Analysis Of Jezebel 's ' Sara Benincasa ' Essay

Culture often thrives off of polar opposites—hot and cold, bitter and sweet, male and female. By setting up these opposing constructs, one can easily find a set definition for each. A hot surface could scorch someone or a cold temperature could cause them to shiver. In the same way, a bitter substance would be less enjoyable to eat than a sweet one. These terms are often defined by mentioning their antitheses. Because it’s comfortable to embrace specificity and certainty, topics such as gender and gender expression often get simplified into binary existences—however, they don’t quite operate under the same parameters. In an essay entitled “Bad Feminist”, Dr. Roxane Gay explores and warns against the dangers of binary thinking. Throughout

Gender can be defined as “sex roles” which are conditions that one considers to be for men or women. People tends to mistake it with sex or thinks that they are both the same. We discussed about the patterns of gender which how the authors of The Kaleidoscope of Gender describes it as “regularized, prepackaged ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Spade and Valentino,2017). It becomes an identity for us. We believe that there is and can only be two genders, being masculine for men and feminine for women. These roles has been forced onto us since birth: blue for boys, and pink for girls. You can see the roles being push onto a person throughout one’s life, but we don’t notice it since it’s “normal” to us.

Gender roles are categories that characterize what it means to be feminine and masculine in society, on how people think about gender as they relate to one another (Adams et al., 2013). For example, women are expected to be accommodating and emotional, while men are usually expected to be self-confident and aggressive, this shows how men and women are to behave in society. However, these sayings were taught to individuals based on norms, or standards created by a society which is called Gender Socialization (p. 318). Growing up as a child, we were taught as girls to play with dollhouses, pretend kitchen sets, cleaning supplies and play dress up. Whereas boys are taught to play with cars, sports equipment’s, action figures, and weapons. However, if a boy was playing with dollhouses, or playing dress up, he would be considered gay, or not masculine and looked down upon by society, and families. The same goes for girls who play with boy toys, or dresses as a tomboy, this is what we are taught to play with at a young age. Our families tell us how to behave, our schools tell us what

Shirley Ardell Mason also known as (Sybil) was quietly living in Lexington Kentucky, and had ran a art business out of her home in the 1970s. She later died on Feb 26, 1998 from breast cancer due to declining treatment. There was a movie based on Shirley Ardell Mason Life called “Sybil” which came out in 1976, her real name wasn’t used in the book or movie because she wanted to protect her identity. The movie depicted on what Shirley had gone through as child, which included physical, emotional, and severe sexual abuse of the hands of her mother who was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Due to Shirley’s trauma as a child she was diagnosed with a multiple personality disorder also called dissociative personality disorder, which consisted of 16 distinctive personalities in 1973 diagnosed by her therapist Dr. Cornelia Wilbur. Shirley Ardell Mason was born on January 25, 1923 in Dodge Center, Minnesota. Her parents Walter Mason and Martha Alice Hageman raised Shirley in Dodge center where they were well liked by others.

Both Deborah Blum’s The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over? and Aaron Devor’s “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes” challenges the concept of how gender behavior is socially constructed. Blum resides on the idea that gender behavior is developed mainly through adolescence and societal expectations of a gender. Based on reference from personal experiences to back her argument up, Blum explains that each individual develops their expected traits as they grow up, while she also claims that genes and testosterones also play a role into establishing the differentiation of gender behavior. Whereas, Devor focuses mainly on the idea that gender behavior is portrayed mainly among two different categories: masculinity and

In “Man to Man, Woman to Woman”, M. Sherman and A. Hass explain the problem of male –female communication through the research. They passed a questionnaire to 160 women and 110 men asking them that how often they talk about the topic listed on the questionnaire with friends of the same sex. From the responses of the questionnaire, they wrote this article. They said that the men reported talking about sports, current events, music, whereas women reported talking about relationship problems, health, family, reproductive concerns, weight, food, and clothing. They come up with the conclusions that both men and women don’t have to adopt other’s style, but they have to recognize and respect other’s style. Well, it seems like Sherman’s and Hass’s article can really tell us accurate information than that of Maynard’s article. “Man to Man, Woman to Woman” is based on the majority view and not one person’s view like “His Talk, Her Talk”. “Man to Man, Woman to Woman” is based on the survey, so the newlyweds would be able to understand better because now-a-days people like data from research, they like exact numbers. Moreover, the survey done by Hass and Sherman leads us to the conclusion that the difference in topics is not so damaging to intimate male-female relationships as are the differences in the style and function of conversation. J. Maynard’s data are merely based on her own life experiences. Some people may not believe in one person’s

As Lorber explores in her essay “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender, “most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Lorber 1). This article was very intriguing because I thought of my gender as my sex but they are not the same. Lorber has tried to prove that gender has a different meaning that what is usually perceived of through ordinary connotation. Gender is the “role” we are given, or the role we give to ourselves. Throughout the article it is obvious that we are to act appropriately according to the norms and society has power over us to make us conform. As a member of a gender

