Portrait

achala says -

“women are naturally intuitive, sensitive, emotional, impulsive, subtle, romantic.” says electra . Well, are these natural? These are culturally conditioned phenomena but most of us do take them for granted. Girls are taught to be sensitive, emotional impulsive ..etc… When ever then go “beyond” that here comes the parental “advice”: behave like a girl! Of course boys are also taught to be “boys”. that is also a cultural construt. Some thing far beyond and above biological aspects. In the end you begin to see through the glasses “they” gave you.
“I am a women. I must be snsitive, consoling….ect. I must dream of my marriage and looking after my huband’s children”
And “I am a man. I shoun’d behave like a women. I need to be tough…etc.”
But we all know that when we were kids these things try to get blended. But we are not allowed. We gat the perfect training as we grow up. That’s the point. Ok. women…(and of course men)speak up, am I correct or wrong?

how did my posts on weddings and cattiness turn into an argument in which someone thought i was challenging gender roles that are allocated for women and men, and why we abide by them?

society, over the thousands of years in which humans have been the pre dominant species on this planet, has created something we call ’social norms’ or ’stereotypes’. with allies like religion and culture that differ in various societies and amongst various people, social norms have come into being, to teach people how to behave in a socially ‘acceptable’ manner. don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal…those are the very basics with which the formation of these norms probably began. socially acceptable meant, and still means to many, behaving in a manner that doesn’t harm anyone else, or bring about disruption to the community with which you live. it’s about thinking about others, and not behaving in a manner that is selfish and self centered. they were expectations of us, as living, feeling humans, to act in a way that benefits our family, society and state. however, these social norms have become a frame into which we are all expected fit. or else.

achala talks about gender roles, which is only one of the issues we modern people have with these age old social norms. what about all the other social norms, which even the smartest most broadminded people expect their friends and families to live by? what about the boxes and frames that we’re constantly putting people into, because who they are and the way they behave is simply ‘abnormal’ to us? from the moment we’re born right up until the moment in which we die, we’re being watched, observed, judged. boxed, caged and framed.

everything we do, everything we say, we do and say with caution. why? because we care what others think about us. we care what people say, what people think, how people feel towards us. it matters. some of us try to be indifferent and pretend that we simply do not care, but at the end of the day, it’s probably impossible to be completely indifferent to what people’s opinions on us are. and maybe that’s a good thing. if we totally ceased caring about what kind of impression we make on others, would we be driven to do things well, to the best of our capacity, and to avoid doing horrible things? if we simply did not care, that would emotionally enable us to do whatever we want, whenever we want.

we’re constantly labelling people to be ‘fast’, or ‘easy’ based on how many people they’ve gone out with in how a short period of time, to be ‘blonde’ on what kind of humour they display, to be ‘intelligent’ on how many A’s they get for their o/l exams. those are ALL roles we expect people to fulfill, just like gender roles, and there are reasons, real reasons, for wanting people to fit into all these roles we’ve formed. judging a person on how well they fit into our requirements for that role or not is simply what we do. it may not be right, or wrong, but at the route of all those social norms, there are probably perfectly logical reasons as to why they they are social norms in the first place. most often the problem we have with those roles, is that those reasons are just not applicable or relative to TODAY, even if they were a long time ago. few of those social norms have changed with the times, especially in this country, and adapted to present day.

do gender roles have anything to do with biology? i think so. not everything to do with biology, but something. have we ever wondered why gender roles are as they are? why were women expected to stay at home and why were men expected to hunt? why was the woman better than the man at staying at home and taking care of children, why was the man automatically the one to go on to the outside world? does this have absoloutely nothing to do with nature, the way we’re built? defined gender roles are EXPECTATIONS. like achala says :These are culturally conditioned phenomena. so why then, did the world expect women to be so more than men? could it possibly be, because they NATURALLY were?

loki said -

I hope electra is generalising there because I’m nowhere close to most of those things. Actually that’s why I cant seem to get on with most women, I tell things as I see them, lack sensitivity, no subtlety or intuition, need things spelled out etc hehe.

and also -

I think its upto you to take those glasses off, if you want to. Its not easy to fight conditioning but its a battle worth fighting. People tried to make me “a typical girl” too and I quite simply refused. I strongly believe that the degree to which you display masculine or feminine traits has a lot to do with what you really want from yourself.

firstly, thanks loki. you’re entire comment was useful and interesting.

moving on…here’s a little something i found here -

To some scientists and theorists, the biological differences between men and women make their gender roles inevitable. These “essentialists” contend that gender behavior is coded in the brain and in the chemistry of the body. Brain structure is cited as a key reason for gender differences. For example, neuroscientists have discovered that women’s brains have a larger corpus callosum, which serves as the bridge that carries messages between the right and left hemispheres. Some theorists believe this difference in structure explains why women are more intuitive and better at expressing their emotions—the two hemispheres communicate more in women’s brains, so information flows more readily from the emotional right hemisphere to the verbal left hemisphere. In addition to differences in the brain, other biological factors may play a part in shaping gender behavior.

as much as loki says she is a tomboy, i’d assume that there is SOMETHING in the way in which she reacts to certain situations etc that is not similar to the way a boy would react to it, and that displays aptly the presence of her female hormones, and feminity. being a tomboy doesnt make her a lesser ‘girl’. i believe there are innate, ingrown things that make us different from boys, and that no matter how ‘un feminine’ one is by usual standards, she is still nothing close to being, feeling or acting like an actual boy would. thank god.

achala, it is true that many so called female qualities are gender roles pre concieved by society, but being naturally maternal, emotional and such things are not social norms like ‘women have to be able to cook and clean’. they are quite different. while society can tell you how to act and how to behave, they cannot tell you who to really be, or how to feel. and in that aspect, women are still different, less tough and more emotional. women tend to admit their feelings more, and are more comfortable with expressing them. i’m not saying men are unemotional totally, or are insensitive. but just that you are probably more likely to find a woman telling you how she feels than a man doing so unhesitantly and articulately like a woman would.

so should we, as modern feminists, strive to be tough, insensitive and emotionally guarded SIMPLY because we MUST defeat and defy the gender roles defined for us by our ancestors, in which women are expected to be sensitive and emotional?