Gender Roles in Society
The annoyingly unbalanced gender roles in the Harry Potter books (discussed here) are all part of a wider movement which I've been discussing recently at school with T.O.F.U. (Thinkers of Fantasies Unthought), a club that a friend and I started last year in an attempt to attract together the creatively minded people in our school and have some neat free discussion and artistic expression. It's a really great club, although digging up members in my academically obsessed school has been dissappointingly difficult. Anyway, we recently had a whole discussion about gender roles. Some of the points that came up are addressed below. It's rather long, so pick and choose parts to read if you don't have the patience. And as usual, if you have anything you'd like to discuss in response, please e-mail me at dragonfyre52@hotmail.com Here goes:
This problem is made worse by the constant need in society today for more and more possessions, so that it is now considered necessary to have at least two cars in a household, which forces both parents to work so they can afford them, and then there's the drive to send the darling children off once more once they're old enough into expensive prep schools to ensure that they're "competitive" in the race to go to the ideal college, but at this point I veer dangerously close to a whole nother rant of mine, which I'll avoid for the moment. This failure to try to equalize the rights of all people, and not just women, has also rather doomed the feminist movement itself, because when we realize the damage sending the kids off to day care every day causes, it will become necessary for women, because men certainly can't respectably be "just housewives," to return to their role as caretaker of the home.
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Did you ever wonder why all hurricanes are named after women? Well, steal from my site and you'll find out. Everything herein ranted is copyright 2001 by Hurricane October, whose permission you needs must have to use it.
We had the whole feminist movement to free the rights of women so that they were acceptable not only in a traditionally "female" sphere but anywhere they wanted to be. But there were several problems with this movement. First of all, there was not an accompanying movement to give men equal rights to those women possess, so that while now women are acceptable in the workplace or the home, men are still largely expected to be the primary breadwinner, and aren't quite allowed to stay be the one staying home with the kids. The unfortunate side effect of this failure is that if the woman wants to have a career and the couple wants to have children, there is no one home and the children are sent packing off to day care starting early in the morning on into the late evening, so that they hardly see their real parents, which has some scary psychological effects which we are perhaps seeing the first results of with the proliferation of school shootings. (There are several books about this you cn check out if you're interested, including "High Risk.")
There are many pressures put on boys to fit into the traditional stereotype of masculine behavior. This happens in sports as well as in general behavior. Boys who read too much, show sensitivity or good manners, are artistic, or violate any of the other stereotypical and, in my opinion, rather annoying qualities which are defined as manly are accused of being either "girly" (a sadly terrible insult) or gay. This is even enforced by some women who have become brainwashed by society's conventions and restrictions, so that guys think it is more attractive to be rude and chauvenistic than kind and chivalrous.
But this does not mean that it is only males who are restricted by societal conventions. Girls are also taught the importance of being "feminine," which all too often translates into either passivity, vanity, or cattiness. Of course some people manage to escape these stereotypes, like any others, and the female stereotypes are becoming less restricting than the masculine ones, but there are still girls who think their time is better spent putting on makeup than listening in class, and it is a simple fact that girls' math scores decline quite a bit in comparison with boys' once they hit high school, and I don't bet it's because the girls are getting stupider.
Here's an interesting commentary on part of this situation which occurs at my school: This year the ASB approved the painting of a male viking on one side of the bleachers and a female viking on the other side. However, once they actually went into their physical, painted form, both of them looked remarkably male. Now, the stadium is used for football, but it's also used for boys and girls soccer, lacrosse, and track. So why shouldn't there be a female viking as well? When the principal, who made the fateful decision which, with one fell swoop, turned Mrs. Viking into a definite Mr., said that artistically, it looked better that way. Right. It's interesting that this change was not cleared with the ASB, or, for that matter, anybody, before it occured.
And quite a bit of the gender generalization (hm... genderalization?) is a self-fulfilling prophesy. We observe it, but often it's the observation and the stating of it that causes it to prepetuate. Girls are taught "how to be girls" and boys "how to be boys." Things that are allowed in girls are not allowed in boys, and vice versa. For instance, my mother has a little girl, and her friend a little boy. When Samantha climbed the furniture, my mother told her to stop. When Harrison did, his mother said "Boys will be boys." So what was my sister being? I definitely agree that there are some true differences between the sexes, and that they should be allowed. Only females have the physical ability to produce offspring, so there's not much hope for changing that. Women have to be the mothers up to a certain point. My point is that we should allow the differences to exist, but we shouldn't try to force people into their gender roles. If girls want to paint and boys to play baseball, we should let them, we shouldn't force them all to do the same thing (sameness and equality are two rather different entities indeed) but if a girl wants to play baseball and a boy to paint, that, too, should be allowed. I'm simply saying that there should be freedom to choose. I have similar beliefs on racial equality. I don't think it helps to force people to hire so many of each race. I think there should be a race blindness. It shouldn't matter one way or another what race they are, it should be based on merit. Unfortunately we have a real problem with being blind to difference in America...
