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History of gender roles
How have gender roles changed through history
Gender selection views
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For centuries there had been one sex that dominated the development of society. Laws, religion and lifestyle all revolved around the idea that one sex, the male sex, was dominant. Oppressed and considered inferior, women would obey the men, forgo all rights and accept all responsibility. Only recently, with the emergence of the women’s liberation movement, have both sexes been considered equal. For the first time in human history, both sexes have been given the chance to fulfill their potentials without discrimination. Parents, despite preferences of having a girl, or a boy, have known that regardless, their child would have an equal opportunity at life. The cutting edge technology, however, means that all this could change. The ability of parents to actually select the gender of their child could have not only devastating effects on society, but on the lives of so many children and parents. Whether parents had a girl or a boy has always been left up to nature to decide. To date, no-one has dared interfere with the genetic workings of the body, mainly because the technology did not exist to do it. Now, with the dawn of the twenty-first century, that technology has arrived and mankind is faced with a very important decision: whether or not to “play God” and manipulate the gender of their child to suit their preferences. The romance of having the perfect nuclear family, with two boys and two girls’ fills the heads of young couples everywhere, and when given the opportunity, m...
An absolute monarch is a ruler by divine right who has control over every portion of his kingdom. The most famous absolute monarch, Louis XIV, had the longest reign of any of the French kings. Louis achieved this as a result of his reformed laws, foreign policy, a smart economic advisor, and his decision to deny power to the nobility. Although some of these ideas could be viewed as having a negative impacting on France, overall Louis XIV’s absolute government was beneficial to the development of his country.
Louis XIV (the fourteenth) was an absolute monarch. He was often called "the Sun King," and ruled over France. He devoted himself to helping France achieve economic, political, and cultural prominence. Many historians believe the phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely" mirrors Louis' reign. Louis XIV revoked the Edict on Nantes, changing the economy of France in one motion. By creating the city of Versailles and being a major patron of the arts, Louis was very influential on French culture. He made France go almost bankrupt from his costly wars and failures. Louis was very corrupt in his power, and it shown in all he did to change France; he got what he wanted, when he wanted it.
In her example, she speaks of how this advertisement reestablishes the idea of loving your body. Women have curves, they have hips, they have thighs. In the Nike advertisement it makes the [consumer] feel proud of their strong, athletic body (Haley pg 108). The woman in the Playtex display has the ideal body type of a runner. This model is strong, and she has the body of an athlete. Just like any runner, and most female athletes, her strengths are hidden. With lean muscle brought upon by playing sports, women often do not look as strong as they really are. Under those tights, she has “thunder thighs”. She has calves and shins of steel from keeping her toes up. She has a sculpted upper back from swinging her arms and keeping her shoulders relaxed. She has and unbelievably strong core from reaching her legs out in each stride, and holding her body
When Louis the XIV began his rule in 1643, his actions immediately began to suggest and absolute dictatorship. Because of the misery he had previously suffered, one of the first things he did was to decrease the power of the nobility. He withdrew himself from the rich upper class, doing everything secretly. The wealth had no connection to Louis, and therefore all power they previously had was gone. He had complete control over the nobles, spying, going through mail, and a secret police force made sure that Louis had absolute power. Louis appointed all of his officials, middle class men who served him without wanting any power. Louis wanted it clear that none of his power would be shared. He wanted "people to know by the rank of the men who served him that he had no intention of sharing power with them." If Louis XIV appointed advisors from the upper classes, they would expect to gain power, and Louis was not willing to give it to them. The way Louis XIV ruled, the sole powerful leader, made him an absolute ruler. He had divine rule, and did not want to give any power to anyone other than himself. These beliefs made him an absolute ruler.
A single moment, a single movement, a single protest against the system is the first step to finding change. For every parent that says “leave my child intact”, it would be one day closer to a time when it will be socially appalling to cosmetically alter an infant child who is incapable of consent or comprehension. The fluidity, complexity, and ambiguity of human sexuality extends far beyond sexual preference and onward into gender and sex. Accepting that some things will never fit within a textbook definition, and celebrating difference rather than condemning it, would fulfil the dream of many minds such as Fausto-Sterling and Butler as well as the author. Only time and individuals that dare to reject the flawed system can ease the binds of ignorance that tie society so tightly to an outdated Victorian mindset of sex and gender.
Louis XIV of France was born to Anne of Austria and Louis XIII in 1638 after more than twenty years of childless marriage. The birth was seen as a miracle and the child was considered to be a gift from God by the people of France, and thus was named accordingly. Louis ‘le Dieudonné’ was to become one of the most powerful kings in early-modern Europe, ruling over twenty million people and reigning for over seventy years (until his death in 1715), one of the longest reigns in European history. Louis XIV was a formidable figure, in control of both the largest standing army in Europe at that time and highly complicated political system, for which he has been hailed as the propagator of “early modern state building”. His reign and in particular the longevity of his reign have frequently been questioned. E.H Kossman described Louis’s reign as “absolutism in its most perfect form”, while Briggs argued that “the absolutism of Louis XIV was often little more than a façade, behind which many of the old limitations continued to operate”. It is my belief that the exploration of the idea of ‘absolute monarchy’ could serve to obtain some clarity on the matter.
