This week in class we learned quite a bit about the differences between gender and sex. In the article Gauging Gender by Stephen Asma, Asma attempts to examine the changes in gender studies from his time in college until now, and furthermore he seeks the changes that we still need to make. The line between gender and sex was first drawn by feminists in the 80’s. Sex was used as a word in biology to describe humans, plants, and animals. Gender then became a studied by mainly social scientists and was used in describing behaviors and the constructed roles of females and males. Asma pointed out that a person who’s considered a man doesn’t necessarily have to perform the roles of a man and females do not necessarily have to perform the roles of a woman. From this statement onward, the article makes out several points that we also made in class. For instance, there is more than one gender and our culture is relatively unaccepting of people who don’t fit into the very strict definition of what it means to be a woman or man. We explored this concept in class as we examined how our culture constructs what it means to be a man or woman in comparison to other cultures.
The short clip about Samoans and “Fa-fa-feenies” showed how some cultures are accepting of more than two genders. However, as we saw in other videos, in our culture we’re mean to people who don’t fit into our two distinct descriptions of gender. The videos Tough Guise and Killing Us Softly showed us how the media plays a role in showing us what it means to be either a man or woman. Masculinity was mostly associated with violence and strength, while being femininity was associated with beauty and vulnerability. Not very many people fit into this mold, but our society pushes a certain level of masculinity onto males and femininity on females. But most men and women don’t necessarily fit into these images. In fact according to the article there can be up to four or five different male and female psychological match ups, but mainstream society still pressures males and females to conform. Well what are the consequences of this form of thinking? In our society, many people bully others and put others down in order to make themselves feel better and move up the social latter. As a result of this emotional battering there are huge numbers of people who are anorexic, alcoholics, or depressed.
Even though our school is considered quite affluent, I have seen people succumb to depression because they don’t fit a certain mode. For instance, my freshman year there was a guy who would always dress in scarves and UGG boots. Girls were nice to him, but I would often hear other guys calling him names. He was fine for the most part, but it was obvious that he had low self-esteem in social climates like in class discussions or even at lunch. There’s nothing wrong with being different. People in our society would agree that it’s important to lower the number of people depressed or committing suicide. By widening the definition of what each gender means, or better yet, accepting more than two definitions of genders as a society we will be taking a huge step towards nation of more emotionally sound people.
Much like the story we read in class, this image depicts part of the image of masculinity and femininity that the media feeds us.
