Family+-+'Becoming+Members+of+Society'

Family: "Becoming Members of Society"

It seems to me that the reasoning behind natural gender roles and identity is just one big circle. Children see in society the way others of both genders act, and then see how to behave and not behave, so then the children begin to act in these manners, which creates a percieved way that they "should act", if anyone deviates, they're ostracized from society, which brings them to how they "should act" and then these behaviors seem natural because of "monkey see, monkey do" and we then get our natural gender roles. I hope that kind of made sense, it's actually pretty hard to describe circular reasoning. All in all gender roles and identity are formed because of societal dictations, and since no one wants to be ostracized, they follow them, which creates the false idea that these roles were always there. Take young children for example, they determine another's gender by the way the act and dress and compare it to the outside information of how each gender is suppossed to dress and act. "In one study, young school children, who were given dolls and asked to identify their gender, overwhelmingly identified the gender of the dolls on the basis of attributes such as hair length or clothing style, in spite the fact that the dolls were antanomically correct (426)." To some, this might be a good thing since determining gender in this fashion "protects" the child from one of the most evil and unutterable things anyone could possibly think of: sex. Even today though, people, much older than elementary school children, still use these indicators that don't always work, often because they try to get around the awkward question of "so... are you a girl or a boy?" To others, this idea of natural gender is just the way it is, but they're the ones who've simply succumbed to society's circular logic. If something is simply because "that's the way things are", then there wouldn't be cultures that have different ideas and different kinds of gender identity. Considering, too, that our contemporary culture is very much built on the idea that people can be whatever they aspire to, regarless of social restrictions, the idea of determined gender roles and identity makes little to no sense because gender identity, and the subsequent "should-be's" of gender roles are social restrictions on people.

Then there are gender roles themselves, which are based solely on two pricinciples, one for each gender: masculinity and femininity. These principles are another facto which goes into determining a person's gender identity, "masculine characteristics are used to identify persons as males, while feminine ones are used as signifiers for femaleness (427)", so to me, that means there is illogical logic behind what it means to "act like a girl" or "act like a boy". The idea of gender roles suggests that there are certain activities and behaviors that are simply for a specific genders, "it's a girl thing" or "that's a boy's sport". This kind of mindset can cause a worthless self-defense for otherwise unacceptable behaviors, it's more acceptable for boys to be aggressive while it's acceptable for girls to be gossipy, despite that both behaviors are usually frowned upon. Because of this, there is assumed natural roles for males and females to take on, which is where we derrive our ideas of gender roles, again, creating a circle. Again, if a person steps outside of their determined gender role, say a girl playing football or a guy takes up dancing, they can only expect to "be rewarded with ridicule or scorn (428)." However, these activities can be balanced out, if you will, depending on how in-tune the person is with the rest of their gender identity - a guy who dances may not be ridiculed if he shows more masculine traits - but this may also not happen, and ridicule occurs all the same. This leads me to think that the general attitude and beliefs about gender are just wrong. To me, these attributes, masculinity and feminity, in their traditional roles of dominant aggression and passive subordination respectively, work more like the Tao, everyone has them in some fashion or another, no one is strictly one-sided, and both are necessary for everyday life and each one has it's strenghts and weaknesses that make ideal or undesirable for certain scenarios. When gender identity is seen in this light, then the subsequent roles are thrown out and it becomes up to the individual person's ability. Then, it's simply a matter of acceptance, which wouldn't be too hard as the societal circle tends to work fast if everyone is in agreeance, and we get a step closer to the ideal "everyone is able to be themselves regardless of restrictions" that everyone believes in.

I think the most interesting section of the article is the part concerning how gender is conveyed "body posture, speech patterns, and styles of dress which demonstrate and support the assumption of dominance and authority convey an impression of masculinity (430)." The article discusses that people who give off masculine vibes are people "[maximize] the amount of space they physically occupy ... attempt to control the direction of conversation ... speak more loudly (431)" are seen as more masculine, with the opposite being true for people being seen as feminine. To me, these aren't so much gender traits as they are personality traits. Usually, a person's speech and writing styles are recognizable, if developed enough, based on word choice, stress, and syntax, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's representative of their gender. People, male or female, in positions of power need to be be in command with little possiblity of being easily swayed. The only reason authoritative speech seems masculine, and thus male, is because society dictates that guys are supposed to be assertive and girls are to be submissive. Since nobody follows these dictions strictly to the T, are we to asume that the gender line is being blurred? No, it's that we're using an old system that's becoming, if not already is, obsolete in today's cultural norms and beliefs; and since a person's mannerisms, or lack thereof, do not determine a person's gender, only the personality, it is safe to assume that the only way to determine "gender" is by which set of reproductive system one possesses, everything else is the person's personality.