* I do not hope to solve any problems or to give you any answers, I wish to *
provoke your thoughts, so that you can discover your own problems and find your own solutions to them.
Dear Macho Women and Femme Men,
To be shunned from society hurts, it leaves confused feelings of being frightened and alone, unable to tell where you can belong or who can accept you for who you were born to be. People who see themselves as 'normal' people may use words like 'different', 'weird', 'trouble', or 'gay' when they talk about people who go against their ways of normality. One lesson we should have learned from generations and generations of history is that everyone is equal, but still people are too fearful of things that are 'different'. Today's generation is facing the fear of people who go against what is considered 'normal' for their assigned genders, also known as gender roles. Society's dominate gender roles of men shown as strong, brave, and dangerous heroes of masculinity and women characterized as submissive, caring, and gentle things of femininity; these ideas of gender roles are forced subliminally onto us leaving us with a sexist perception of what the standard man and woman is, what society defines as 'normal'. However, imagine if the standard gender roles were to be rewritten putting the gender roles of society on the opposite sex, changing it so that men were the ones persistently perused by women and if women were raised to not show the weakness in their emotions. Even more drastic yet, picture a world where gender roles were eliminated and had no foothold in people's minds; we may naturally gravitate towards our old gender roles because femininity or masculinity is coded into our biology, or we might reshape gender roles into guidelines available for all humans, unlike our society's separate roles for men and women twisted by the need to uphold historic belief, the need to advertise for profit, and the greed to keep the power where it is. The effects of the current gender role stereotypes given by society are stifling to a person's self-expression, women and men who do not fall in line with these stereotypes are stigmatized for going against their assigned gender roles, which unfair in society that is suppose to place such high value on equality.
A woman goes to a high fashion retailer to look at the latest fashions, she works for a important clothing magazine that is always up-to-date with the trends so her style is always under surveillance. She sees so many cute things that she cannot make up her mind, until she decides to buy them all to fill up some of that empty space in her closet.
A man goes to a high fashion retailer to look at the latest fashions, he works for a important clothing magazine that is always up-to-date with the trends so his style is always under surveillance. He sees so many cute things that he cannot make up his mind, until he decides to buy them all to fill up some of that empty space in his closet.
Take some time to analyze what is different about these two segments, really think about what each sentence means for the woman and for the man. Do not look at them as you yourself would judge them, think about the issue globally, from the position of someone likely to find issue with the difference, someone who has become a bigot by blindly following the ideals of gender roles and accepting them as facts. From that perspective, several actions would be marked as being feminine qualities that only women should do such as; working in the fashion industry, being conscious of clothing style, describing clothes you want to wear as 'cute', indecisiveness with decisions, compulsive buying, and even having enough clothes to fill-up your closet. A woman can do all of these things and not be questioned or rejected for any reason, but when a man does them it is unnatural, making people hateful, fearful and for some it is sickening.
There is a large displacement between societies' image of the ideal man and the man in the segment above, he is so far from 'normal' that he is feared because of his unique differences and is shunned from society. Society believes within their ideological culture for only men and women to be together that men's dominant ways of masculinity are the appropriate way for a boy to act, what proof do they have of this to keep the belief in place as the mindset best for a boy to grow up in? The rules society expects boys to follow are damaging to the growth of a human, a drastic example of the results of these rules and there outcomes is given by Joan Morgan -author of "From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos"- talking about rappers and their artistic interpretation of the way they live their lives given in their music and lyrics, she explains "When brothers talk so cavalierly about killing each other and then reveal that they have no expectation to see their twenty-first birthday, this is straight-up depression masquerading as machismo,"(603). Morgan is talking about black rappers in particular but these men are living their interpretations of what they think of as the manly lifestyle that is acceptable for a black man in our society. You would be shocked if a woman was to have this attitude towards life, but it is within the realm of possibility for a man to have this attitude because it falls in line with the attitude expected by society from men. Why should that depression be considered natural for a man, when a man shopping for cute clothes is considered unnatural?
A man sprints down the street from his house so his family cannot see him cry, he goes down a dark alley and finds an abandoned 67' Chrysler. He starts to beat the car with whatever he can find, not even noticing the deep cuts forming on his hands.
A woman sprints down the street from her house so her family cannot see her cry, she goes down a dark alley and finds an abandoned 67' Chrysler. She starts to beat the car with whatever she can find, not even taking noticing of the deep cuts forming on her hands.
A bigot whom looks at this with strict belief in societies gender roles would take notice that the woman is; physically exerting herself, running away from her emotions, is not scared of danger, knows something about cars, she releases her anger in physical form, and is unphased by the pain in her hands. Qualities that are typical in a boy and not quite so typical in girls. This difference from normality leads to society -the mass populous- into feeling unrelated and distant from the single person, justifying the person's exile from society. These characteristics are scary coming from a boy, but from a girl it seems even more drastic and unpredictable. She is a girl, most would perceive on site that she is happy, safe, and nonthreatening but when she acts out in anger in such ways she is looked at more critically then the boy because it is expected from the boy, not the girl. Although women also have limitations put on them because of gender roles, men have been far more stigmatized for going against their assigned gender role.