What does it mean to be a woman or man? Whether we a man or a woman, in today’s society it is not determined just by our sex organs. Our gender includes a complex mix of beliefs, behaviors, and characteristics. How do you act, talk, and behave like a woman or man? Are you feminine or masculine, both, or neither? These are questions that help us get to the core of our gender and gender identity. Gender identity is how we feel about and express our gender and gender roles: clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It is a feeling that we have as early as age two or three. In the article, “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meaning of Gender,” the author, Aaron Devor, is trying to persuade his readers that gender shapes how we behave because of the expectation from us and relate to one another. He does this by using an educational approach, describing gender stereotypes, and making cultural references. He gets readers to reflect on how “Children’s developing concepts of themselves as individuals are necessarily bound up …to understand the expectations of the society which they are a part of” (389). Growing up, from being a child to an adult is where most of us try to find ourselves. We tend to struggle during this transition period, people around us tell us what to be and not to be, Jamaica Kincaidt in her short story, “Girl” tells just that, the setting is presented as a set of life instructions to a girl by her mother to live properly. The mother soberly

For a long time, men and women have been dealing with the controversy of gender roles. In modern day, the battle for gender equality has been more known. In the story “Guys Suffer from Oppressive Gender Roles Too”, the author Julie Zeilinger explains how males are held to a more macho standard, but do have prevalent emotions. If we were to let go of these rigid rules about what is manly, there would be no standard for any gender. If that was reality, men shouldn’t have to feel humiliated about staying home, and if their companion makes more money than they do. Zeilinger talks about how males detach themselves from some emotions, and live a “life nub to a true range of human emotion” so they can meet this masculinity standard. However if males

In Reyes’s Los Angeles Times article, “Men Are Stuck In Gender Roles, Data Suggest” posted on December 26, 2013, she discusses that there are gender roles in today’s society that has been set and learned at a young age, that men do men things and women do women things but there’s a small percentage where it’s flipped upside-down. The context of this article can be misogyny or sexist, and focuses more towards the male audience with a smaller portion of women. Reyes’s exigence comes from her own research as the “census data and surveys show that men remain rare in stereotypically feminine positions”(Reyes Par. 3). Due to her excellent use of appeals, Reyes’s article is highly recommended for the PopMatters Persuasiveness Prize. Reyes supports her claim with ethos with her usage of good credible sources; logos, using inductive logic and by providing good statistics; and pathos, like the bandwagon appeal with an attempt to sway people away from the norm, and by providing stories from everyday folk on how they’ve encountered these stereotypes regarding gender roles.

As Sociological Images notes, dissimilar to men, why should gathered reject all things womanlike, women are urged to adjust manly and female attributes. NPR's article Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences appears to offer believability to this

Gender is one of the most heated terms in the English language during the 21st century, whose role seems to be constantly changing, always on the move, reflecting new updated meanings for society. Gender roles often portray the fairness and justice of any given society, hence the more equality genders reach, the more advanced and sophisticated the society is considered to be. They also suggest a set of rules that males and females have to follow and play their parts in order to define genders. However, the ambiguity of society’s confinement, like an invisible hand around everybody’s neck, draws attention to the artificiality of what we define as “acceptable” behaviors.

“You throw like a girl.” “You run like a girl.” “You look like a girl.” It’s common sense that these phrases are not at all compliments but rather gender-based insults. Since when did the physical capacities of a young girl stacked up against a boy turn into an insult and a limitation? Is being a female individual something derogatory, something to be shameful about? Young girls are taught to be weak, fragile and soft-spoken while it’s openly accepted and even encouraged for boys to have hard opinions, to be strong and tough and exert power. They’re constantly put into a place of doubt by the media, parents and their social community.

This process involves acting out what we believe to be society’s perception of what it means to be masculine or feminine (West and Zimmerman, 1987). The initiation before a man and woman begin dancing together is perhaps the clearest example of individuals ‘doing gender’. In this space, men are almost exclusively responsible for initiating conversation or some sort of physical interaction. The idea that men must be aggressive and women must be passive only reaffirms our gender stereotypes. This relationship is even more evident in fraternities, as there seems to bee an even wider range in terms of what is deemed to be appropriate behavior (Boswell and Spade, 1996).

“Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls”, says Aaron Devor. Women and men have always been seen as totally different people, but is it right to say that women are different from men. Many research findings support these gender differences. The range of critical response to the topic of the gender is clearly discussed in the reviews written by Aaron Devor “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes,” Deborah Blum “The Gender Blur,” and Mariah Burton Nelson in “I Won. I’m Sorry”. Marian Burton Nelson, a former Stanford University and professional basketball player and author of sit book on gender identity. Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Aaron Derov, a sociology professor at University of Victoria. All three articles have similar and different opinions, but they are all about gender differences. While Devor and Blum talk about the origin of gender differences in men and women, Nelson focuses more on strong women; all three articles focus their discussions on aggressiveness, gender behaviors, and male domination.