To start off I want to define what gender is versus what we have made it out to be. Throughout many readings and definitions, I have realized that gender is something that we have given importance to and has no origin, but it is made out to be something that is fixed like sex, when it actually isn't. Gender is "an achieved status: that which is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social means"(Doing Gender 175). We, as a society, construct this reality of gender, we participate in this imitating game by consciously trying to live up to these expectations that we have assigned to each sex and in turn that creates a society that is based on segregation and seclusion and grows on an individual's self-doubt. Although in recent years we have progressed in terms of seeing sex and gender as two different forms of identity, we are still constantly "creating differences between girls and boys and women and men, differences that are not natural, essential or biological"(Doing Gender 178). This cycle is perpetuated through many forms which includes, family, school, peer groups and mass media, they all play a part into why people base their potential on how good their performance of gender is. For example, when a couple has a baby, the first thing relatives or even the couple ask is "Is it a boy or a girl?", which not only shows how much we value 'gender', but looking into why they specifically asked this question, the ways we raise each sex are based on this instilled belief that men represent dominance and women represent deference. Imagine if the couple would have said the baby was a girl and the amount of pink items that would have rolled through the door versus if the couple said it was a boy and the amount of blue items. Or looking back to a child's book titled "I'm Glad I'm a Boy, I'm Glad I'm a Girl" where it creates a sense of weakness versus strength, socializing girls by telling them they depend on boys and are only needed for domestic roles, which then creates barriers on what you can accomplish based solely on your gender. But the messages we send out about gender also directly affect our personalities, which based on the textbook definition is a person's consistent patterns of acting, thinking and feeling that develop through social experience and by internalizing surroundings. If we are surrounded by a society and people who as soon as someone comes out of the womb and throughout the rest of one's life we are categorizing them and imposing upon them the belief that the way people perceive you can either increase your security or cause you to be stratified , then we are naturally going to internalize gender as something that defines us and instead of having the freedom to be who you are, you start to adapt to the environment in order to be socially accepted. Through this process you start to constantly be afraid of doing something that isn't approved as what your gender 'would do' and start to put on a performance for peer groups and throughout school in order to live up to the expectation of who you are suppose to be. But throughout the act of trying to gain social acceptance, we put people down and point out their own straying behaviors in order to elevate ourselves and gain approval of peers. This is tied to the reading about manhood and how men use women and other groups of men to gain approval from men on the level of manliness they embody, but the problem with that is that there is no original person or idea that is the complete embodiment of gender so the cycle is never ending because the end is not defined. This then leads to endless individuals always living with the sense of no control and placing a great amount of value on appearances and on what people own versus someone's character. Since we define men as powerful, the way we insult men is to emasculate them and all the insults are directly related to being a women, which then perpetuates misogyny by associating weakness with women and men, who are focused on self- image, do not want to be anything like a women and that lead to the hatred of women. Other effects of this process of exclusion is over-sexualization, rape culture, the man-box, bogy- image issues, the acceptance of violence, homophobia, and racism because since men are expected to not show vulnerability and are encouraged to prove there dominance this creates the ma-box and also leads to the usage of women as currency, which then implies the idea that women are simply "body props" that have to objectify themselves in order to have power and that their only value is found in how desirable they are to others.The media also plays a big part because through the news, commercials and tv programs they are portraying through sexualized themes,so females do not get any messages that are saying they don't have to use sexuality to be empowered and then leads to the normalization of rape because they blame it on women for simply applying the messages they absorbed and men's need to prove their dominance.But the way men use other men to reach 'manhood' is through comparison and that includes not wanting to be perceived as gay so they put them down and through stereotypes of different races they also put down men of color. Also, the media has commercials of males being aggressive and violent which confirms the expectations od dominance, but encourages for dominance to increase to a greater magnitude that includes defaulting to physically assaulting anyone that challenges them. All of these problems were created by society because we don't see people, but it is always a man and woman interaction were we assess people and decide, based only on face value, if they fit the expectations of gender, we give importance to gender by seeing it as a means to assure security.
In the beginning of this unit , I recognized that gender and the expectations that came along were a huge problem in how we value people, but I hadn't realizing how the simple interactions I have, perpetuate this idea of segregation. My sociological imagination has expanded to not only include me thinking about connections between an event to other ideas, but to see my personal problems to occur because of the problems with society. The reason people, including me, have so many problems with assigning so much value to how we look or our self confidence issues is because we were taught that the way other people thought of us was were our value resided and that physicality was more important than character. But it also let me make more connections of how institutions that hold power have perpetuated the importance we play on gender, simply with the girl and boy bathrooms built in every building that force you to pick one binary , this was an example from 'Doing Gender' or how simply walking through a door that a male opened for you is a confirming the expectations we associate with sex. Now I at least will be aware of what society is telling me and analyze it instead of consciously or unconsciously internalizing it and not taking any personal struggles of stratification or segregation personally and blaming it on who I am, but as a result of the society I live in, it will give my some social mindfulness, so I can take step back and not see a situation as right or wrong.But, I don't know if problems with gender stratification and gender discrimination can be solved, because it's impossible to not do gender, but since we give gender the importance, what if we took that importance away. and then we wouldn't always be assessing people's 'essential nature' to decide what gender they belong in. We have to change the way we socialize people because socialization is basic to human development, but the way we socialize people to base their potential on how good their performance of gender is and our idealization of feminine and masculine natures, needs to change. In order to take away the importance of gender we have to socialize people to put less importance on the self, the part of the personality composed of self-awareness and self image, so that people aren't always focusing on perceptions and the approval of others. I think a big part of fixing these problems is to educate people and discredit the expectations linked with each sex, so people can be who they are and put less significance on power.
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