Societal Influence on Gender Roles and Identity

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Gender, sex, gender roles, masculine, and feminine; these are all things that can be shaped by society. Your gender roles can change, but not your sex; that is given at birth. If gender is shaped a certain way, then that changes us to fit those societal norms of gender roles, masculinity and femininity, patriarchy, and how to maintain this gender order. Sex is based on the biological features of a human to say if they are male or female. While gender is more affected by the social and cultural expectations to say whether you are male or female. Allan Johnson would also describe it similarly “sex’ was used to refer to anything related to being female or male. Gender was about grammatical construction, which often had nothing to do with sex”(Johnson) …show more content…

He is saying that ses refers to you being male or female, while gender is more about the pronouns you use. Femininity and masculinity determine your gender, but your sex is determined biologically. “The public response to feminism has been ferociously defensive precisely because feminism touches such a deep nerve of truth and the denial that keeps us from it. If feminism were truly ridiculous, it would be ignored. But it isn 't ridiculous, and so provokes a vigorous backlash.”(Johnson) Johnson is talking about feminism and the backlash it gets for being around. The point made about it being ridiculous In the poem “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, we see that she talks about the expectations of a woman in her culture. “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap;wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don 't walk bareheaded in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil…”(Kincaid) These for the most part overlap with everyone. Referring to the Johnson article, he would think that these are not true and women do not have to be strictly this way. Men and women can have the same traits. There is no reason that they have to be opposites. Johnson mentions the polar opposite idea“A related problem with femininity and masculinity is that when we split humanity in half we tend to see women and men as polar …show more content…

Most movies you see the knight in shining armor or someone 's prince charming. In the movie Mona Lisa Smile most of the girls ' main goals was to find their husband. The husband was seen as the hero of theirs and was going to whisk them away from the “finishing school”. “Don 't disregard our tradition just because you are subversive. Dont disrespect this class just because you 're married.”(Mona Lisa Smile) This relate because of it is their tradition to be getting married while in that school. Women have been able to also scare men by their presence and competitiveness in the workplace as Johnson talks about. “Because patriarchy defines women as subordinate and “other,” men can take women’s exclusion from serious competition for granted. As a result, many men have been rudely awakened by women’s entry into hitherto male-only workplaces.”(Johnson) Because of patriarchy men are worried that women will be taking over their jobs. This is a horrible thing because of the lack of respect for women. ITs sad that there are still people in the world that are like

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