“everyone “does gender without thinking about it” (Judith Lorber, “Paradoxes of Gender, p.13).
When I was young I did not think about my gender role. I did not think about the day to day events in my life that effected my gender. When I look back I can find so many instances of gender in my life. So, I am taking one of the smallest instances because of the many ways it relates to not only gender building, but maintaining. As a child I remember very cold winters in Omaha. My sister and I loved to play outside in the snow. So, my parents bought us matching snowsuits.
They were pink with lavender trim. My friend, Charlie, who lived up the street, had a snowsuit too. His was black and red with a logo of a racecar on the back. As a child I never thought of the implications of my snowsuit. It was functional and I suppose I thought the color pink was pretty at the time. My room was pink, my bike was pink, and Barbies corvette was pink.
Why should it be any other way? As I look back at the photographs of the three of us playing as children I see what implications the pink snowsuit had on my gender. Not only that but how we played together. All of us had hoods on our snowsuits to cover our ears. With out the difference in the pink and black snowsuits you may have not been able to tell who the boy was and who the two girls were. My long blonde hair was pulled back under the hood and all of us had childlike chubby faces with big smiles. Charlie was always building big, macho, snow forts and my sister and I were making snow angels. The snow angels were pretty and soft, like the pink snowsuits. The snow fort was supposed to be tough, a boy thing. We could all play together, but even by age four, Charlie knew that making snow angels were not a tough thing to do so he refused.
The Essay on Gender segregation in children
According to research children establish and maintain same gender relationships, the play in groups which are mainly composed of their own gender. Gender segregation has been observed in children as young as three years. Gender segregated social groups among children is significant within the segregated groups since children do experience different world from other peers and they have an ...
He was going to make the fort to protect my sister and I. He was going to build something better and bigger. According to Lorber, social statuses, such as gender, must be constructed through teaching, learning, and enforcement. “Gender is thus both ascribed and achieved (West and Zimmerman 1987).
So how is it that by age four, that we were constructed to know so much about what was supposedly masculine and what was supposedly feminine? There are different theories about how children are gendered. “Most parents create a gendered world for their newborn by naming, birth announcements, and dress” (Lorber, p.25).
Lorber believes that children are gendered from birth. This is easy to do in our social institution. Gender statuses are made very important in American society. The way people behave and act reflects not only upon the individual, but their families as well. Parents tend to want their new born baby girls to be described as delicate and beautiful.
On the other hand, boys should be described as strong, handsome, and alert. Gendering starts even before a baby is born with the decorating of a room in light colors such a pink, blue and yellow. Gendering does not end at childbirth; it is an ongoing process that develops thoroughly throughout our lives. Lorber makes a good point about the process of gendering; “individuals learn what is expected, see what is expected, act and react in expected ways, and this simultaneously maintain the gender order” (Lorber, p.32).
I, at four years old, was aware that I was not expected to build a big, tough fort. Everyone would think my dainty snow angels were precious and everyone would think Charlies fort was brilliant and tough. By putting my sister and I in pink snowsuits my parents were making a point that we were girls.
If I were to have worn Charlies black snowsuit my neighbors would have thought it was a hand me down from my brother. Even the way we interacted with each other show domination and gender roles. Charlie was strong and rough while my sister and I were docile and easy going. Charlie made the rules when we played and my sister and I followed them. In Sandra Bems book, The Lenses of Gender, she begins with the first lens, androcenterism. It is stated as “male-centeredness” because it simply describes how society is structured (Sandra Bem, “Introduction to the Lenses of Gender, p.2).
The Essay on Attitudes Toward Homosex Gender Men Gay
In a recent meta-analysis by Kite and Whitley in 1996, it was confirmed that men hold more negative attitudes toward homosexuality than do women. They also determined that men's attitudes toward homosexuality are particularly negative when the person being rated is a gay man rather than a lesbian. Their review of the literature also highlighted the complex nature of attitudes toward homosexuality ...
Mans experiences are seen as the norm and females experiences as not the norm.
This does not necessarily mean that he is superior to her, but simply that “man is treated as human and woman as “other” (Bem, p.2).
Bem sees three different aspects of a womans relationship to a man. First, that men see womens difference from man and inferiority to man. Second, that man see womens domestic and reproductive function, as he will be the head of the household. Third, that men see women as a way to satisfy their sexual needs. In the situation of girls building snow angels and boys building snow forts I thought androcentrism would have little relevance.
