The Man Trek Gender Ethnography

According to the article in the Gendered Society Reader titled, "A Social-Psychological Model of Gender" by Kay Deaux and Brenda Major gender based behavior can be broken down into nearly predictable elements.

“The cult of masculinity.” When it comes to the big screen, women are treated like second-class citizens. Women were portrayed as helpless creatures, waiting in the castle for their Prince Charming whereas men were dauntless, swooping the Princess of her feet and saving the day. This gender gap came to an end when The Hunger Games (2012) was released in theaters. The brave Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) did what no “real” man or Prince could ever do – stand up for someone else – even when it meant risking her own life. The Hunger Games was not only one of the top grossing movies of the year, but it was also one of the very few movies where a woman was able to display her stability and willingness to fight. The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Gravity are some of the few movies that show a women’s potential than to sit in a castle. They all show three common characteristics for the roles of women: courage, personality, and recognition.

Reimer, we delved into the historical side of things. Being a history teacher herself, it was no surprise that Ms, Reimer was so knowledgeable on the subject — in fact, she gave me more examples than I could possibly use. After careful consideration, we came up with a timeline of specific groups that had used dress to broadcast their identity to the world. First on the list? The Roaring Twenties and the Flapper subculture. The 1920s, says Reimer, were “a party time for everyone. Everyone’s living the high life…there was a sense of rebelliousness.” This rebelliousness was most often personified in the “flapper girl” who, according to a June 1922 article in The Flapper magazine, wore “bobbed hair; powder and rouge on the cheeks; …low cut, sleeveless bodice; absence of a corset; high skirts” (“Announcing Flapper Beauty Contest”). However, this so-called “modern woman,” was more than just her appearance; Journalist H.L. Mencken echoed the sentiments of many when he wrote that the flapper was “foolish…and inclined to revolt against the precepts and admonitions of her elders” (W. Morris and M. Morris 215). Like many people of the time, Mencken reacted negatively to the sudden strength shown by women who had appeared submissive only years

“Doe Season,” by David Kaplan, is a real creation of literary art, as it contains a lot of controversial binary topics. One particular binary that really stuck to me when reading this story was femininity and masculinity. This short story is written in an enthusiastic, emotive language, as it contains a wide range of attractive visual details, extended dialogues between the characters, and some long-winded sentences, which make the story overall effective. Though the story is short, it develops a range of topics, such as interpersonal communication between the characters, their small conflicts, characteristics of their actions, descriptions of the places they visit and the processes they are engaged in, etc. However, analyzing all of the issues put into the story by David Kaplan, the problem of Andy’s development in change in masculinity and femininity throughout this fiction appears to be the most important binary.

As times grew more modern, women started wearing less and less clothing underneath their dresses as bare skin was popularized; less corsets, less camiknickers, etc. were worn. The rigid shape of the corset was abandoned for dresses with lines of “soft curves from the shoulder to the waist. ” There were “bobbed hair and skirts above knees. Women redefined the feminine with the sophisticated schoolgirl look of the 1920s.”

Clothing has always been a social representation of who you are as a person. Throughout time clothing has been changing from the time of cavemen when humans wore animal fur and skin to now where you see models wearing diamonds as a shirt. In the 1940’s women stole the scene of fashion introducing a different style of clothing you would never see in today’s fashion world. As the world changes, so does clothing.

Women began to dress similarly to their favorite characters on the screen, with long circle skirts, collared blouses and penny loafers. Working men wore the standard suit

ALAN! yells my sister after my brother for leaving his shoes and clothes scattered all over the floor before jumping into the shower; while my mom is picking up those same clothes. Why do you spoil him so? I ask. He is a boy. He is not going to pick up his clothes! exclaims my mom. After hearing my mom’s comment one too many times I realized, the treatment and expectations between us, men and women, is so unbalanced and yet we go through life accepting it as the norm and taking it for granted.

Generally, there are not as many documented physical abuse cases for men as there are for women. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline (2014), men are less likely to seek help when it comes to physical abuse. “1 in 4 women (24.3%) and 1 in 7 men (13.8%) aged 18 and older in the United States have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime” (National Domestic Violence Hotline, 2014). The stigma revolving around masculinity and how society views men teaches them not to express their feelings and see themselves as victims. The common stereotype is that men are seen as the abusers and women are seen as victims, therefore men who express their feelings are seen as weak and incapable of being a “man”.

A movie like “Frozen” is a great example. The movie Frozen broke many gender stereotypes between both sexes. Starting off with the fact that the protagonist of Frozen was a female. Anna (the protagonist) was known not to poses stereotypical attributes that were placed on females. She was brave, adventurous, and assertive which are known to be stereotypically masculine traits.

Be pretty, handsome, but nothing in between. For a man, play a man’s sport like football or basketball. Then for the ladies, most people would prefer that they don’t play those sports, but what can be expected when they grew up with all males? In the collaborative book Gender Failure by Ivan Cayote and Rae Spoon, who have lived as woman but feel as if they are meant to be males, they talk about how they failed their roles as both females and males. In the course of history people have failed the gender binary, failed to see how transgender people live, and even today what the transgender community still faces today.

Other examples include: Treating someone like a second class citizen, where a group of people are made to feel invisible because they “don’t fit in”, the treatment of another person as if they are inferior to you, denial that sexism exists, and traditional gender role assumptions.

Race is a system of categories put in place by society in order to make each individual fit into a certain social group. It is due to societies implementation of such a system that individuals in these racial categories do not always look at each other as equals, causing a race to not always identify themselves as a homogenous front. This essay will delve into the poetry of a popular Def Jam spoken word artist Black Ice, whose piece Bigger Than Mine looks into the dualism within Black society in the United States with an undertone of what it means to a man. A schism as described by Black Ice being between two distinct groups, Blacks and “Niggas”.

Two questions came about with these changes in clothing. The first being, why didn't these influences change women's costume in the same way as that of men? Taking the history of humanity as a whole, there can be little doubt that men have played a greater part in social life, and have been more easily influenced by social factors, than have women. It can be said that if social and political influences have been the chief factors in bringing about the greater uniformity of men's

Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando, and Thomas Page McBee’s memoir, Man Alive, aim to define the male and female gender through life experiences. Virginia Woolf uses the eponymous protagonist, Orlando, to define the freedom that men have within society while women face many societal restrictions. Within Man Alive, Thomas, a transgendered man, experiences similar freedoms and restrictions that Orlando experiences through his experiences within society. Man Alive is the journey of Thomas Page McBee’s transition from woman to man; it focuses not on his physical change but on his mental change. Orlando was placed in a predicament that allowed him to experience life both as man and woman. The first thirty years of Orlando’s life was spent as a man then he was permanently transformed into a woman. Almost parallel to Orlando’s transition experience, Thomas was also in a predicament that allowed him to experience life as a man and woman. Thomas, born Page, goes through a transition to become male. Orlando and Thomas both aimed at trying to figure out who they were in society; Thomas was trying to find what kind of man he wanted to become and Orlando was trying to find what kind of woman she was becoming. For example, if female Orlando was promiscuous, she would be heavily criticized by her community while male Orlando received no censure. Man Alive focused, not on the criticism that Thomas received but, on the characteristics of men via