Blog 2 – Chivalry,
Gender Roles, and Feminism
Gender is a weird
topic in our society because it doesn’t carry quite as much weight as race
does, but it is still is a prevalent issue. But I think because it is a
prevalent issue, people try to talk about it as politically correct as possible
– and in doing so, some issues arise.
For example, “The
Gingerbread Person v2.0” claims that people should think of femininity and
masculinity as playing tug-a-war. People can have masculine-ness and feminine-ness
without one taking away from the other. The article is just trying to point out
that someone can be masculine and feminine at the same time, i.e. they want to
be progressive in the way people look at gender roles. But when I read this,
all I thought was: why is there feminine-ness and masculine-ness in the first
place? Do we need to take character traits like “sensitive” “kind” and “familial”
and apply them to woman-ness? Character traits shouldn’t be categorized.
Character traits are character traits, and people either have them or they don’t.
I like sports and kids, but when I say that I like sports and kids I don’t
think: my liking for sports is part of my masculine-ness and my like for kids
is part of my feminine-ness. The fact that I like those things is just part of
me. If we want to be progressive in the way that we think about gender roles, then
we shouldn’t categorize character traits in the first place. Why don’t we just
take away those labels and just say that someone is both assertive and kind at
the same time and be done with it. They aren’t both masculine and feminine at
the same time, they just are.
The article, “Are these the most PC parents in the world? The couple raising a
'genderless baby'... to protect his (or her) right to choice"
is all about this need to be PC about gender roles. And as the article discusses,
it raises the issue about whether or not the parents are actually imposing
their beliefs on their child by trying not to make a choice for him or her. I
think at the end of the day, what the parents are doing is good in that they
are giving the child freedom to be whomever he or she wants at a very young age
– but I think keeping the gender secret is actually giving the child less
freedom to be whomever he or she wants because the parents already made the
choice this big deal. When that baby comes out with what gender he or she wants
to be, everyone is going to be tuning in because it has gotten so much media
attention. If they simply raised the child in accordance to what they like to
play with and wear and do, then the choice would come naturally to the child
rather than feeling like they needed to put a lot of thought into whether or
not he or she wants to be a boy or a girl. Like one of the doctors in the article
said, there is something innate about gender. Children are not in-tune to society’s
stereotypes until an older age, so the baby’s choice would be her or his own.
It is so hard to talk about gender roles and feminism because
people are so worried about not offending anyone and being very PC. But by
doing so, all these definitions and categories are created about gender roles.
I think if we really want to be progressive, we need to simply think of people
as people with certain character traits rather than boy and girl with either
boy or girl character traits.
No comments:
Post a Comment