But, in the tradition of American culture, Charlie was building the snow fort to protect us. He was making a shelter and was commended for his idea and hard work. If we look into the deeper meaning of what was happening, he was viewed as making something useful. My sister and I were viewed as making something pretty, and rather useless. Therefore, supporting the idea that male experiences are normal and female experiences are not normal or as important as male experiences. Charlie took a role to protect us, almost like Bems second idea, that men see women as domesticated and he had his need to protect them and head up that household.
Also, as in Bems first idea of how men view women, Charlie thought building the snow fort would be difficult, giving us girls the easier job. At the time, I did not feel inferior but it was inferior and we both knew better then to help with his big job of building the snow fort. Charlie was proud of his massive creation, and my sister and I were proud of the angels scattered all over the lawn. But, to an outsider, it would seem that my sister and I were waiting for Charlie to get done so we could play in the fort he built for us. Lorber believes that as gendered beings we go along with these norms and expectations “to build a sense of worth and identity” (Lorber, p.35).
The Essay on Silence And Men And Women
Men Fear Women, and Other Generalizations Kruegers article, Women Readers and the Politics of Gender in Le Roman de Silence, focuses on several different interpretations of the romances intentions towards presenting the role of women. No conclusions are formed as to whether or not the author of Silence, Heldris, is being misogynistic or proto-feminist. Krueger points out that this question of ...
We have been taught that things like Bems view of antrocentrism is normal and that we have no need to stray from the reality that society gives us. If we do we might be alienated, not desired, and end up alone. Bems second lens of gender is polarization.
She defines this as the “male-female difference” (Bem p.2).
She believes that the “male-female difference is superimposed on so many aspects of the social world that a cultural connection is forged between sex and virtually every other aspect of the human experience” (Bem, p.2).
In other words, the masculine way of doing something is usually seen as the correct way and it forms a societal norm. At age four, my gender was apparent to not only myself but also all of our neighbors and friends. It has been said, that parents dress their children to display the category of girl or boy from birth so that they dont have to answer the question. What they dont realize is that they are marking their children for different treatment by society.
“others treat those in one gender differently from those in the other, and the children respond to the different treatment by feeling and behaving differently” (Lorber, p.14).
Society, our parents, and our race mark us by gender. They do it by the clothes we wear and the activities we are involved in. We are seen as masculine or feminine. Girls that have more masculine qualities are not seen as being masculine but instead, tomboys. Boys that have more feminine traits are not seen as feminine but instead, weak. We label the members of society based on their gender.
Bems third lens of gender is “biological essentialism”. It views the other two lenses as natural because of biological differences (Bem, p2).
This seems to influence our culture the most with the argument that men and women are biologically different sexually, then they must play different roles in life. Biology between men and women is different. No one denies that. But it is history, not biology, which is determining the gender norms.
The Research paper on Gender Role Women Society Men
Part I. Introduction Statement of the problem Female and male gender roles in today s society reflect on more than just what others think about the man and female role. This paper will also show how and why people think this way. At the time of conception male and female babies are influenced to act a certain way by the actions of the people around them the most. A baby s sex distinction is ...
Biology does not put little girls in pink and little boys in blue. Biology does not teach girls to build snow angels and boys to build snow forts. Accepting biology as the reason for gender norms is an easy way out. Bem puts it best when she says “No matter how many subtle biological differences there are between the sexes there may someday prove to be, both the size and the significance of those biological differences will depend, in every single instance, on the situational context in which men and women live their lives” (Bem, p.38).
Power by males in society has led to gender stratification, until people stop supporting it you can consider it androcentrism, biological essentialism or polarization. Any of them are good reasons as to why we are so gendered. But, until we get to the root of the problem, which lies in political power and our environment, not much can be done to change the norm. “Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be taught to be masculine or feminine” (Lorber, p.22).
As a child, in my pink snowsuit, playing with my little sister and Charlie, I saw nothing wrong with the scenario. When I look back I see that the clothes we wore, the games we played and the way we interacted had us molded into our gender roles by a very young age. Gender began with our parents. I only hope that through education we can slowly break down the gender barrier through a new generation.
