Rough draft of the second paper

Abstract

This paper will compare the reading of Harold Garfinkel's" studies in Ethnomethodology" and Erving Goffman's" stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity." According to Garfinkel, there are norms and stereotypes in every society concerning gender identity and sexuality. Societies determine what constitutes sex composition, creating normal gender identity and sex status. Societies prejudice and stigmatize people who do not fit in their definition of male and female and hence discriminate against those members belonging to transgender, homosexual, bisexual, and other minority groups (Garfinkel, 1967). People with different sexual orientations prefer to keep it a secret to avoid status degradation and psychological trauma due to stigmatization and discrimination. Erving Goffman further discusses the issue of societal stereotypes and norms from a different perspective by illustrating how strangers in the society or people with physical differences get stigmatized (Goffman, 2009).  According to Goffman, stigma refers to the act of discrediting an attribute deeply. The discrediting leads to the concealing of the victim's actual status, hence the virtual and actual social identity. Goffman's study relates to the issue of stereotypes on normal sexual identity and abnormal sexuality and gender identity (Goffman, 2009).  Stigma causes people of the LGBT group in society to conceal their identity, creating a virtual social identity while concealing their actual reality to avoid discrimination and stigmatization. Therefore, the underlying social norms lead to stigmatization of the minority groups, which conceal their identity to have their interests met.