Gender Essay, Research Paper

Perhaps it has become second nature for the human race to associate certain traits with specific genders. Moreover, maybe because society has taught us that this practice is okay, mankind does not bother questioning its validity. However, it is my opinion that this practice certainly does need to be questioned. Why is it that what is right for a man is not necessarily right for a woman? And to the same effect, what is acceptable for a woman is not always acceptable for a man. I spent my life surrounded by people who accepted these values and attempted to pass them onto me, and although some of them may have found their way into my subconscious, I must say that I tend to disagree with most gender stereotyping.

You would never know it to look at her now, but at a young age my older sister refused to leave the house in anything other than a dress. And without ever asking me my mother decided that it was practical, considering she had two girls in the house, for me to wear those dresses once my sister had outgrown them. The only problem being that I didn’t like to wear dresses, I preferred to wear jeans. I think Claire Renzetti and Daniel Curran would probably see where I was coming from based on the following comments from their article Gender Socialization:

Girls in frilly dresses, for example, are discouraged from rough-and-tumble play, whereas boys’ physical movement is rarely impeded by their clothing…Clothing, then, serves as one of the most basic means by which parents organize their children’s world along gender-specific lines. (Page 9)

Looking back, I wonder what they would have done if I had been a boy. Would they have still made me wear my sister’s dresses, or was it simply because of my gender that I was forced to wear dresses until my sister grew out of her faze.

Although not a big deal, this type of gender stereotyping was only the first of many similar situations I was to experience late in life. I remember when I was about the age of ten and, I was at the peak of my sports career. I was the only girl in my camp group that wanted to play baseball instead of arts and crafts. The first couple days of camp none of the boys wanted to pick me for their team…for what they said were obvious reasons. However given a few days I was able to prove to my male peers that being a girl was not a handicap, but my problems didn’t end there. Once they were finally willing to admit that I could hit a baseball, the warm weather kicked in and they found another reason to leave me as last picked. Since it was practically an all boys league they played “shirts and skins”, and because of the heat being on the “skins” team was preferable. However, having me, the girl, on your team automatically made that impossible. Once again this left me the undesirable teammate.

Fortunately I only seemed to mind being a girl during my earlier years. Once I reached the age of thirteen I started seeing things in a whole new light. Although I still preferred guys as friends, I began to look at them as more than that. Unfortunately, it seemed apparent that I was still not very desirable to them. My mother and even some of my friends hinted that I just wasn’t feminine enough. They would make comments on my clothes, or tell me how nice I would look with my hair down. And even though I tended to agree with most of what they would say, for some reason I never took any action. I think the comments probably just made it worse, and it was society’s expectations for my gender that caused people to make the comments.

My freshman year in high school I started dating my first serious boyfriend. It was during the little over two years that I spent with him that I learned the most about myself and people’s expectations of me based on my gender. Instead of using flattery as a way to keep us together he chose to continue where my mother had left off and use insult toward my femininity to keep me with him. This is not to say that I didn’t love him, infact we are still quite close, just perhaps that I was not in the right place in my life to be committed to someone. I found that during those years I was sometimes looked down upon for not being as “feminine” as others, and although this perception might have been correct I in return looked down upon those who played into that role that they were given based on their gender.

As years passed I grew into my role as a woman. I began to wear more feminine clothing, use makeup and basically become more comfortable with being a female. It was with these changes that I started to notice a change in the way men treated me. For the first time doors were being opened for me, and men were staring at me from across the room. While some women might find this type of behavior to be oppressive, I tend to enjoy it. I appreciate those little things that men do for me, because it reminds me that I am no longer simply a woman due to my sex, but I am now a woman because of my gender.

The only fall back to my change in behavior is the increased financial burden on both my parents and myself. This is one of the main reasons that I have decided that if given the preference I am certainly going to choose to have male children. Not only are boys less expensive to raise, they are also from my experience less of a handful. I always felt bad for my parents for having to deal with both my sister and I. Through all of our boyfriends and our tantrums they certainly had their hands full with us. Personally I don’t need all the headaches, I would rather raise the boyfriends instead of hearing about them. However, I’m realistic and I realize that it is impossible atleast at this moment in time to choose the sex of your child, and therefore I will love my kids regardless of their sex. I just hope that if I have girls they are given less to deal with then I was.