Chapter 5 Blog

· Summary

o Sex is the biological characteristics people are born with while gender is the attitudes and behavior that society expects of men and women. Gender roles are rigid and can result in stereotypes and myths. This is why it is common to adopt these roles early in life. Nurture versus nature is a huge argument that scholar have today based on the behaviors that people exude. Biology is important, but it has yet to be seen that women are naturally the better parent and men are naturally more aggressive.

o Sociobiologists contend that biology determines a woman’s or man’s behavior. Even though it appears that most people learn their behaviors based on imitation, role modeling, reward and punishment which would be the social learning theory. Cognitive development theory states that children learn their gender identity by interactions. While symbolic interactionists believe that gender roles are socially constructed categories that derive from social situations. Then the feminist perspective argues that gender roles differ due to socialization, patriarchy, and gender scripts.

o Gender roles are instilled into people by many different institutions such as parents, peers, teachers, and the media. The majority of these socializing agents continue to reinforce traditional male and female gender roles. Traditional gender roles are based on the beliefs that women should fulfill expressive functions and that men should play instrumental roles. The roles have both negative and positive consequences. The positive is that both genders know what is expected of them and the negative is that the roles create stress and anxiety and limit choices. Most major social activities are sex segregated such as roles in the home, religion, work, politics, and education. Also the way that men and women communicate is different even though most of the differences are unintentional they reinforce the expected interactions and reactions. Today most of societies are male dominated and the variation of equality is at different degrees.

· My Opinions

o I still have issues with the nurture versus nature debate. Because personally I believe that nurture are what influences a person but they might have to deal with some obstacles that usually to tend to deal with the nature aspect. For example a man is born with the biological parts that determine his sex. But if he has no father figure in his life and his brought up by his mother and his aunts then obviously he is going to have more feminine behaviors than a typical man would. He still is a man by biological definition, but in terms of gender he may consider himself to be feminine and not masculine.

o Another issue that I had was with the gender roles surrounding the household. I just feel that it is a matter of choice if women want to do a career and the housework. I do not see why it appears that she has no other choice in the matter. The reason I feel this way is that we can change the roles for a man and let him do the housework such as cooking dinner, washing the dishes, vacuuming, etc. but you will not see a women take out the trash if a man is present. In my opinion, it appears that there is a double standard for men to change their gender roles, but for women it is for them to add onto their already defined role.

· Questions

o My question is why is androgyny the first solution that we have come up with to solve the problems with gender roles? As a matter of fact is their really any problem with the gender roles that we have today? I mean I know that everyone should be treated equally and that a man should not be allowed to do what he wants just because he is the ‘dominant’ figure but other roles that the genders have I do not see why they need to be altered.

o The other question is why are we trying to change societies that are not our own? The reason that I ask this is because it may stem from religious ideals and you cannot force someone to change because that would be breaking their beliefs. I mean you might not agree with the idea but you cannot force your opinion onto others.