How I Learned to Drive has demonstrated that gender is a learned, in addition to the physically heritable trait, through society. Vogel stated that this play provides an opportunity to examine the issue at a microcosmic level at how we are taught at an extremely early age to look at female bodies (Mansbridge 124). The play is portraying a woman from her eleven years old to her forties. It detailed the process of how she gains her way to view her own body from her family, and especially Uncle Peck, can be seen clearly. This implied that our sexualities are gained through the society instead of ourselves, despite being the owner of our bodies.
In order to successfully deliver Vogel’s message, she revealed the secret at the end of the play in which Uncle Peck is a pedophile. Besides, various scenes were included before the revelation of the secret, such as interactions among Li’l Bit’s family and Uncle Peck provided a clear picture of the process of how Li’l Bit became the victim of her uncle. It allowed the avoidance of the issue being preconceived by audiences as well as developing subjective opinions towards Uncle Peck through piecemeal information provided at each time points. In this way, the audiences are able to conceive Vogel’s message more effectively. There are a few ways to view gender as a social construction, including: female sexuality and agency, femininity, masculinity and objectification of female.
Li’l Bit as the protagonist of the play has been taught how
In the excerpt “Why Do We Make So Much of Gender?”, from his 1997 book The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy, Allan Johnson argues gender through identity and culture. Johnson starts out by expressing opposition on how women are looked at through a patriarchal society and not the biology from which they came. He mentions the feminist argument that women in a patriarchal society are “oppressed” and that this comes from social order (545). He goes on to point out, the focus should be on raising children to adulthood rather than worrying about reproduction. Although, I agree with Johnson’s arguments, there are things in this world that cannot and should not be changed.
How “I Learned to Drive” is an interesting drama because it meant to educate people to be aware of their relative and other people around them to be a victim of sexual abuse. This play was written by Paula Vogel. The most aspect that interested me of that play was the way that Paula Vogel arranges the scenes of the play in a non-chronological order to keep the audience's attention until the last part of the play. The author did an excellent job to write the play in the easiest way and understandable to send a message to other people to learn from Lil Bit's secret. Also, the author mentioned the problem that might cost people a lot due to the bad relationship between the families and their kids. The main character of the play is Li'l Bit, who was molested by her uncle Peck and
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 John Patrick Shanley’s play, “Doubt: A Parable”, and Paula Vogel’s play, “How I Learned to Drive”, both have strong themes of sexuality in the forms of sexual predation and pedophilia. Although these two stories are considerably different, the message is the same. “Doubt” is a play that concerns a mystery over whether or not a boy (Donald) has been raped by a priest, and “How I learned to Drive” is a play about a woman (Li’l Bit) who reminisces about the sexual molestation and the emotional manipulation she had to endure at the hands of her uncle. Although these plays both have main theme of sexuality, they each have vastly different settings, desires, and outcomes. In this essay, I will compare and contrast the theme of sexuality in both of these plays.
How I learned to Drive by Paula Vogel who uses this play to show the audience of complexities of psychological and sexual that is rampant in the family. Our two main characters are Lil Bit and Uncle Peck; the family is played the
Gender Matters is a collection of various essays on feminist linguistic texts analysis, by Sara Mills. Mills develops methods of analyzing literary and non-literary texts, in addition to conversational analysis based on a feminist approach. The author draws on data from her collection of essays gathered over the last two decades on feminism during the 1990s. The essays focus on gender issues, the representation of gender in reading, writing, and in public speaking. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of feminists’ analysis of sexism in literature and the relation between gender and politeness. The article is informative for my research paper, as my
When attempting to explain something as intangible and complex as human behavior it is difficult to devise experiments that lead to conclusive results. Sometimes complex problems are easier to solve when they are broken down into smaller pieces or into simpler problems that are more approachable. Using human evolution to explain human behavior is such an example. Evolutionary psychology reaches for the roots of human development when they were in their most basic stages to explain why people behave the way they do. Specifically, explaining human masculinity through science has been a major focus of evolutionary psychology. This paper seeks to explain why masculinity cannot be explained by sociology alone and will present
Although men and women have significant biological differences, the question whether gender-specific labels stems from these biological differences or are gender constructed remains a polarised nature versus nurture debate. Whether it is through the process of socialisation or genetic make-up, “gender identity” is given from a person’s birth, determining how a person culturally interacts and the expectations society places on them. Along with a “gender identity” comes a whole set of “norms”, “values” and so-called “gender characteristics”, which are supposed to define the differences between a male and a female. According to the World Health Organisation (n.d.), the term “sex” is often used to define the biological and physiological
Sexism has always been a major issue for women. It seems that today, everyone has to be careful of what they say and do so as to avoid offending someone. While everyone is busy worrying about extinguishing sexism towards women - which still is an issue that needs to be taken care of, who is concerned with sexism towards men? Sexism is just as much of an issue to men as it is to women.
