Socialization of Gender,
Is it inherently negative?
Egalia’s Daughters
My first reaction to Egalia’s Daughters, by Gerd Brantenberg, was something like "WHAT is this". I was immediately very confused, and had no idea what this author was writing about. In fact, I felt as though I opened the book to the middle of a story, and became turned off by the whole experience. It took about three chapters, and someone’s help, until I started to read the book understandably, with ease, and began to enjoy the world I was entering. It became very apparent that I would have to detach myself from all that I thought I knew about gender, and simply allow myself to take in the message Brantenberg was trying to convey. As soon as I began to understand what I was reading, I found myself thoroughly engaged by both the story and the sociological aspects of both the Egalian, and my societies social constructions of gender. Although I was aware, to some degree of the socialization of gender in our society, having not taken any feminist or women’s studies courses, I was not familiar with how much gender is ingrained in our culture, language, government, identities, etc. This book truly brings forth those ideals by expressing the opposite of what we know in our society to be true concerning the socialization of gender.
Egalia’s Daughters explicitly expresses how genderized our culture is by presenting the opposite of what we know to be true. The book reverses all that we know to be socially acceptable and correct for men and women by reversing those gender roles and creating what we know to be masculine as feminine, and what we know to be feminine as masculine. Brantenberg writes about a society where men (she calls them manwim) take on what we consider to be female roles. They stay in the home, take care of the kids, are stereotypically passive, ditsy, subordinate to women, unintelligent, etc. Whereas women in the Egalian society (she calls them wom), make the money, are powerful, dominant, aggressive, authoritarian, etc. Wom are looked up to and considered the more powerful sex, and menwom are considered to be vulnerable and weak.
Brantenberg even reverses what our society deems as feminine beauty, and masculinizes it.
"She had a fine rounded head and short-cropped black hair that always stood straight ...
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... gender in the media. Everyday women look at magazines, movies, television, advertisements, etc. and constantly compare their appearance, self-worth, and well being to the images of the women that are represented. To some, the answer is getting rid of "Cosmopolitan" and "Vogue" magazine, to others it is self awareness and understanding that what is shown is an ideal that is unattainable and ridiculous. I think that the answer lies somewhere in between, in changing our social views and expectations of women in our society. How to go about that, I have no clue.
As I keep writing, I find that I can express the social construction of gender in my life in a simple phrase: Every aspect of my life is socially gendered. The clothes I wear, the people I am attracted to, the emotions I keep, the activities I engage in, the way I speak, the friendships I have, the life I lead, all of it is completely genderized. By looking at the opposite of what I know to be true in Egalia’s Daughters, I am able to understand how much our society is surrounded by gender ideals and the social construction of gender. My question is, is the social construction of gender always a bad thing?
Viewing gender as something one must always adhere to and play the role of creates a view of set sexualities for people. For example, men are expected and allowed to be sexually promiscuous while women are not and face slut shaming, harassment,
“The Social Construction of Gender” talks about gender as a concept created by society. In it, the author explains why society felt the need to create gender as a social institution and how gender is embedded into everyday life. The labeling of people as male or female is used by societies as a way of deciding who takes over which responsibilities and who does which tasks. The author of the article concludes that gender and gender inequality is created by society
We all know what it is like to wake up in the morning, with our head aching, and our body feeling like it was just hit by a train. College students world wide know this feeling. These are the results of binge drinking. The question of why college students continue to submit themselves to alcohol is unknown. While many reasons are given, the cause generally falls into one of three categories, peer pressure, insecurity, or to help solve there problems. But the one thing students don’t realize are the consequences and effects that binge drinking can have, health and social problems are just a few.
However, there is still and will always be debating points stating that gender socialization either doesn’t occur or doesn’t pose a problem. This can be refuted using multiple examples that trace back to one main topic: sexism. Sexism essentially has been the byproduct of gender socialization in the sense that it is based off the notion that ‘one sex isn’t
The Mayans are American Indian people who lived in southern Mexico (Miller "Maya" Grolier). The Yucatan was the center of the Mayan civilization from about the 1st century B.C. ("Yucantan" Grolier). They flourished in Mexico and central America from 250 to 1600 A.D. ("History of Agriculture" Grolier). Their ancestors had crossed the Bering land Bridge from Asia (Miller "Maya" Grolier). Honduras was once a part of the Mayan Empire. It had flourished between 250 and 950 A.D. (Seligson "Honduras" Grolier). The Mayans also had lived in Mexican states: Yucantan and Chiapas, British Honduras, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador (Burland 1770)
The ancient Maya once occupied a vast geographic area in Central America. Their civilization inhabited an area that encompasses Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and parts of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, as well as Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. "From the third to the ninth century, Maya civilization produced awe-inspiring temples and pyramids, highly accurate calendars, mathematics and hieroglyphics, and a complex social and political order" ("Collapse..." 1). Urban centers were important to the Maya during the Classic period; they offered the Mayans a central place to practice religion.