Women are now more freely able to express themselves whether their actions are masculine or feminine, while men have been taught to have no desire to be like a women or to do anything feminine because it is taught as the opposite of masculinity. Men are not able to participate in girly, feminine activities because they are scared of the ridicule that they will face from their peers. Here's another angle to look at it from, what would you call a girl who typically does boy activities? A 'tomboy' is likely the first thing to pop into your head, nothing wrong in calling a girl that some girls today even call themselves that proudly. Now, what do you call a boy that likes to take part in feminine activities? It is difficult to come up with a term similar to a 'tomboy' for a boy, many of the terms that you would first think to use are derogatory like 'fag' or 'sissy'. The author of "Boyhood Femininity, Gender Identity Disorder, Masculine Presuppositions, and the Anxiety of Regulation", Ken Corbett, elaborates the situation " Feminine boys are often described as 'whiny', 'mincing', 'weak', 'just like a girl'. These modes of address not only signal the demeaned status of feminine boys, but also illustrates how anguish as a bid toward social redress is shunned. And how emotion as a call to social transformation is belittled,"(Corbett). Why is there a non- derogative name for girls going against gender roles, but not a single commonly used non-derogative name for boys going against their gender roles? Because women have years of feminism striving for women to have the right to be seen as equals to a man.
Women have made leaps and strides in equality, fighting uphill against the gender roles that are placed on them as women. This has given women a much stronger sense of pride in recent years, allowing them to have the courage to break several of the barriers of gender roles that were used to keep woman in check back in the day. Michael Kimmel gives an example of feminism pride when he writes, ' "Whenever I ask a women what they think it means to be a woman, they look at me puzzled, and say, basically 'Whatever I want'"(608). This is not the same for men, man has not made strides for equality with women because most men are content with the position they hold and have no desire to be like a woman. Leaving all boys to face brutal standards such as "big boys don't cry" and "take it like a man" which are emotion-numbing messages forced onto men at a very young age. Leaving boys very critical of the way they act, as well as the actions of other boys, and self-conscious of the way they are perceived by other men. They are unable to do several things that a woman can do because they are raised to fear doing anything feminine because it is unnatural for a boy.
I grew up with four brothers, we had seven boys total in the house counting my step-father and grandfather leaving my mom as the only woman in the house. With so many boys in the house everything was often a masculinity contest, I rarely won. My mom always kept a diary for all the funny things us boys said and did as children, one story in the book I heard several time was,
"I went to all of my boys to ask them what they wanted to do as a career when they got older. Broc said that he wanted to be a race car driver like his daddy, Dylan said he wanted to be a veterinarian cause he likes animals, Ty said he wanted to be a professional baseball player. Last, I went to Tyler and asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said "Either a singer, a dancer, or a hairstylist".....Uh-oh...."
This was from my mother, I reheard this story in her version about a year after it happened. When I heard the punch line as "Uh-Oh" all I wanted to do was rip the page from the journal and pretend that it never happened. I was scared to be called out like that by the naivety of a joke my mom put in her funny stories journal, a story that was shared with our entire family, all thirty-six of them. Why was I so scared? I saw it as outing myself as gay, a story from when I was young and just innocently answering a question. They laughed at the story, like it was just a good joke, it had no real meaning. At most they saw it as a phase and just laughed it off, but in their ignorance of the situation I was left to form my own opinions from their reactions, that being a singer/dancer/hairstylist was not an appropriate thing for a boy to do, that's was why they were laughing at the story. This was a defining moment for my masculinity, I see this as the moment I was trapped in by gender roles for the next ten years of my life.
The purpose of the gender roles in unclear, it has been for several years a way to keep people in check, particularly women and homosexuals. It has also been fundamentals that we raise our children on, rules they will come to see as the way people should act, and if they do not act this way they need to be either ostracized or forced into a rut of self-denial in order to fit in with everyone else in society. Gender roles have been made into attractive qualities that bring people together in love -as well as- the defining factors of peoples irregularities that are to be feared and avoided. Balance needs to be restored to the gender roles, it is time to form a positive outlook on all walks of life -we are all equal- and we cannot let our children draw these harsh and scary conclusions about things they do not understand. You do not want to hinder a child's growth by giving them fear of truthfully expressing themselves and the way that they feel, this is the only way for a child to grow up with confidence in who they are and how they act. Women have mended this rift some with their strong pride in feminism meanwhile men are left in the world women are striving for and show no interest in "diluting" men's masculine image that our society holds in such high regards. Their needs to be a mass re-evaluation of the values we are passing down to our children, and how they are taught to judge men and women. If a boy goes into a toy store and picks up a doll out of genuine interest it should not be seen as unnatural by anyone, same goes for girls playing with monster trucks. Children need to explore and be creative for themselves before they are given opinions that they do not have, all that leads to is ignorance and bigotry.We need to cure the ignorance and bigotry that we still have today to find what is true within gender-assigned roles and what is just opinion.
We can all love and be loved,
-Tyler Higgins
"I hope that - whoever you are - you escape this place. I hope that the world turns, and that things get better.But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may not meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you: I love you.With all my heart.I love you.-Valerie"~V for Vendetta
