In American culture, society has views about how males and females should behave. Males are viewed as independent, rough, and tough while females are viewed as social, emotional, and delicate. Starting in 1792 with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, women began to advocate for changes in how society viewed them (“History of Women’s Suffrage”). American women made additional positive changes to the women’s rights movement when they gained the right to vote in 1920. Since these beginnings, women have continued to push for change. American women now have the right to wear pants, work, take on male occupations, and decide to remain single. Despite the advances made for females, males are still bound to a rigid set of societal standards. In the introduction to Real Boys’ Voices, a series of interviews and research for the book Real Boys, William Pollack, a clinical psychologist and co-director of the Center for Men and McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, notes that American males are expected to be stoic, without weakness or vulnerability (xix). In these interviews, Pollack found that a constricted view of masculinity is part of contemporary American culture. In Real Boys, Pollack describes the findings of these interviews and research. Pollack shares that “the outdated and constricting assumptions, models, and rules about boys that our society has used since the nineteenth century” are still operating in force (6).
American males are exposed to society’s rules, stereotypes, and expectations on a daily basis. Books, television, radio, movies, and music all carry messages about gender. In “Night to his Day”: The Social Construction of Gender, Judith Lorber describes how gender...
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Boys have to hide their true selves and feelings to fit in, but in society expect men to be both tough and gentle, and be able to express their feeling, try to not hide behind the mask. Regardless, masculinity is an unrealistic expectation of men. Who cares what others think as long as they be their true self. It is apparent through my though that this essay is a good source to research or write an essay and can be teach. This essay helps parents learn more about their children feeling and grow into manhood to become real men.
An article entitled “How Boys Become Men,” written by Jon Katz was originally published in January, 1993 in Glamour, a magazine for young women. In this article the author claims that the men are insensitive because they have had to learn to hide their feelings during the stage of growing up with other boys. The author defines his claim by analyzing the process of boys growing into a man with the focus on the lesson boys learn that effect their adult lives. The author describes these lessons with the code of conduct imposed upon boys, for example “never admitting fear”. He explains these codes with several instances and by including his own example to convey to the reader the challenges of growing into a man. Through the various stories of young boys, he intends to explain why men seem so insensitive to help women understand why men sometimes seem “remote” or “uncommunicative”.
Overall, the value of the American Identity is found in literature such as The Awakening, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Great Gatsby. Different historical events such as the Women’s Suffrage Movements define America as a male driven nation. These few evidences of many provide an explanation of how men came to control a lot of the activity in the nation and its impact. Currently, women are treated with more respect, have equal rights, and can do many of the things that men can do. However, there is still a great amount of gender inequality in many various aspects and it will remain that way because this nation has been male dominated since it’s independence. History and literature are two aspects of our nation’s cultures that have demonstrated the gender inequality and contributed to the strengthening of this male dominated society in the course of time.
Risman (1988:14) notes that “early childhood socialization is an influential determinant of later behavior, and research has focused on how societies create feminine women and masculine men.” Rather than focusing on gender as natural and fixed, Risman (1998) suggests instead that gender can be viewed at three levels: individual, interactional, and institutional. Instead of viewing the differences between men and women outlined in “If I Were A Boy” as natural and fixed, sociologists would instead look to socialization and societal norms to explain why men and women appear dissimilar. Additionally, many sociologists view gender as being continuously created; Risman (1988:10) notes “the pervasive differences between male[s] and female[s]…are continuously created by the gendered structures in which we all live.” Sociologists, who would instead view these perceived differences as a product of our society, would heavily dispute the gender essentialist perspective taken in “If I Were A Boy”.
While we tend to look at the world in a gendered fashion, there are differences in what’s considered masculine and feminine. In addition to varying from person to person, the concepts of masculinity and femininity also vary across time periods, across different cultures, and even across the span of an individual’s life. Kimmel pluralizes these terms to “acknowledge that masculinity and femininity mean different things to different groups of people at different times” (Kimmel; 10). He goes on further to reference sociologist R. W. Connell’s explanation of hegemonic masculinity, which states that it is “constructed in relation to various subordinated masculinities as well as in relation to women” (Kimmel; 10). In an article by Connell, he describes
An article entitled “How Boys Become Men,” written by Jon Katz was originally published in January, 1993 in Glamour, a magazine for young women. This article details the process of a boy growing into a man and mainly focus on the lesson boys learn that effect their adult lives. These lessons are about how to hold back emotions and never appeared sensitive. The author includes examples of his own experiences as a boy to convey to the reader the challenges of growing into a man. Through the various stories of young boys, the author is trying to prove that the men are insensitive because they had to learn to hide their feelings during the stage of growing up with other boys. The purpose of the author is to explain the women of the world, why men appear to be emotionalist and “macho.” The author’s main idea of this article is to explain why men are insensitive and to help women understand why men sometimes seem “remote” and “uncommunicative.”
