? Please write a paper analyzing the film using the concepts from Chapter 11 and 12 This is the film:?https://www.vudu.com/co

Film Paper #3

Instructions: Please answer the following 4 questions using the concepts from Chapters 11 and 12:

1) Write an informative summary of the material in one to two paragraphs.

2) Choose four of the concepts listed below to discuss what you feel are the important themes of the film.

a. Define each concept; b. Relate that concept to the film; and c. Explain why you think this concept is important in the film.

3) Did the film increase your understanding of a particular issue? Did it change your perspective in

any way?

4) Evaluate the merit of the film: the importance of its points, its accuracy, completeness, organization, and so on. Include a discussion of whether or not you would recommend the film to others, and why.

Points of consideration in writing your reaction:

1) Proof read your paper for clarity, grammatical errors, and coherent, error-free sentences. 2) Throughout your paper, be sure to use direct quotations to illustrate important ideas. 3) Throughout your paper, be sure to cite the textbook using page numbers. 4) Support any general points you make or attitudes you express with specific reasons and details.

Statements such as "I agree with many ideas in this film" or "I found the film very interesting" are meaningless without specific evidence that shows why you feel as you do.

Concepts for The Mask You live In

• Doing Gender • Feminism • Gender Identity • Gender Socialization • Homophobia • Gendered institutions • Patriarchy • Heterosexism • Homophobia • Theories of Gender (any application)

• Gender and Social Change • Sex and Culture • Theories of Sexuality (any application) • Sexual Violence • Sexual Identity • Sexual Scripts • Social Construction Perspective • Violence • Sex and Social Change

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253

● Understand gender as a social construction

● Explain the process of gender socialization

● Identify different components of gender stratification

● Compare and contrast different theories of gender stratification

● Relate gender inequality in the United States to that in other nations

● Evaluate the different components of change with regard to gender

in this chapter, you will learn to:

The Social Construction of Gender 254

Gender Socialization 257

Gender Stratification 264

Theories of Gender 271

Gender in Global Perspective 274

Gender and Social Change 275

Chapter Summary 278

Imagine suddenly becoming a member of the other sex. What would you have to change? First, you would probably change your appearance—clothing, hairstyle, and any adorn- ments you wear. You would also have to change some of your interpersonal behavior. Contrary to popular belief, men talk more than women, are louder, are more likely to inter- rupt, and are less likely to recognize others in conversation. Women are more likely to laugh, express hesitance, and be polite. Gender differences also appear in nonverbal communi- cation. Women use less personal space, touch less in imper- sonal settings (but are touched more), and smile more, even when they are not necessarily happy (Wood 2013). Research- ers even find that men and women write email in a different style, women writing less opinionated email than men and using it to maintain rapport and intimacy (Colley and Todd 2002; Sussman and Tyson 2000). Finally, you might have to change many of your attitudes because men and women differ significantly on many, if not most, social and political issues (see ▲ Figure 11.1).

If you are a woman and became a man, perhaps the change would be worth it. You would probably see your income increase (especially if you became a White man). You would have more power in virtually every social setting. You would be far more likely to head a major corporation, run your own business, or be elected to a political office—again, assum- ing that you are White. Would it be worth it? As a man, you would be far more likely to die a violent death and would probably not live as long as a woman (National Center for Health Statistics 2013).

If you are a man who became a woman, your income would most likely drop significantly. More than fifty years after passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963, men still earn 22 percent more than women, even comparing those working year-round and full-time (DeNavas-Walt and Proctor 2014). You would probably become resentful of a number of things because poll data indicate that women are more resentful than men about things such as the amount of money available for them to live on, the amount of help they get from their mates around the house, how much men share child care, and how they look. Women also report being more fearful on the

Gender

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254   CH A PTER 11

The Social Construction of Gender From the moment of birth, gender expectations influ- ence how boys and girls are treated. Now that it is pos- sible to identify the sex of a child in the womb, gender expectations may begin even before birth. Parents and grandparents might select pink clothes and dolls for baby girls, sports clothing and brighter colors for boys. Even if they try to do otherwise, it will be difficult because baby products are so typed by gender. Much research shows how parents and others continue to treat children in stereotypical ways. Girls may be expected to cuddle and be sweet, whereas boys are handled more roughly and given greater independence.

