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Gender stereotypes and sexual expectations of women differ from those of men
Sexism in society towards women
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Today's society has an ideology of what assertive males should be. As the boys grow up they are told that they are strong, hard-working and should be dominant. This leads to portraying girls as being weak, sensitive, and mostly that they are submissive. Many people assume that a girl's role in society is to stay at home and take care of their children. This is because of the sexism that society has created for women. Sexism is the stereotyping or discrimination typically against women based on gender. This plays a major role in teen dating violence because, since a young age, boys are taught that girls should show respect and obey them in any given circumstances which contribute to macho values for boys. There was a study done to both girls
The War Against Boys is the story of our cultural attack on the modern male. Twenty-first century men are looked down-upon, laughed at, and many times emasculated in our day-to-day lives. In her book, Christina Hoff Sommers does an excellent job reminding us that men are responsible for a lot of good in the world: “This book tells the story of how it has become fashionable to attribute pathology to millions of healthy male children. It is a story of how we are turning against boys and forgetting a simple truth: that the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the word.” Our culture has promoted a skewed view; most people believe that women are treated unfairly, that
Rachel Simmons was amazed there were so many books regarding aggression in boys, but was unable to find any books on the subject of girls’ aggression. The experiments that were conducted regarding aggression were also only performed using males. Many psychologists considered aggression to be behavior such as hitting, punching, name calling and threatening others as a male issue. Simmons discovered from the many interviews she conducted on women that aggression is just as much a female issue. In her book, “The Odd Girl Out: The hidden culture of aggression in girls”, Simmons interviews many women and girls who were victims of bullying, were the actual bully, and also people who witnessed the abuse. Simmons’ purpose for writing this book was to make everyone aware of the secretive way girls bully each other, and to show how they hide their aggression, which many times is the result of their own struggle for acceptance. This book was effective because Simmons also gives the reader suggestions to help everyone involved in some form of aggressive behavior know how to deal with this behavior, and the lifelong consequences it has on everyone involved.
The idea that teenage boys should act a certain way towards females is usually instilled in them at a young age. According to Devor, “ Femininity must be expressed through modes of… action which communicate weakness, dependency, ineffectualness, availability for sexual or emotional service, and sensitivity to the needs of others” (Devor 6-7). In other words, men have to place women on a lower pedestal because of a woman’s so called “needs” (Devor 6). The “needs” that women express are feminine characteristics. The characteristics of females listed by Devor, does not show any sign of power or dominance. Since society believes gender is a patriarchy, females have no influence and need attention. This shows that men adjust their actions around women, since they believe that women need special attention. Furthermore, if a male possesses anything non-masculine,
The headline, “Recession Causes Increase in Teen Dating Violence”, clearly affirms a causal relationship between the economic recession, and the increase in teen relationship violence. Specifically, causation can be described as one event causing an effect within a specific scenario. As you see in the headline title, a recession assumes the responsibility for an increase in teen date violence. Hence, with this headline we observe a cause and effect relationship.
What is Love? Webster’s dictionary defines love as a strong, deep affection. Many of those who are or have been in love can definitely agree with that. My definition for love is all of earth’s surroundings that make one feel good or happy; to me, love is not just love towards another, but it is also love towards something beyond. Everyone knows that love is a beautiful thing to experience: it feels like all the happiness in the world is in your hands and you could never be happier. But what happens, coming from a woman’s perspective, when your husband uses that love as a weapon against you? What if he raised his hands against his woman, bruising his hands so that they started to swell up? Well, that is the case in many women’s lives around the world who are torn apart in a war between fighting for love and fighting for survival. Many people debate about whether or not love is blind; in these terrible acts of domestic strife, love is blind and blinding. Love becomes blind when people, especially in violent relationships, tend to avoid the truth.
...rkshop, open discussion once they leave the intervention they go back to the neighborhood where 7 out of 10 are victims of dating violence and most cases following the mother or father foot step.
To say that girls are different from boys is an understatement. Boys and girls are treated and raised differently while growing up in a patriarchal environment(Chesney-Lind & Sheldon. Chapter 6); the diverse ways in which they mature physically and emotionally, boy’s and girl’s involvement or path that leads to their potential delinquency are worlds apart. In addition, bombardment by role models and advertisements of society plays a large aspect in the differences between boys and girls. The majority of female role m...