...socially directed hormonal instructions which specify that females will want to have children and will therefore find themselves relatively helpless and dependent on males for support and protection. The schema claims that males are innately aggressive and competitive and therefore will dominate over females. The social hegemony of this ideology ensures that we are all raised to practice gender roles which will confirm this vision of the nature of the sexes. Fortunately, our training to gender roles is neither complete nor uniform. As a result, it is possible to point to multitudinous exceptions to, and variations on, these themes. Biological evidence is equivocal about the source of gender roles; psychological androgyny is a widely accepted concept. It seems most likely that gender roles are the result of systematic power imbalances based on gender discrimination.9
of the same sex, then they are more apt to have a third. A second
...representation of body is seamlessly depicted in today’s contemporary culture. Without question, body fat is a controversial aspect to the female population. The ad does this for many purposes as discussed before. Bocock provides evidence that the reason women consume a large amount of goods is because of the multiple ways in which these products can correspond to the way they feel. Women in particular, buy Body Language Sportswear clothing to have a meaning, or emotional attachment to it. The advertiser’s use celebrities as mentioned above to represent these images. In return, the advertising company not only gains profit, but also expands their mass production. Brands such as this will eventually skyrocket through the spread of market. As a result, this ad evidently presents the ideological and theoretical values for marketing strategies intended to mediate people
Everyone is familiar with her examples of women smiling in ads to sell wares. I see her point, but I wonder why she makes it. I am female, if I’m purchasing something it’s typically something that will make my life better happier, if the person in the ad doesn’t look happy why would I want to buy the product. This is a conscious decision by a marketing company to show us happiness with a manipulated smile. Cunningham believes that change is already in the air and that women are going to be taken more seriously if we show more women with a media presence not smiling. She emphasizes her point with Nike ads of nonsmiling “athletes sweating, reaching, pushing themselves” (Cunningham 176). Again, as a consumer, I do not expect to see a smiling running
Genetic Engineering is harmful because it has produced Gendercide in countries such as China and India. Genetic engineering allows sex selection to become easier. The imbalance between genders continues to rise. Clayton Farris states, “In China the imbalance between sexes was 108 boys to 100 girls in the late 1980s, for the generation of of the early 2000s it was 124 to 100. In some chinese provinces is an unprecedented 130 to 100”(Farris 63).The imbalance between sexes is “unprecedented”. Parents constantly use genetics to get the gender they value. Many parents choose boys in China which leads to the outrageous number of “130 to 100”. Chinese parents value men more than women in their culture. Sex selection gives them the opportunity to get what they want. Their desire sex leads them into Gendercide. Genetic
Dahl, Edgar. Boy or Girl: Should Parents Be Allowed to Choose the Sex of Their Children?. Melbourne: Victoria 3010, 2005.
From the beginning of time, females have played a powerful role in the shaping of this world. They have stood by idly and watched as this country moved on without them, and yet they have demanded equal rights as the nation rolls along. Through the years the common belief has been that women could not perform as well as men in anything, but over the years that belief has been proven wrong time and time again. So as time marches on, women have clawed and fought their way up the ladder to gain much needed equal respect from the opposite sex. However, after many years of pain and suffering, the battle for equal rights has not yet been won. Since women have fought for a long time and proven their importance in society, they deserve the same rights as men.
For a pregnant couple, it is common to be asked what gender your child is going to be: “are you having a boy or a girl?” However, what happens when it is difficult for a child to be classified in a specific gender? It is known that the XX chromosomes make up the genetic blueprint for a female and XY chromosomes make up the blueprint for a male. However, several people have not been identified as either a XX or a XY child. The condition “hermaphroditism”, commonly known as intersex, is the condition where a baby is “born with ambiguous genitalia…abnormally developed genitals that do not clearly identify the child as male or female” (Switzer 67). Thus, intersex people have been coined with the chromosomes XXXY due to uncertainty of which category they belong to. Usually with this condition, the baby would either have an abnormally large clitoris, an abnormally small penis, or both. Hermaphroditism, which falls under the “diagnosis of Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD), affects 1 in 2,000 children each year” (James). A common resolution is for the parent to choose the gender of the child, have the child undergo corrective surgery, and proceed to rear the child in the role of the selected gender. However, it has been argued that this method negatively affects the child both physically and psychologically. So, should parents be able to choose the gender for an intersex child? Some people might support the idea of parents choosing a child’s gender since it can be seen as a cultural aspect of their family and because parents have the freedom of choice. However, it is unreasonable and immoral for a parent to do so as it causes the child to enter into a struggle of self-identity, it does not allow the child to decide on having reconstru...
Nature's tools assign females as the caregivers and nurturers of the world. Males are assigned the role of provider, some would argue, if at least only to provide the sperm. Obviously, there is much more involved in the role of a father than just sperm donation, however nature only defines our roles and behaviors to a certain degree. The rest of the definition of our respective parenting roles is dependent on attitudes and norms that prevail in our spheres of influence. In the article, "The Biological Limits of Gender Construction", J. Richard Udry argues that childhood gender socialization is limited by biological processes that produce behavioral predispositions. For example, females fetuses, in the second trimester, exposed to higher levels of testosterone from the mother were ...