Gender Identity, By Deborah Blum, The Gender Blur, And Mariah Burton Nelson Essay

Men and women have been subject to certain stereotypes throughout the ages. The gender roles of different societies transcend age, race, and location and affect us all. The Odyssey by Homer, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson explore the phenomenon of gender biases that many, if not all, societies deal with. At one point or another, it may become true that when men or women cross the threshold of prescribed gender roles, they are often belittled or ridiculed.

Before this class I believed men and women’s gender roles in society were strictly defined. As I gained more knowledge from the Critical Thinking Reader, The Grapes of Wrath, and my research project, I learned that gender roles change based on an individual’s environment, socio-economic standing, and societal norms/expectations. These resources helped clarify that men and women’s roles in society are interchangeable and there are no definite lines or barriers that keep them from fulfilling all roles, that being said men and women can also remain stuck in the roles society has traditionally seen them in.

On the other hand, boys might be more physical and aggressive because it is expected for boys to prove their manliness. They face intense pressure to demonstrate their masculinity front birth. Boys are treated differently while the girls are supposed to be meek and not demonstrate unladylike qualities in public. Unfortunate for boys, the society expectation of aggressive male as seen in sports such as football manifest in violence on and off the field at an early age and other anti-social behaviors

Our gender has an effect on every aspect of our lives, varying from how we view ourselves and other people to how we interact in social and civic life. It also impacts the way we set our goals in opportunity areas such as education, work, and recreation. Gender socialization starts at birth then manifests through family, education, peer groups, and mass media. Gender norms are automatically placed on us, where women should learn how to be nurturing, sensitive, emotional, passive, and always hold a man’s position higher than hers. On the other hand men should be overly confident, aggressive, dominant, and view women beneath them. This paper uses various readings to show how these gender norms are supported and challenged in today’s society.

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

There has always been a battle between the roles of men and women. Men are very different to women in many different ways. The essays that Fatema Mernissi wrote “Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem” and Dave Barry wrote “Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out” have the same baseline, but are different in their own ways explaining gender roles and qualities. The essays “Batting Clean-Up and Striking Out” and “Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem” are both similar, but their approaches are very different by one being humorous and the other being very serious.

I observed the basketball championship game in McCarthy center and, while sporting events are mostly seen as a male-dominated activity, I saw more girls in the audience than boys. I, myself, got up at six in the morning to wait in line to get a spot to watch the game. This breaks the stereotype that girls are uninterested in sports. However, after the devastating loss, most people went back to their gendered stereotypes. I, along with the girls around me, were crying at the heartbreaking finale, while some boys in CM took to breaking things in the halls. This alines with the gender stereotypes that women are more emotional and men are more violent. While I do believe that we, as a society, are moving away from suffocating gendered stereotypes, there are some that we still preform subconsciously. The younger generations are moving forward with making gender non-conformity the new normal, however, we are far from ending the fight to break gendered

Within sport, as throughout society, gender differences exist. The socially constructed phenomenon of gender dictates a dichotomous system whereby females are feminine and males are masculine. Focusing on females specifically, society determines the feminine traits and roles ascribed to this gender. Being domesticated, slender, passive and heterosexual are a part of the desirable appearance that society has formed surrounding femininity (Wolf, 1991). On the other side of the dichotomy is the masculine realm that sport plays into. Sport is fuelled by muscle, power and aggressiveness, which are behaviours and images associated to masculinity. Sport therefore, defies all existing female gender ideals. It would be assumed that females have no place within this institution due to the gender clash. However, female athletes do exist, and many are very successful. For this to work, sport has established and reinforced the social constructions of gender that exist in society. Female athletes are viewed as inferior and are pushed into gender appropriate sports. Furthermore, they are often labeled as masculine until they can prove otherwise, and so great attempts are made to reassert femininity. The stigma associated to being masculine or homosexual for female athletes is so great that many have become irrationally fearful of this label. The sexualisation of the female body and overt displays of heterosexuality are used in

Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Mann's The The Difference: Growing Up Female in America and Bernard Lefkowitz's Our Guys

In “Girls Will Be Girls” Orenstein talks about the struggles women face “to behave both like and unlike a man without being penalized either way” (2). It is not uncommon for women to be criticized for acting to much like a man. In “Jingo Belle”, Tannenoct describes the American beauty as “sexy” and explains how she “drive[drives] men wild” (58). This shows how women are often sexualized and expected to please men. In “When Women Rule”, Kristof explains how “when women highlight their accomplishments, that’s[it’s] a turn-off” (26-27).

In Sandra Bem's The Lenses of Gender (1993), Bem's last focus is on how the concepts of androcentrism and gender polarization create a gendered identity and form our society's institutions. The most significant aspect to this piece was if men and women were different, and if so, how to handle that difference in a society. It is very difficult to read this book as a women in America because the concept of equality seems so easy to me. Treating everybody with the same respect is a natural response for me, and to know that in this androcentric country I will not have enough time for my children is heartbreaking. With that said, in the passage a valuable point is made,

This mentality is ingrained in the minds of young men from a very early age. It is, “men’s and boy’s practical relationships to collective images or models of masculinity, rather than simply reflections of them, that is central to understanding gendered consequences in violence, health, and education” (Connell). For instance, characters like James Bond and Barney Stinson, as well as public figures including Derek Jeter, encapsulate the ideal womanizing characteristics idolized by many men. In fact, even those men who don’t actively exercise, “hegemonic masculinities, are complicit” (Connell), in practice. As a result of these dominating and oppressive ideals, “women become a kind of currency that men use to improve their ranking” (Kimmel). Essentially, as a defense mechanism to feeling powerless, homosocial enactments, sexual conquests, and even domestic abuse allow for men to regain their sense of power. In the process, however they damage the people around

Judith Lorber is able to convey many of her ideals about our contemporary conceptions of gender in her essay, ?The Social Construction of Gender.? Not only does she clearly express her opinions on the roles of physiological differences of the male and female bodies, but she also elaborates on the roles of the mass media and professional sports among other things. It rapidly becomes clear that there are many legitimate arguments that support this movement for near or complete equality in genders and the roles that they perform.

“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.

All societies behave in a different way towards two sexes and distinguish two genders. Through innumerable indications, we are taught that men and women are different. In everyday life, it is commonly assumed that men are more aggressive than women. Statistics indicate that males are more likely than females to commit such crimes as murder, armed robbery, and aggravated assault which are the result of feeling aggressive. In addition men describe themselves as being aggressive to a greater extent than do women and show greater potential for acting aggressively. All of these assumptions lead us to a certain question: Why are human males more aggressive than females? Actually, there are two