The biggest culprits are video games, movies and television, rap music and rappers, and porn. 31% of men and boys claim to be addicted to video games. The more addictive video games are the more violent ones. Boys can come to idolize their video game characters who are normally aggressive, violent and can not express themselves in a healthy manner. A study by the surgeon general shows that violent video games will make boys more aggressive and less sympathetic to other people's pain. Violence in movies will also do that, but more importantly, the movies only portrait three stereotypes as “real men”. First is the silent but deadly. He is aggressive, violent and does not express any emotions; he is a James Bond type character. Secondly, there is the superhero. He is also aggressive and violent, but he possess some skill to make him more violent and better than other men. Lastly is the man-child. He is not aggressive or violent, but he proves his masculinity through doing stupid things like partying, excessive drinking, drugs and the objectification of women. Though most music does not spread great messages for young children, the rap industry is currently the worst and the most influential on boys. It associates being a real man with fame, power, money, excessive drinking, drugs and having sex with lots of women. Finally, porn is a huge contributor to the masculine identity currently being forced on boys,
It’s easy for sexual harassment and relationship violence to be dismissed as only “adult” issues. On the contrary, these problems have proven to be pervasive in both junior and senior high schools. Although statistics show that “nearly half of students are sexually harassed in school” (Koebler, 2011), sexual harassment and dating violence are not being appropriately addressed in schools and are in essence, being shoved under the table. These are not fleeting issues, because sexual harassment and domestic violence can be particularly harmful to victims and have long-lasting, detrimental effects. One senior girl at Hoover High School said she has experienced sexual harassment and dating violence first hand,
Examining the most common characteristics of a violent offender, simply being a man can be considered a risk factor. The male gender is characterized by traits like strength, and a natural willingness to defend what is theirs. Such behaviors are driven by male hormones, which are utilized in the regulation of human aggression. Though girls comprise a smaller overall portion of adolescent arrests, the murder of Reena Virk in 1997, in which seven girls and one boy brutally assaulted and drowned a fellow classmate , shifts focus back onto juvenile female violence. While male offenders, often choose to act as individuals; the “girl-gang” phenomenon has recently caught the attention of researchers. Institutes from Canada, as well as the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany have published studies, emphasizing increasing female violence and the issue of “girl-gangs”. After exceptionally violent murders, the public tends to be very sensitive and biased regarding these issues, influenced heavily by the media. Therefore, it is important to distinguish between ordinary myths and statistics. Theories such as the Liberal Feminist View, as well as the Power-Control Theory approach female violence as it being the result of a constantly changing society. To fully comprehend the nature of female violence, however, a combination of social, economic, biological and psychological factors have to be taken into consideration. Commonly boys use violence to solve a conflict and to protect their honor girls instead, see it as a way of emancipation, to prove that they are not the weaker sex.
So why are girls so “aggressive?” Nicki Crick, PhD, a researcher at the University of Minnesota says: “Physical aggression isn’t very accepted for girls, so they turn to manipulation and emotional threats as weapons” (Murray, par 3). “In recent research, it indicates that gender differences in aggression disappears when the definition of aggression is broadened to include aggressive acts in whish the victim’s personal relationships are manipulated of damaged-- that is, relational aggression” (Miller, 145).
Society assumes that the romances should hold a very high role in a woman’s life. In the movie Clueless Cher sets up her teachers because she thinks it is what will make them happy. Cher also tries to set up her new friend Tai with a popular boy because she thinks that is “helping”. In “Teen Mags: How to Get a Guy, Drop 20 Pounds, and Lose Your self-Esteem” Higginbotham explains how teen magazines perpetuate societal standards. At
As humans, we are all fascinated by the idea of love. We believed that only love can save us from our emptiness and brokenness. The feelings of being with someone you love is astonishing, because the mental connection is rare. The desire of wanting to give everything and care for that person is usually valid in dating. One feels butterflies in their stomach, their heart races when one sees their significant others, flushed cheeks, disorganized thoughts etc. But what if the feeling of heavy breathing and heart racing is caused by the fear of being physically abused by your partner? What if the flushed cheeks turn into purple bruises, the disorganized thoughts come from the insults and manipulation from you partner and the butterflies are the fear of your own safety.
As soon as a child is born a sort of social conditioning begins. The child whether a boy or a girl will end up being taught many different sets of behaviours and how they should act. A boy is taught things such as sports, how to be complete and self reliant. He is also taught to be strong; such as when you get hurt to not cry, as society expects boys to not cry. Boys are also taught not to show emotions in anyway and to not show anyone how they feel or to not give the correct answer if asked how they feel. Boys are taught that this is the masculine gender role, and since this is how boys are expected to act, then this is the only way boys should act. Apparently this is how boys become men. Girls on the other hand are taught many different behaviours. They are taught house keeping and how to cooperate with and please others. Girls are also taught to be soft; if someone falls down they are expected to comfort them and make them feel better. Girls are also expected to be emotional because it is part of their nature. Girls are taught that these are expected from a girl and that this is the only way to act. If there is sort of a mismatch between what somebody wants and what society expects them to do then there may be difficulties. If there is only a minor or small mismatch, society may accept that particular person, and may be able to cope with this reasonably well. If there is a major or large mismatch between what the person wants to do or act and what society expects, then society may not accept this person and there may be severe emotional trauma.
Society has deemed women as weak, and if women are to be considered weak they are also more vulnerable. We have built up this image of women being weak, and we have taught our boys to believe the same thing. Young boys are learning from their fathers and other men that they are surrounded by, to believe they will always be more powerful than women because women are too small to be strong and too weak minded to be smart. As a result, a man who feels as though he is not powerful in his family or at his job may target a woman he feels is