On that note:
Today is International Day Against Homophobia! http://www.homophobiaday.org/default.aspx?scheme=4073 . Check out that page for more information.
This couldn't come more timely enough. Today I had to listen to my fellow colleagues talk about how you need to teach a male child how to act like a boy and not effeminate... I'm not sure what the criterion is for such. Apparently this is important to establish his identity as a male and not a female or else he will become gay. I guess we should also ensure that all girls play with dollies so that she knows how to be a girl and a mother. NO giving her cars to play with I dare say! If ignorance is bliss. We must be in heaven.
Even today we encourage girls not play sports, especially some sports in particular like rugby or american football. Girls are considered women only if they have babies. Not true? Well then why is it when a woman makes a decision not to have children she is looked at disapprovingly and or with pity?
Men are taught to be "macho" and are supposed to be charge of the household. Women are to be the ones to cook and clean even if women and men both have jobs. "Most men in the polls said they were happy to share child care and domestic chores with wives who work outside the home. Yet household duties remain sharply divided along gender lines. Working mothers still do twice as much housework as their husbands, and more than half of all women questioned expressed at least some dissatisfaction with the amount of help their husbands provide around the house." Washington Post article: Gender Revolution
You would think in 2012 we would be elsewhere. Instead we are taught the need to fall into societal created gender roles and then told that these gender roles are biologically driven rather than societally driven. "You give a girl child dolls and tiny pink dresses, set her in front of my little pony and strawberry shortcake. You flood her with images of domestic life and when she grows up, goes though her rebel phase, and then find a husband to have a perfect little suburban life you then call it 'nature'. It isn't human nature to automatically fill roles, it's human nature to manipulate things into his or her chosen direction. We started with using sticks to gather insects from mounds for food, those sticks turned into spears. After learning how to manipulate nature to make tools, we manipulated animals to make pets and livestock. The wolf became the dog, but while we did this to other things, we did it to ourselves. The gender roles we now take for granted as 'nature' are simply institutions we have created to serve our needs. Our failing is in the religious way we go about living up to that true nature of alteration, we fall short of knowing how we adapt, so we fall short of knowing how to evolve." All Philosophy- Gender Roles
"Gender identity is how people think of themselves and identify in terms of sex (man, woman, boy, girl). Gender identity is a psychological quality; unlike biological sex, it can't be observed or measured (at least by current means), only reported by the individual." All Philosophy- Sex vs Gender
Patriarchy plays a large role in defining gender roles. One of the main driving forces, if not THE main force behind patriarchy is religion. Therefore religious views have a lot to do with how we identify ourselves and how society defines our gender roles. I spent a good deal of time looking at posts on forums concerning gender roles and the predominant factor in the discussion is that gender roles as they have been defined : with the woman as a traditional housewife in charge of taking care of children, cooking, cleaning etc and man as head of the house is believed to be important or fundamental for religious reasons by many people and that true equality of the sexes ( not genders) is not appropriate both religiously speaking and for societal (and family related ) purposes. There were also those discussions on why man should be head...and concepts of god as masculine. I wont go there for now , but its something to think of.
Before the Abrahamic religions spread, the dominant ( or not so dominant religions). Were almost always, if not always, female centric; and consisted of goddess worshiping and thus lead to matriarchal societies. Today we don't state that God is male but he is portrayed and spoken of in masculine ways and as such gender roles have been defined to make one group dominant and the other group submissive.
There is much much more to be said on this topic. Will discuss further very soon.
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