The study of genetics includes not only the study of normal DNA, but also of the mutations within a DNA. A mutation is a slightly distorted gene. These mutations can have an effect on a person, both physically and mentally. Although genetics may seem to be just about the genes, scientists are beginning to see a connection between gender and genetic mutations.
At a young age, we are taught to adhere to norms and are restricted to conform to society’s given rules. We are taught that straying away from stereotypes is anything but good and encouraged to build our lives upon only these social rules. Recently, stereotypes based on genders have been put into the limelight and have become of high interest to a generation that is infamously known for deviating from the established way of life. Millennials have put gender roles under fire, deeming it a form of segregation and discrimination by gender. Researchers have followed suit. Mimicking millennial interests, numerous studies have been published that detail the relationship between gender, stereotypes, and the effects of the relationship between the two. Furthermore, gender roles have been used as a lens to study socialization; tremendous amounts of interest have prompted studies on the inheritance and dissemination of norms, culture, and ideologies based on the stereotypes that cloud gender. For sociologists, determining the extent of the impact of gender stereotypes on socializing our population has become a paramount discussion. Amidst many articles, the work of Karniol, Freeman, and Adler & Kless were standouts and between the three pieces, childhood served as a common thread; more specifically, these researchers studied how gender roles impact socialization from such a young age.
Gender identity is the personal conception of being a man or a woman and the society creates standards and comes up with gender roles basing them on existing norms and traditions which will in turn influence gender identity. For instance, most societies associate strength and dominance to be masculine roles while caring and assisting or subordination known to be feminine roles. This clearly makes gender identity be bred within the society. One’s identity is important as it influences his or her life through events like life experiences, how one is being taken or treated, how to do one associate or socialize with others, the type of job one will have to do and also opportunities that may come up favoring a certain type of gender identity. One is also likely to face obstacles or discrimination due to his or her identity.
My beliefs and view on the gender ideology towards work and family is more weighed on one side (Masculine) and partly on the other (Feminine). It is evident that the ‘Masculine’ gender is more dominant in our society and because of this; there is more expectation and responsibility for the masculine gender. However, there is a continual inclusion trend in which we are witnessing the feminine gender assume some roles of the masculine gender. But overall, the masculine effect is still dominant. I personally feel that there should be a good balance of work and family responsibility by the men. It is necessary that the ‘Men’ are mostly responsible for taking the role of the breadwinner of the family therefore, the working hours of the men would have to be met as required by the employer. For example, working 40 hours a week is the minimum in the US but varies in some other places. In a case whereby the man has to take an overtime shift just to meet the needs of the family.
Female to Male as Nature is to Culture Gender relations form an integral part of human social interactions and are of great interest to anthropologists. Since the feminist movement in the late 1960s, one question that has been discussed is to what extent the opposition between women and men can be thought of in terms of the dichotomy between nature and culture and what implications this has for the position of women in society. This structuralist perspective was first formulated by Ortner (1974), drawing on Levi-Strauss and de Beauvoir, but has since been criticised for being simplistic and ethnocentric. I will delineate Ortner’s argument and look at its application to male and female roles in
Universally, the status of a woman in a society is secondary to a man’s status. On the other hand, there are societies today that man is subordinate to woman. The treatments and symbolizations of women are diverse and vary from culture to culture. No cultures are exactly the same. In this critical review of Ortner (1974) “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture” I will attempt to give a summary and critical analysis on the article.