two features of these definitions must be noticed at once. First, they describe traits portrayed, not organs possessed, which means masculinity and femininity are performances layered on top of sex, not sex itself. Second, they are defined by association, by what a society happens to link with each gender, which is the first clue that they are social products, since associations differ from society to society: American masculinity and Pakistani masculinity differ hugely, and even city masculinity and village masculinity differ within Pakistan.

3. The Natural-Sciences Position: Masculinity and Femininity as Natural Realities

• The natural sciences define masculinity through physical strength, treating the stronger male body as the origin of the masculine role.
• The supporting biological facts are real: males and females differ in physical features, males carry more red blood cells, and the sexes differ measurably from infancy, female babies recognize faces, smile and learn to speak faster than male babies.
• On this view, aggression, dominance and protection flow naturally from the male body, while care, gentleness and nurture flow naturally from the female body, masculinity and femininity as biology’s handwriting.
• The position’s honest strength is narrow but genuine: bodily differences exist and nobody socially constructed a chromosome.

4. The Social-Sciences Position: R.W. Connell’s Framework

(a) The framework itself

• Connell replaced the singular “masculinity” with two masculinities: Hegemonic masculinity, meaning the men who have sexual contact with the opposite sex and play the active role, and Subordinated masculinity, meaning the men who play the passive role.
• Connell likewise identified three femininities: Emphasized femininity, which is caring, loving and romantic; Resistance femininity, which pushes back against the assigned role; and Compliant femininity, which carries both traits.
• The very existence of plural masculinities and femininities is itself an argument, because nature does not issue one body in five behavioral editions, only society grades people into hierarchies of “more” and “less” manly or womanly.

(b) Connell’s argument that masculinity is socially constructed

• The definition of hegemonic masculinity is the heterosexual male in the active role, and Connell tests the definition against a case it cannot survive.
• In a gay sexual contact, one man plays the active role, but his partner is male and he is not heterosexual, so the definition can no longer call him “hegemonic,” even though he is doing exactly what hegemonic masculinity is defined by.
• The man who plays the passive role, though biologically male in every respect, is treated as playing a female-like role and is filed under subordinated masculinity, his biology unchanged, his masculinity downgraded by a social reading of his behavior.
• The conclusion follows in one sentence: the masculinity we “defined” is socially constructed, because a category that biology cannot assign and behavior can revoke was never biological in the first place.

(c) The real-life examples that support the social position

• The failing markers example: a woman with a heavy voice and body hair is not thereby “male,” and a man with a soft voice is not thereby “female”, indeed Hollywood and Bollywood’s male stars wax away the very chest hair that is supposed to certify manliness, which shows the markers are fashion, not nature.
• The upbringing example: the “tomboy” raised among brothers and the softer, more sensitive boy raised among many sisters show the same biology absorbing opposite trainings, the traits followed the environment, not the chromosomes.
• The performance example: in the film Dostana, two action-film actors portraying gay men visibly add sensitivity, emotional touch and femininity to their conduct, and the fact that femininity can be acted proves it is a learnable script, not a bodily secretion.
• The cross-cultural example: if masculinity were nature’s decree, it would be identical everywhere, but American men help at home while Pakistani masculinity forbids it, New Zealand’s women led their country successfully through COVID, and women command militaries abroad while Pakistan bars women from the infantry on the assumption that they “can’t fight.”
• The toxic edition example: what the film Kabir Singh glorifies, drinking, aggression, beating romanticized as love, is not nature’s masculinity but a socially manufactured toxic masculinity, and the fact that Men’s Feminism demands masculinity be redefined concedes the point entirely, because only constructions can be redefined.

5. The Verdict of the Debate: Natural or Social Reality?

• The debate must be closed under the discipline’s governing rule: in social sciences there is no right or wrong answer, any answer you can defend is the correct answer, and the defensible verdict has two parts.
• Nature supplies the body: the sex, the strength differential, the infant differences, these are natural realities and denying them is unnecessary.
• Society supplies the meaning of the body: which traits attach to which sex, which behaviors count as manly, which roles follow from womanhood, and every test applied above shows these meanings varying by culture, by era, by film and by fashion, which only social products do.
• The verdict in one sentence: the formation of masculinity and femininity is a social reality built on a natural foundation, nature builds the house’s ground, but society writes the rules of who may live in which room.

6. Where Traditional Gender Roles Come From

(a) The construction chain

1. Birth: the doctor announces “boy” or “girl” on the basis of biology.

2. Identity: an identity is assigned on that basis.

3. Role: a role is assigned on that identity: blue clothes and toy pistols for him, pink and long hair and makeup for her.

4. Repetition: the same role repeats from grandmother to mother to daughter, across centuries.

5. Stereotype: repetition hardens into fixed mental images of what each gender is.

6. Privilege: one gender’s role carries privilege over the other’s.

7. Patriarchy: in societies like Pakistan, male privilege over the female becomes the system called patriarchy.

(b) The four factors that construct and stereotype the roles

• Culture supplies the practices: primogeniture in property, dowry demanded while the woman’s own Haq Mahr is ignored, and the wife’s “permission” rituals, each of which trains one gender to owe and the other to own.
• Religion, as interpreted by societies, assigns the bread-earner role and the dress codes that mark the genders apart.
• Media manufactures the ideals: the advertisement that grades a woman as a “good wife” by her cooking, the drama that rewards the silently enduring wife, and the songs that objectify, so the child learns the role from the screen before life assigns it.
• Language carries the roles invisibly: “send a boy, not a girl,” woman as an insult, “mankind” as the default human, so that the mind thinks in gendered grooves without noticing it thinks at all.

(c) The answer to “in your opinion” in one line

• Traditional gender roles come from the chain, not from the body: they are assigned to individuals against the identity given to them after birth, repeated for centuries by culture, religion, media and language, hardened into stereotype, and defended as “natural” precisely so that no one asks who assigned them.

7. Conclusion

Masculinity and femininity are the traits a person portrays, and the theoretical debate over their origin ends in an asymmetric verdict. The natural sciences hold the narrow ground honestly, bodies differ, strength differs, infants differ. But R.W. Connell’s framework captures everything that matters about the traits themselves: two masculinities and three femininities that nature could not have issued, a hegemonic definition that collapses when tested, and a “subordinated” masculinity created by social judgment on unchanged biology. The real world completes the proof, because the traits change with country, upbringing, film role and fashion, and nothing natural changes with fashion. Masculinity and femininity are therefore social realities built on a natural foundation, and traditional gender roles come from the seven-link chain that runs from the delivery room to patriarchy, which is the discipline’s most liberating finding, because what society has constructed, society can reconstruct.

References

• R.W. Connell, the two masculinities and three femininities, and the collapse test of the hegemonic definition.
• The historicizing construction chain, birth to patriarchy (Chapter Two).
• Real-life anchors: Dostana (performed femininity) and Kabir Singh (toxic masculinity, the Men’s Feminism link).

More preparation: See all CSS Gender Studies past papers by topic.

Related answers:

• Sex vs Gender Debate (Nature vs Nurture): CSS Solved Answer
• Theories of Social Construction of Gender: CSS 2016 Answer

Last updated: 2 November 2026.

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