Week
Four, here we are. I feel like the semester has barely begun and yet I’ve
learned so much from this class. This week we focused on gender. As it’s
currently a really hot topic, I hope that I can approach it in a way that doesn’t
cause anyone offense. That being said, this is what I think about gender and
some of what was discussed and learned in class.
I’ve
always seen the world in black and white; right and wrong. My parents raised me
to believe in having high standards and morals. As a member of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe that we were spirits before we
came to this earth. And that as such gender is an eternal principle. Those born
female on earth were female in the pre-earth life and those born male, were
male in the pre-earth life. It isn’t something that a person can choose, but
rather it is a divine part of who we are. Much of my beliefs and feelings stem
from this.
Growing
up in a family with three sisters and one brother, I’ve been blessed to have
experienced these differences myself. For instance, my sisters and I loved to
create “Barbie World.” We would spend hours creating it and it would fill our room.
(it was mainly random books and other toys stacked around creating houses and
business, but we loved it.) Our older brother would help, but would often get
bored and want to do something more exciting like make Ken a bungy jumper from
the second story window. Even when playing with “girl’s toys” he had the tendency
to make them want to fight or do something more exciting then play house. On
the flip side, when we would play Legos, or the little army men with him, we
wanted to have them play nice and create things that wouldn’t be destroyed.
As
stated before, the above is just from my personal experience. Though we played differently,
we played together and learned to find a balance. Even though we never told him
and we acted like we disliked his destroying our game, we really loved the different
aspect that he brought to our play.
It
was a bit shocking to me when I found out that there were people who believed
that gender wasn’t really important and that it was something that you could choose.
I then began to hear about different studies being done, and how some people
believe that if treating exactly the same, there would be no different gender
tendencies. A few things that I’ve heard is that if children were provided toys
that were typically made for the opposite gender that they would then portray those
same characteristics. Yet in the years that people have been trying this, it
has yet to prove correct.
Studies
have been done from infantry that proves that men and women are inherently different.
We are literally wired differently. Males tend to look for and participate more
in physically engaging activities, while girls tend to naturally navigate
towards nurturing and relationship activities.
Men are more spatial oriented and women are more relational oriented.
So, not only are we physically different, but our minds and the way we view the
world is different. Males and females compliment each other.
Boys tend to take on situations more aggressively
and girls tend to react more emotionally. One study that I saw was of young
toddlers put behind a glass barrier. The boys had the tendency to run at the
glass to try and get to their mothers, while the girls would generally sit down
and cry for help. As with every study there are outliers, but the overall conclusion
was that gender does play a role.
Another
study that I’ve heard a lot about over the years about infants is that the
females will look at faces more than males. Females, tend to look longer and
make connections with faces differently than the males will.
What
I really like about the above studies is that they were done with infants. A baby
hasn’t had the same interactions that an older child would have, so the study
can help prove that gender is an innate part of who we are and not something
that culture or society can teach.