Traditional gender roles challenged in current culture

Traditional+gender+roles+challenged+in+current+culture

Ashton Moreland, Managing Editor

  • Stats: women in the workplace (minority women)
  • Wage gap
  • Colors gender specific
  • Makeup gender specific
  • Clothing gender specific

 

What does gender mean?

Gender. The word alone has as many meanings as there are people to define it, and enough power to cause global dispute. But what does gender really mean? What does it determine? Or does it determine anything? There are many open ended questions attached to this six letter word, and no one seems to have all of the possible answers to them.

“Gender is the assigned sex that you were born with. It defines your genitalia, not who you are. Like your personality, for example, defines you as a person,” sophomore Nate Cram said.

Definitively, the word gender means “the state of being male or female.” Though it is a non-complex word, gender tends to carry a certain complexity with it wherever it goes. In recent years, gender has been intertwined and threaded through conversations about sexuality, self-expression, and even government legislation to figure out what this one word entails.

In terms of social meaning, there seems to be connotation as to what constraints gender places on your capabilities in life. Whether that answer is negative or positive depends on the person.

“To me, gender doesn’t socially mean anything. It doesn’t mean you can’t do anything that you put your mind to,” junior Aaron Baker said.

Gender terminology

Along with gender itself comes the terminology one uses when referring to a person of a specific gender. Pronouns such as “he” and “she” are used for males and females, but what do we use for anyone of a less conventional gender?

“In all honesty, I feel like you should ask people what pronouns they want to use, mainly because I feel that it is rude to refer to them by their non-preferable pronouns. I wouldn’t want somebody to keep calling me something I didn’t want, so we should treat them with the same amount of respect as they treat us,” senior Sandra Vargas said.

On the other hand, some believe the English language should stick to its binary usage of pronouns no matter what a person classifies themselves as.

“The way you’re born is the way you should die… I understand changing the way you live but the way life works is that if life, or God, made you one way, then you should stay that way and live the way you were born and be happy with it,” junior Santiago Rodriguez said.

Aside from pronouns, there is also specific terminology used when generally describing men and women. In a negative connotation, there are more terms widely used and considered socially acceptable to degrade women than men. For example, women are more likely to be called a “slut,” or a “skank” for having sex than men. In fact, these words have become so orthodox in popular culture that they are not frowned upon for their meaning, which is demeaning and marginalizing, but rather for the words themselves.

“It’s sad that just because of our body parts, we’re [women] at a disadvantage. I think people who use those words are just hurt. I’ve always grown up believing that hurt people hurt other people, and if these people grew up in a bad environment or bad family circumstances, then they’re going to act out and be rude,” junior Taylor Powell said.

 

Gender and sexuality

Sexuality seems to be gender’s partner in crime; sharing common ground on the basis of self-expression and characterizing oneself. But do these two words rely on each other? Do they always go hand-in-hand, or are they separated according to the person?

“I don’t necessarily think sexuality and gender correlate. I mean, gender is who you are and sexuality is who you like. It could be separate, it could be together, depending on the person. It doesn’t really matter,” senior Makayla Auslam said.

Others believe that there is a correlation between gender and sexuality, and that perhaps the terms are not as fluid as some may think.

“In the Bible it says that a man and a woman were created to make more. The Bible didn’t say that there was a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Boys should like girls and girls should like boys,” junior Julio Anaya said.

With such vastly different mindsets throughout our culture comes the will to fight for what one believes in. Protests for and against gay rights have been revived by law changes protecting those who think differently, and vice versa. But one thing that accompanies this contention is new social awareness. Redefining and pushing boundaries has expanded society’s consciousness of issues such as gender and sexuality.

“Gender is changing so much in society and in mainstream media, people are starting to recognize non-binaries as an actual thing and transgender people, and I feel like it’s helping the LGBT movement move farther forward,” senior Josie Fox said.

 

Gender inequality

“You fight like a girl!” “Come on man, don’t be a girl.” Insults thrown out at the slightest display of weakness in men have such commonplace in modern vernacular that the true meaning of these phrases hardly registers before the words are spoken. But do these insults, formed decades ago, really mean anything in the modern day?

“In sports, girls are ‘pampered’ because we’re seen as the weaker sex. We play no tackle football or flag football, or sometimes a completely different sport like softball-  just for girls. It makes me feel like men don’t think we can do the same things as them, and they’re completely wrong,” sophomore Bekka Bitner said.

Some believe the true key to social equality is to eliminate these phrases from our speech completely, and to stop dehumanizing people.

“We have to stop saying stupid stuff like, ‘stop acting like a girl.’ Because what is that saying? That’s saying that if you hurt your arm and someone tells you to stop acting like a girl, that girls are weak. And women, girls in general, are super powerful,” junior Ben Aley said.

However, inequality isn’t just found in word choice, but rather throughout our society as a whole. According to the Women’s Department of the U.S. Department of Labor, women make 78 cents for every dollar that a man earns- and this number even varies based on the type of job.

There are many contributing factors to this difference in pay. For example, historically, women have received lower levels of college education, and are still segregated against in the workforce, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

“It’s really disheartening to know that just because of the way I was born, it will be harder for me to make money and be considered equal to another human being. Not to mention the minorities that make even less than I would in a job,” senior Teagan Myers said.

Aside from inequality in the workplace, traditional gender roles in society are being challenged and changed by the millennial generation.

“In this country, everyone used to look to the man to provide for the family and for the woman to cook and clean. I don’t feel like that should be true today. I think men should do some cooking and cleaning and if women want to go out and make their own money, then they should be able to,” Aley said.