Traditional Gender Roles By Linda Pastan

Despite the achievements of women in many different fields, society still attempts to limit women to certain roles. Furthermore, in the poem, women “… are defined […] by what [they] never will be,” (lines 19 - 21); once again, the author claims that women are defined by what they are unable to do because of gender bias. Instead of being given the chance to be influential, they are continually limited to staying at home or doing jobs “meant for women.” Finally, Boland tells the tutor that women “…were never on the scene of crime,” (lines 27 - 28). This serves as a metaphor for how women are never allowed to do important jobs; instead, they are left at the sidelines due to the repeatedly ignored restrictions placed on women by our gender-biased society.

In her book “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Woman, and the Rest of us,” Kate Bornstein goes over a lot of the major issues regarding gender awareness and identity politics. She talks about the ideas of labeling ones self, understanding gender differences, how people view laws, behaviors, and the medical and scientific privilege that make transitioning challenging for a lot of people. Bornstein touches on many of the issues today that affect trans people. She includes poetry, pictures, quotes, essays, and a play to raise questions and discuss the idea of gender. This is a great book to introduce and discuss the issues that affect the lives of trans people as they navigate and explore the lines that define gender.

Barr begins her book making the claim, “In some ways, it is an old fashioned insight that gender is about power, but in native worlds, where kinship provided the foundation for every institution of their societies, gender and power were inseparable.” From the beginning, Barr separates herself from other historians who focus on Native-European relationships during the colonial period by placing women and family at the center of the narrative. In doing so, she challenges conventional wisdom that men dominated colonial interactions. Through detailing misinterpretations of the role of women and family in Native cultures she sheds light on how violence and mistrust dominated Native-Spanish relations in the Texas borderlands.

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.

Blee, Kathleen M., and Ann R. Tickamyer. "Racial Diffences in Men's Attitudes about Women's Gender Roles." ProQuest Research Library [ProQuest]. Springer Science & Business Media, July 2010. Web. 17 May 2016.

I’ll be honest; this was definitely a hard read personally. I had to read several things more than once to understand what the author was saying. I have come to the conclusion that her thesis is simply concerning how racism and slavery came into existence in the New World. She has a lot of points concerning gender roles and gender in general. Dr. Brown states, “I have tried to surmount this difficulty by writing not just a social history of women in Virginia… but a history of gender broadly construed to include masculinity” (3). I believe she is trying to say that instead of just talking about women when talking about gender, she wants to include the man’s role in deciding or establishing gender roles. Her main points have to do with how gender

American Literature has always been about men and for men. In this essay, we are going to analyze the women’s role in the book, as inferior and weaker gender.

Junot Diaz, the author of “A Cheaters Guide to Love” writes his short story with many different references to anti-feminism. He writes about women in different ways to show them as powerless, and un-superior to the main character in the short story. From this short story, Diaz conveys the main characters ways when he shows the him talking about, the girl he calls to have sex with, the women at the yoga class, and the files read at the end of the story that show the fifty girls he cheated on his fiancé with. Diaz creates his main character and puts him in the second person to relate to the reader, but show his anti-feministic signs.

This poem was created to inform readers about the stereotypes of women. Since I can never relate to women, it would be unfair for me to observe in this perspective. If I were to do so, it may offend women because my assumptions are not definitive enough. By searching for quotes, I formed a found poem describing women’s struggle in a patriarchal society.

Literary and rhetorical devices can greatly strengthen texts and their significance. Kait Rokowski excels at using them in her critically acclaimed spoken word, “How to Cure a Feminist”. In this poem, Rokowski writes in an instruction book form and begins with witty remarks, but it soon escalates into a horrendous exposé on the atrocities women face. Rokowski’s use of similes, personification, and numerous rhetorical devices creates an astounding spoken word that leaves its audience haunted.

In recent years, feminism has become a buzzword in debate and politics. Although this point has only been brought up recently, literary pieces from the past can provide insight on how gender stereotypes influence the perception of gender in society. In pieces such as “Mallam Sile” by Mohammed Naseehu Ali, “Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning, and “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, females are portrayed through reinforcement and deconstruction of stereotypes, which can influence the meaning of the work.

In Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market, Laura is saved from death through the bond of Sisterhood: a female power that embodies both traditionally feminine and masculine characteristics and values. Ross Murfin’s essay “What is Feminist Criticism?” feminist criticism, in the study of literature, is described as a criticism that examines how the values and attitudes of patriarchal societies affect the portrayal and expression of women in text (186-194). French feminists have focused on analyzing the way meaning is produced and have concluded that a gender binary is formed by language (186-187). Meaning is created by what a thing is not; for example, men are men because they are not women. The gender binary determines what things are masculine and what are feminine. This essay will adopt a feminist perspective and examine the gender roles (the behaviours, expectations, characteristics and values assigned to each gender by a society’s gender binary) depicted in Goblin Market. The primary focus will be on how gender roles affect the actions and decisions made by Laura and Lizzie throughout the poem and how sisterhood, a construct that blurs the gender binary, is the means that saves Laura’s life.

Feminist criticism scrutinizes the ways in which literature reinforces or undermines the economic, politic, social and psychological oppression of women. One of the tools used

For instances, to look, act, and speak a certain way to fit in the model that society has created for women. Society tells woman their gender role as soon they are born by the toys and clothing that are presented to them. “This girlchild was born as usual and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.” Indeed, advising her at a young age that she is the nurturer, housekeeper, and in doing all this she must maintain her sexuality, clearly depicting the expressive role. Although, the poem points out the positive qualities she has “She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity” she couldn’t see those qualities because she was busy trying to please everyone else. “She was advised to play coy, exhorted to on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.” With all those great qualities, she finds herself apologizing for her

In 1990 Judith Butler first published her book Gender Troubles, where she questions gender roles. Butler theorizes that gender, as in male and female, is a type of societal/gender colonialism created to keep people who do not fall within the gender roles from being part of the mainstream society. In her 1999 preface, in which she addresses the impact her book had in the decade since its original publication, Butler expresses the concern she had with the “heterosexual assumption in feminist literary theory (61).” Butler utilizes the works of other feminist philosophers to further demonstrate the inconsistency, and disconnect between fighting for women rights and fighting for human rights. Judith Butler makes an interesting argument on the failure to recognize the spectrum of gender, however, she makes a compelling argument on the use of language perpetuating a patriarchal society.