The gender binary of Western culture dichotomizes disgendered females and males, categorizing women and men as opposing beings and excluding all other people. Former professor of Gender Studies Walter Lee Williams argues that gender binarism “ignores the great diversity of human existence,” (191) and is “an artifact of our society’s rigid sex-roles” (197). This social structure has proved detrimental to a plethora of people who fall outside the Western gender dichotomy. And while this gender-exclusive system is an unyielding element of present day North American culture, it only came to be upon European arrival to the Americas. As explained by Judith Lorber in her essay “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”, “gender is so pervasive in our society we assume it is bred into our genes” (356). Lorber goes on to explain that gender, like culture, is a human production that requires constant participation (358).
On a daily basis people are exposed to some sort of misrepresentation of gender; in the things individuals watch, and often the things that are purchased. Women are often the main target of this misrepresentation. “Women still experience actual prejudice and discrimination in terms of unequal treatment, unequal pay, and unequal value in real life, then so too do these themes continue to occur in media portraits.”(Byerly, Carolyn, Ross 35) The media has become so perverted, in especially the way it represents women, that a females can be handled and controlled by men, the individual man may not personally feel this way, but that is how men are characterized in American media. Some may say it doesn’t matter because media isn’t real life, but people are influenced by everything around them, surroundings that are part of daily routine start to change an individual’s perspective.
Prior to the 1970s when the theme of gender issues was still quite foreign, the societal norm forced female conformity to male determined standards because “this is a man’s world” (Kerr 406). The patriarchal society painted the image of both men and women accordingly to man’s approach of societal standards that include the defining features of manhood that consist of “gentil...
While Reading the book Real Boys by Dr. William Pollack, I realized that our society is holding boys to contradictory standards aiding the problems that many of them face while in adolescence. This book introduces the reader to numerous boys who share their feelings of shame and despair in trying to live up to the "Boy Code". Pollack feels the pain that comes from boys prematurely separating from their mothers puts them on the cycle to hardening themselves emotionally. The one acceptable emotion becomes anger.
Men do not have the benefits of equality either, they are also limited by societal expectations and having to fulfill the requirements of what it means to “be a man”. Gender roles shape the fabric of our society. In the documentary Tough Guise, Katz chronicles the socialization of boys from the moment they are born and as they grow up. Tough guise explains how the entertainment industry feeds messages about masculinity which exclude basic human qualities such as compassion, and vulnerability. These are portrayed as feminine with a negative connotation implied (Earp, Katz, Young and Rabinovitz 2013). In American modern culture children of both sexes are consuming large amounts of media on a daily basis. The documentary MissRepresentation explores the media’s role in the shaping of our society; specifically the media’s treatment of women. When it comes to girls and women, marketers have made substantial profits from objectifying women and setting an unattainable standard of what it means to be beautiful. Hyper-feminized women are all over the covers of magazines, hypersexualized in advertisements, and in movies. Women have to walk a very thin tightrope and the expectations for a good woman are contradicting (Newsom, Scully, Dreyfous, Redlich, Congdon, and Holland
American society needs to break from the mold of the myth of gender, which suggests that society and culture dictate our roles as men and women, as can only restrict us into unnecessary conformity. The opinion of society should no longer decide who we are, what we do, and what we’re capable of doing. We, as Americans, need to deeply analyze and question this fallacy of gender and the way it restricts us at home, in the media, and in the classroom. If we continue to follow the invisible guidelines of in invisible rulebook, we’re destined to hurt ourselves and our future generations by remaining nestled into our cultural cocoons and never shedding them.
As a child develops, their surroundings have a major influence on the rest of their lives; if boys are taught to “man up” or never to do something “like a girl”, they will become men in constant fear of not being masculine enough. Through elementary and middle school ages, boys are taught that a tough, violent, strong, in-control man is the ideal in society and they beat themselves up until they reach that ideal. They have to fit into the “man box” (Men and Masculinity) and if they do not fulfill the expectations, they could experience physical and verbal bullying from others. Not only are friends and family influencing the definition of masculine, but marketing and toys stretch the difference between a “boy’s toy” and a “girl’s toy”. Even as early as 2 years old, children learn to play and prefer their gender’s toys over the other gender’s (Putnam). When children grow up hearing gender stereotypes from everyone around them, especially those they love and trust like their parents, they begin to submit themselves and experience a loss of individuality trying to become society’s ideal. If everyone is becoming the same ideal, no one has a sense of self or uniqueness anymore and the culture suffers from
As Lorber explores in her essay “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender, “most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Lorber 1). This article was very intriguing because I thought of my gender as my sex but they are not the same. Lorber has tried to prove that gender has a different meaning that what is usually perceived of through ordinary connotation. Gender is the “role” we are given, or the role we give to ourselves. Throughout the article it is obvious that we are to act appropriately according to the norms and society has power over us to make us conform. As a member of a gender an individual is pushed to conform to social expectations of his/her group.
Throughout today’s society, almost every aspect of someone’s day is based whether or not he or she fits into the “norm” that has been created. Specifically, masculine and feminine norms have a great impact that force people to question “am I a true man or woman?” After doing substantial research on the basis of masculine or feminine norms, it is clear that society focuses on the males being the dominant figures. If males are not fulfilling the masculine role, and females aren’t playing their role, then their gender identity becomes foggy, according to their personal judgment, as well as society’s.