The mass media over the years has had such a profound role in creating an image on how women should be viewed. From their appearance to what their duties are in everyday life, the media has made sure to depict unrealistic images of women. These images have caused not only the male public but women themselves to believe that they must attain a certain kind of body or occupation to fit into society. Women often feel obligated and pressured to comply to this praised image of perfection.
Gender differences are best understood as a process of socialization, to organize the roles each individual have to fulfil in society. From parents to teachers, religions, media, and peers; we observe and make sense of the behaviors exhibited by the people around us since young. We imitate and construct our own understanding of how to be of a particular gender, and of how to position ourselves. Parents socialize their children based on their biological sex, and this process starts as soon as the sex of the baby is known. Gender is hence socially constructed.
explores not only the way in which patriarchal society, through its concepts of gender , its objectification of women in gender roles, and its institutionalization of marriage, constrains and oppresses women, but also the way in which it, ultimately, erases women and feminine desires. Because women are only secondary and other, they become the invisible counterparts to their husbands, with no desires, no voice, no identity. (Wohlpart 3).
Binge Drinking is an intriguing phenomenon that many college students take part in all across the country. The issue of binge drinking has been a problem on college campuses for decades. Binge drinking has many horrible effects, but the problem starts with the causes for it. If the causes could be controlled then the issue would not get out of hand. Many college students give different causes for their drinking problems, and experts on the subject have their explanations as well. The problem is, while growing through adolescence anything can become an excuse for drinking, such as ¡§its Thursday the day before Friday, we need to drink¡¨ or, ¡§it¡¦s the last Wednesday of the semester, lets get some beer.¡¨
Women have been placed in the role of undesired in a male dominated world. Media has presented the idea that women should be subservient and inferior to men. Women are sexualized and degraded in American society. These images are accepted as the norms of the society. The images influence sexuality, societal roles, and the physical appearance. Pessimistic thoughts of women can change through technology. Although more images of positive role models are presented in society, women still are presented in submissive roles.
The Mayans did not function in the form of a country, but in the form of “city-states”. “The city states were in frequent contact with the other city states in the region” (http://sacredsites.com ). Eventually the Mayans had Kings, but before that they functioned on a system that was more council related. Even after there were kings the kings still had a group of advisors. There was also an aristocracy in the Mayan society. Coming in after the royals and aristocracy but before the regular citizens were the priests. The priests were highly regarded and often served as the advisor to the
Social Construction of Gender Today’s society plays a very important role in the construction of gender. Gender is a type of issue that has raised many questions over the years in defining and debating if both male and female are equal. Today, gender is constructed in four different ways. The The first way gender is defined is by the family in which a child is raised.
Socially constructed gender roles have a large impact on the society that we are bred in. Boys and girls are told from a young age what is considered normal for each of them based on what sex they were assigned. Girls are immediately told to be shy but not rude, love the color pink, and clean and cook in preparation of the man they are inevitably going to marry. Boys are told to ‘be men’ and never cry in the presence of anyone, emotions are for girls and anything less would be seen as merely weak. Parents usually prescribe their own upbringings to how their children should be brought up; girls are constantly reminded to watch how they come off to people. Girls must clean and cook, but never show frustration, smile even if she’s scared of unfamiliar
The social construction of gender leads to the creation and sustainment of sex roles that we have been taught to adhere to since birth that results to social doings through the creation of gender – who we talk, how we dress and who we associate with. Men are taught to masculine qualities like not crying and women are taught to do feminine characteristics like playing with dolls and wearing dresses. A prime example of this is in the article written my Diane Reay, that analyzes the construction female behavior, where those who identified as “girlies” care about their appearance and we regarded to as stupid by their classmates. Those who challenged the feminine norms, where referred to as “spice girls” and labeled as bitches or little cows by their teachers because they where thought to be negative influences to the rest of the class. Reay states that, “boys maintain the hierarchy of social superiority of masculinity by devaluing the female world,” (Reay, 2014, pg. 257) by esteeming males over females, it creates gendered expressions that depict once gender more promising that the other in society, where self-declared tomboy Jodie stated that, “Girls can be good, bad or- best of all – they can be boys,” (Reay, 2014, pg. 257) which solidifies the social norm of males being better than