American society has many binary systems that it currently uses to subjugate people into standard categories like, for example, gender and sex. Even though society may classify someone as male or female, this does not necessarily mean that that person's outward appearance is the same as their inner genetic makeup. Sex is the biological makeup of either a man or a man. or female. For example, women have XX chromosomes in their DNA; Their reproductive system consists of an egg and a vagina, and they also have functional breasts. Males, on the other hand, have XY chromosomes in their DNA; their reproductive system consists of sperm, testicles and a penis. Gender is the set of characteristics that distinguish a man from a woman and according to their attributes. However, there are some people whose sexual organs are imperfect, depending on gender and sex roles, for example hermaphrodites, because they have both male and female sexual organs. Hermaphrodites tend to stay in the grayish middle zone between a male and a female. Society uses binary methods to classify a man as a man with masculine traits and a woman as a woman with feminine traits. Masculine traits are roughness, muscles, broad shoulders, and deep voice that either men or women can possess. On the other hand, feminine traits include long hair, soft skin, angelic glow, and soft voice that a woman or man can possess. Ozian society considers women as feminine beings and men as masculine figures. For example, the Land of Oz considers Glinda, Elphaba's best friend, to be the ideal feminine woman in Ozian society because of "her perfect, brilliantly red lips and her green traveling dress" (Maguire 69). In Wicked, Ozian society views Glinda as... middle of paper...... it implicitly sees her as the Wicked Witch of the West, who harms and kills people. Ozian society's inability to misjudge and fail to value its attributes led to Elphaba's lonely and dreadful fate. Therefore, societies may ostracize a group of people who are simply different because of their appearance, perhaps because they do not know how to treat people, who may fall into the grayish, in-between zone between gender and gender. sex. Works Cited Halberstam, Judith. “An Introduction to Female Masculinity: Masculinity Without Men.” » Feminine masculinity. Durham: Duke UP, 1998.1-43. Print.Maguire, Gregory. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. Print.Ray, Robert B. “The Thematic Paradigm.” Signs of Life in the United States: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. By Sonia Maasik. Boston: Bedford, 1997. 342-50. Print.