Gender Training In Society Essay, Research Paper

Investigation Into Gender Bias

I remember the day well: It was a sunny, Sunday afternoon and my friends and I were playing inside the house. Our electric race car track wasn?t working and we were quickly becoming frustrated of trying to fix it. Lego had become boring a couple hours earlier, so we had nothing to do. We walked upstairs and looked outside, to see my friends? sisters playing house out on the deck. They were having so much fun, wearing shorts and a T-shirt in the balmy summer weather that all three of us wanted to go out and play house with them. We all knew that each of us wanted to be outside but no-one was going to ask the girls if we could play house. The reason was obvious: the girls were playing a girl game and us boys just didn?t play girl games.

This is only one example of situations that occur every day, situations when we feel uncomfortable because of “gender training”. Gender training in our society starts very early in our life. From the long dresses of Cinderella to the macho attitude of Prince Charming, wearing pink baby clothes instead of blue or green: these are all examples of early gender training. In this essay I will talk about the extent of gender training, its effects on our society and their consequences, good or bad.

Today there is much talk as to why boys traditionally wear blue as babies and girls wear pink. Sometimes in peoples? arguments, they forget to look closely at the beginning. I would like to open up a question for debate on this topic: Is pink really assigned to baby girls as the colour to wear, or is it a natural taste of the feminine mind? And for baby boys, does blue represent a sense of masculinity from their fathers, or perhaps, even a false sense of masculinity from the women, who traditionally bought their clothes?

After much thought, I think that the colours of “blue and pink” were originally chosen by the adults who were attracted to those colours by personal reasons and the two colours have now become a rigid tradition which some people like to change, simply in their own personal interest.

Recently, I found a web page on the Internet that described what certain colours showed to our brains. All colours had some sort of optimistic feel, and this site was obviously a “hippie-made site” (shown by the bleeding background and VW Van on the bottom) however, I think that the text is worth being looked at. White – Protection, peace, truth, inspiration, growth. Green – Healing, money, luck, Harmonic Balance. Red – Sexual love, passion, energy, vitality. Yellow – Opening of the intellect, stimulation of the mind. Purple – Spiritual power, strength. Blue – Healing, meditation, tranquillity, spiritual development, protection. Pink – Emotional love, happiness, friendship, joy. Orange – Strength, optimism, success. Black – the end, death, sudden change, new beginnings. It has always been know that colours affect the way you think. Painters use colours such as yellow to “cheer up” and “open up” a room and I?ve heard that holding a piece of yellow paper with the word “think” on it helps you remember things during an exam! What I am interested now is whether or not gender training as a baby is affecting our views of the world. If you wear pink as a baby and are exposed to pink often (wallpaper of you room, dolls, etc.) perhaps you have strong emotional love and energy, for example. Or, on the guys side, maybe after years of seeing blue you think more of tranquillity, protection and healing or, after wearing red you have passionate moods with energy and (from another source) possibly aggression . If you like to wear black, does that give you a grim outlook on the world, like death or the end? I think that is an area where research could be done and some interesting results occur, helping our future generations understand and possibly control their personal tastes.

All of our life, we are faced with situations where we feel uncomfortable because of gender training. Girls and boys have similar problems, especially as kids. For example, two boys are playing in a sandbox and one girl is by herself playing with her dolls. She isn?t having much fun by herself, but she knows it would be lots of fun in the sandbox. The only problem is that girls can?t play in the sandbox with boys and Tonka Trucks, it?s not right. We know this happens as kids and as adolescence, even. Does it happen in adulthood. I think it happens less in adulthood because the older you become, the narrower you think and the narrower you ways become so there is little problem. Also, as an adult, you are more comfortable around your peers, and not so self-conscious.

When these uncomfortable situations occur I think people react to them differently but they are all uncomfortable. This commonly results in embarrassment, sometimes a joke is thrown at the person involved, a lack of identity occurs and the person feels very insecure. People feel uncomfortable in these situations because we are well trained; gender training imprints us for life; it is like going to school to learn math for your entire life.

In society today, gender training affects many different areas. In media/fashion the problems there lie in the masculinity and femininity of clothing. The short, revealing skirts of today?s girls turn on the guys, but is it right to exploit their looks and body? The men of the 90?s are very covered up with long, baggy pants and shirts. To tell the truth, they don?t have the body of a woman, and they know it, so they just go along for the ride. For security and personal rights I think that men have become to aggressive and sexism is disgustingly overtaking our society. Prejudice at the workplace is now working both ways, women not being hired for some jobs, men for others. Freedom of women is becoming less, as night crime rises, the women is targeted because of less protection. These things in society are a result of gender training and should be changed because they are degrading to people, however, I think gender training is unavoidable in this society whether or not it is “good or bad”. Despite this, there are problems with it and the extent to which it practiced. Without gender training, though, our society would probably suffer from a huge identity crisis and the next generation would feel quite lost.