Martin and Lorber Articles - Jane Vinocur

Martin and Lorber Articles - Jane Vinocur

In the article “Believing is Seeing” by Judith Lorber, the author states that there are two distinct gender groups – male and female, or men and women. She explains that women are conditioned to have female characteristics, and that men are conditioned to have male characteristics. For example, she said that during the Olympics, the media is more than willing to report on the little gymnast girl, than the track and field woman. She also states that the media and people just watching tend to be more interested in a woman who, while she is athletic, is still somewhat tiny and fragile, than a woman who is very athletic, and “somewhat manly”. However, people love to watch track and field and very athletic, manly sports, when men are competing.

Lorber says that when a child with XY chromosomes is born with ambiguous genitalia, doctors will often pick what gender to make the child. If the penis is small, then surgery is performed to create an artificial vagina and the child is from then on categorized as a girl. While this is an extreme case, I once watched an episode of Law and Order SVU that dealt with this issue of picking a gender for a child. The episode was centered on a girl who did not know that she was actually born a boy. When she was a newborn, her circumcision went terribly wrong and doctor’s advised her parents to have her undergo surgery to turn her into a girl. Her parents agreed and she had the surgery, and she also took hormone supplements to be more like a girl. This girl believed that she was a lesbian and not a straight male. While there were some things that made her believe that she was not a “normal” girl, she was treated like a girl, categorized as a girl, and therefore believed that she was a girl. This shows that society puts people in these roles and makes them believe that if they have a problem with them, then it’s an individual problem, and not a problem with society. This is because generalizations made by societies are so widely accepted that it takes a lot to challenge them, and in the case of gender roles, women are perceived as radical feminists if they protest something or demand to be treated as equals.

Gender roles are so widely accepted that it doesn’t seem like a pressing issue to a lot of people to change them. For example, when a man and woman are driving somewhere together, most often the man will just assume he’s driving, and the woman doesn’t object or even think to question this. It’s not a question of skill, because the woman could be the better driver, but it’s a question of gender roles. The driver is in control more, is more dominant, is in charge, and in our society, most of the time we associate these characteristics with those of a male.

In the article “Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools” by Karin A. Martin, the author discusses the physical differences of boys and girls, and the way adults treat boys and girls, based on an observation of preschoolers. The researchers found that adult women’s movements are more restricted. They take smaller steps, and when they sit their arms and legs are folded, thereby making themselves tinier and taking up less space. Women also don’t make exaggerated gestures like men do. Some research suggests that the poor self-confidence that inflicts so many women stems from their inability to move freely. While men are encouraged to be outgoing, women are often encouraged to be calm, and “well-behaved”.

This article talked about how early gender roles are formed by observing preschoolers. Not only did the boys at the preschool never wear pink, but the 5-year-old boys also never dressed up as a girl during dress up, while the 3-year-old boys did. This wasn’t a conscience decision made by the 5-year-old boys, but rather it was implied that they shouldn’t. The 3-year-old boys received encouragement when they dressed up during playtime, regardless if they were dressing up as a man or woman, whereas the encouragement became one-sided as the boys aged. This shows that even at this young age, gender roles have already started to take place. For the girls, they were encouraged to dress up like women, wearing long dresses and big shoes and carrying purses and wearing scarves. When the girls wore dresses and tights to school each day, the teachers often fixed their clothing for them; for example if they tights were ripping or if they’re dressed were folded. This management of the girl’s bodies and clothing by the teachers automatically put the girl’s sense of control over their outfits into the hands of someone else.

During story time, the children were sitting in a circle, listening to the teacher. One boy named Sam had ballet slippers on his hands and was clapping them together loudly, and alternating between lying down and trying to fit the ballet shoes over his sneakers while continuously laughing at/with the other kids. Another boy named Adam also lay down while listening to the teacher. The teacher started to ask Sam to pay attention, but he repeatedly ignored her, and she never enforced what she was instructing him to do. After a couple of minutes, a girl named Rachel went to lie down, and after laying down for 10 seconds, the teacher strictly instructed her to sit up, and Rachel complied. Girls are expected to behave more properly than boys. For example, when a teacher would ask the class questions, the boys would shout out answers, regardless if they were insightful or irrelevant to the question asked. The boys demanded attention, and the teachers rarely denied it to them. However, if a girl didn’t raise her hand, and instead just shouted out the answer, she would immediately be reminded that that was not polite. Girls are told to be quieter, or told to repeat their requests in a quieter tone, 3 times as often as boys.

Gender roles are set almost from birth and when someone drastically breaks one, people and society find it strange. For example, my friend had a mom who worked all day long and a stay-at-home dad. When I first learned this in fourth grade, I was so confused. I had never heard of a dad staying at home before. My mom was a stay-at-home mom until I was in first grade, and then she started working from home. My dad worked from home for about a year, but then started another job at an office. Looking back, I would have never disturbed my dad while he was working from home, but up until the end of this summer, I never thought twice about just barging into my mom’s office to talk with her, or ask her to go shopping with me, even though she was working. So why shouldn’t there be more stay-at-home dads? There’s no reason why her having a stay-at-home dad would affect her negatively and she’s actually one of my smartest friends. I’m not saying that it’s surprising that she’s smart, or that she wouldn’t be smart if she had a stay-at-home mom, or even that having a stay-at-home parent affected her in any way. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to be the woman who is the stay-at-home parent. I’m saying that the teachers are wrong to treat the girls in preschool like they have to be proper little women. The preschool girls should be allowed to run around like the boys do, to not be forced to paint and do arts and crafts while the boys get to choose their own activity, and the boys and girls should either both be allowed to call out answers or both be instructed to raise their hands. By starting to form gender roles so early, girls have almost no chance of growing up believing that they are equal to men in every way.

As Lorber says, “Physical differences between male and female bodies exist, but these differences are socially meaningless until social practices transform them into social facts”. People need to break the mold that has been set that girls need to be proper all of the time, and quiet and calm, and that men need to be very athletic and manly. Only then can we break the gender roles and move to a more equal society.