Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Mann's The Difference and Bernard Lefkowitz's Our Guys

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Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Mann's The The Difference: Growing Up Female in America and Bernard Lefkowitz's Our Guys

Gender stereotypes are common in the United States today, even though many men and women have been working hard to defeat it. The task is made difficult however, when society in general implants the idea of gender roles into the mind of a child. Two authors, Judy Mann of The Difference and Bernard Lefkowitz of Our Guys face the issue of gender roles and stereotypes, and how they affect our lives today.

Our Guys focuses on the way that young boys are brought up by society by telling the true story of a group of Glen Ridge, New Jersey teenage boys who sexually assaulted a young retarded girl. Neither the boys nor the townspeople saw what they did as wrong, and tried everything in their power to get them acquitted. They were however, fighting for the wrong cause. It was the boys’ parents and society itself that gave the teens the illusion that they, as males, should be given free range and power over those weaker than themselves. From the time these boys in question were born, their parents and their environment (including the composition of their nuclear families, i.e. ratio of males to females) made them kings. They were privileged teens and the fact that they were male made them even more so. All the ‘jocks’ involved were angels in their mothers’ eyes, who was in most cases, the only female influence in their lives and not a very good one at that (135).

The Glen Ridge boys, affectionately known to their peers as "our guys", were brought up as stereotypical boys, worsened by the "boys will be boys" attitude adopted by their parents, teachers and neighbors (Lefkowitz, 73). This ...

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...only accepted stereotypes are not based in reality at all, and that these stereotypes are harmful to everyone, not just the victims of being typecast. This conclusion is correct in all senses. Judy Mann’s book shows that the only real difference between men and women are their reproductive organs (24). Many professionals support this fact, but not society. Bernard Lefkowitz’s retelling of what happened to the young girl in Glen Ridge, New Jersey shows that believing that women are inferior can have terrifying repercussions. Society’s perception of people and the practice of labeling based on gender must be eliminated in order for women and men to live equally. These books simply help to make more people aware of the problem, which is only part of the solution.

Works Cited

Mann, Judy. The Difference: Growing up Female in America. New York: Warner, 1994.

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