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?
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 two societies found in The Yellow Wallpaper and Othello are both patriarchal in nature; the stories themselves take up the issue of women’s oppression in each society. Patriarchy “is defined as the source of women’s oppression and gender inequalities in which men, as a group, dominate women as another group” (Johnson as cited in Ravari 155 ). Male superiority is demonstrated in the two texts in the way female characters serve and obey their husbands, and how the male characters patronize and cause detriment towards the female characters. Although there are similarities in the effects and consequences the women feel, the differences in culture, era and location of the two stories causes a discrepancy in the experiences of the women from
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 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.
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 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)
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).
In reality, gender is not based on one’s genetic make-up or their reproductive organs. Expanding on this, an individual does not have any control over their assigned gender, but everyone has a gender identity, which is one’s internal sense of being male or female. From a sociocultural perspective, gender roles have the greatest influence on gender as a social construction. Gender roles are the attitudes, behaviors, rights, and responsibilities that particular cultural groups associate with each sex. In regards to gender, the social construction theory acknowledges the connection the topic has with power and meaning, and states that social interaction, or “language” controls how these things are portrayed to individuals. Similarly, sexuality is socially constructed in a sense that, one’s sexual orientation depends on what they are taught to be “socially acceptable”. For example, a person who is raised by homophobic parents would most likely be taught that every aspect of homosexuality is wrong, and therefore they would be influenced to be heterosexual. While many would like to believe that people are born with their sexual orientation, that is far from the truth. All in all, when looking at the big picture, it is clear that race, gender,
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
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.¡¨
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.
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
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.
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