Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Chapter 10
The topic of becoming boys and girls is what I'd like to comment on this week. I've always known the difference between sex and gender. I never realized how young people start to discriminate between different genders though. Of course I realized that as a young boy or girl they understand that girls do not have a penis and that boys do. This is sex discrimination though. However, I didn't know that as young as 2 years old a child applies gender labels such as "lady" and "man". They also distinguish between nurses and police officers as different genders based solely on their role in society. I'm not sure this is a good thing. I think as young children, they should be able to view everyone as "equal" I guess. "Equal" meaning that a man or woman can do any job. Children develop stereotypes so early in life. It is sad to think this way. If children didn't think this way so early in life, more people would be open about different sexualities later in life.
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I completely agree with you that this phenomenon is very sad, however, though we have a very long way to come, it is also something that is changing. What you speaking of directly relates to two forms of equality, gender equality, i.e. the role of a cop vs. nurse, but with the idea of gender equality also comes the idea of gender identity and ones right to choose their gender not in relation to the sexual organ with which they were born. Gender Identify had very little room for fluidity at this time in our culture and that is heavily restrictive to many individuals. In terms of gender equality, there are huge strides, but also huge gaps, for example, more women are graduating form college and at a higher level of academic prestige then men now and yet men still hold the majority of top positions and a significant gap in pay still exists between men and women. Culturally women still deal with forms of inequality by objectification and double standards of sexual activity, what is even more frightening about the cultural inequality that women suffer from though, is that slut shaming (that is the actually term) is strongly reinforced by women who socially rank and insult each other heavily based on their peers sexual decisions and they ways in which they choose to interact with men. Which directly relates to the antiquated idea that as a woman, our sexuality is our most important quality we possess, as it will define who we marry and reflects that our physical beauty is our worth. I find that to be one of the most difficult to approach ideas, on the one hand we have cultural female leaders such a Lena Dunham, Emma Watson and Beyonce who encourage woman to not feel oppressed or confined by the norms asked of them by society and on the other is is ourselves, as women, who continue the culture. It is certainly time for a change and interesting that such concepts and ideas begin to be part of our impressions as young as two.
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