Gender Stereotypes In When I Was A Boy By Dar Williams

I decided to chose song “When I Was a Boy” by Dar Williams. I’ve never heard this song before, however the title spoke to me first and the lyric turned to be beautiful and touchy. Thus I was convinced that it is the right gender sond. But let’s start from the beginning. “When I Was a Boy”, what does it mean? Is she (Dar Williams) trying to say that long time ago she was a boy, and then decided to be a girl? Did she change her sex, or sexual orientation? Why “boy” not men, or male? Is it related to age?

And she begins

I won’t forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand

I said I was a boy; I’m glad he didn’t check.

Peter Pan fairy tail is the reminiscent of childhood, where you don’t bother to worry about gender. You can think of

Why it is like that? Children don’t have social roles, they are just being who they are. And the most awful part is that they must lost the very important part of their individuality. It happens during the process of growing up, when they are being forced and compelled to adopt social norms. It might go smooth or becomes a struggle, but it’s inevitable. Our essence is uncomplete, it’s stocked up with numerous gender stereotypes and gender scripts. But if we strip off all the build-up of these stereotypes, we left to be miserable and lonely human being. Dar Williams song is a nice illustration hoe society slowly but surely imposed its gender rules in our lives. We receive feedbacks and instructions from literally everything. But we not just the receivers. We are active learners and teachers in gender school. We ourselves constantly give feedback and instructions to others. Thus, gender becomes interactive process. It emphasise West and Zimmerman, when they speak about gender accountability, “If sex category is omnirelevant (or even approaches being so), then a person engaged in virtually any activity may be held accountable for performance of that activity as a woman or a man” (West, Zimmerman “Doing Gender”, 1987, p. 136). It seems that every our move becomes gender accountable, and all of us are sharing this duty to maintain each other gender. To the certain extend, it becomes obligation for every individual to keep gender binary active, and we all doing so by

What is it after all that determined our gender? Society with its multiple tools to construct it, or our own body that posses its real gender from the conception? Nature or nurture? In my view, neither, and both at the same time. I think we must not disregard the notion of psyche that Anne Fausto-Sterling describes as “a place where two-way translation between the mind and the body take place.” (Fausto-Sterling, “Dueling Dualisms” 2000, p.24). To better explain it, she refers to Mobius Strip, the twisted ribbon with single surface, where one side represent the body and the other - culture and experience. This simple illustration shows how our nature, our body is connected to outer world, indeed we are the vessel that holds both bodily and culturally sides. Fausto-Sterling also is talking about developmental system theory that “deny that there are fundamentally two kinds of processes: one guided by genes, hormones, and brain cells (that is nature), the other by environment, experience, learning, or inchoate social forces (that is nurture).” (Fausto-Sterling, “Dueling Dualisms” 2000, p.25) Thus gender concept can’t be simply viewed as innate or socially acquired characteristic. We can’t narrow our mind to only two possibilities. Unique development of the individual, along with historical, cultural, economical, traditional influences will form his/her gender. And going back to Dar Williams’ song, I feel that the lyric exemplifies this concept