→ SEE for YOURSELF ← Changing Your Gender Try an experiment based on the example of changing gender that opens this chapter.

1. First, list everything you think you would have to do to change your behavior if you were the opposite gender. Separate your list items according to whether

they are related to such factors as appearance, attitude, or behavior.

2. Second, for twenty-four hours, try your best to change any of these things that you are willing to do. Record how others react to you during this period and how the change makes you feel.

3. When your experiment is over, write a report on what your brief experiment tells you about how gender identities are (or are not) supported through social interaction.

Defining Sex and Gender Sociologists use the terms sex and gender to distin- guish biological sex identity from learned gender roles. Sex refers to biological identity, being male or female. For sociologists, the more significant concept is gender—the socially learned expectations, identi- ties, and behaviors associated with members of each sex. This distinction emphasizes that behavior asso- ciated with gender is culturally learned. Gender is a “system of social practices” (Ridgeway 2011: 9) that creates categories of people—men and women— who are defined in relationship to each other on unequal terms.

streets than men. Women are, however, more satisfied than men with their role as parents and with their friendships outside of marriage.

For both women and men, there are benefits, costs, and consequences stemming from the social definitions associated with gender. As you imagined this experiment, you may have had difficulty trying to picture the essential change in your biological identity: Is this the most significant part of being a man or woman? Nature determines whether you are male or female but society gives significance to this distinction. Sociologists see gender as a social fact, because who we become as men and women is largely shaped by cultural and social expectations.

Support allowing people who have

incurable diseases to die

Support using the death penalty

in cases of murder

Support requiring a gun permit to carry a weapon

64.1% 71.7% 69.3%

82.8%

68.9%

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0%

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20%

30%

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▲ Figure 11.1 Hot-Button Issues: The Gender Gap in Attitudes When people use the term gender gap, they are often referring to pay differences between women and men. As the data here show, there is also a significant gender gap on some of the important issues of the day. Source: National Opinion Research Center, General Society Survey. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago. www.norc.org

Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

G EN DER   255

The definitions that surround these categories stem from culture—made apparent especially by looking at other cultures. Across different cultures, gender expectations associated with men and women vary considerably. In Western industrialized socie- ties, people tend to think of men and women (and masculinity and femininity) in dichotomous terms, even defined as “opposite sexes.” The views from other cultures challenge this assumption. Historically, the berdaches (pronounced berdash) in Navajo society were anatomically normal men defined as a third gender between male and female. Berdaches, con- sidered ordinary men, married other men who were not berdaches. Neither the berdaches nor the men they married were considered homosexuals, as they would be considered in other places (Nanda 1998; Lorber 1994).

There are also substantial differences in the con- struction of gender across social classes and within subcultures in a given culture. Within the United States, there is considerable variation in the expe- riences of gender among different racial and eth- nic groups (Andersen and Collins 2013; Baca Zinn et al. 2011). Differences within a given gender can be greater than differences between men and women. That is, the variation on a given trait, such as aggres- sion or competitiveness, can be as great within a given gender group as the difference across genders. Thus, some women are more aggressive than some men, and some men are less competitive than some women (see ▲ Figure 11.2).

Sex Differences: Nature or Nurture? Is gender a matter of nature or nurture? Obviously, there are some biological differences between women and men, but looking at gender sociologically quickly reveals the extraordinary power of social and cultural influences on things often popularly seen as biologi- cally fixed. Let’s first examine some basic biological facts about sex and gender.

A person’s sex identity is established at the moment of conception. The mother contributes an X chromosome to the embryo; the father, an X or Y. The combination of two X chromosomes makes a female; the combination of an X and a Y makes a male. Under normal conditions, chemical events directed by genes on the sex-linked chromosomes lead to the formation of male or female genitalia.

Irregularities in the process of chromosome for- mation or fetal differentiation can produce a person with mixed biological sex characteristics—a condi- tion known as intersexed (previously referred to as hermaphroditism). For example, an intersexed infant may be born with ovaries or testes but with ambiguous or mixed genitals, or may be born a chromosomal male but have an incomplete penis and no urinary canal.

Case studies of intersexed people reveal the extraordinary influence of social factors in shaping a person’s identity (Preves 2003). Parents of intersexed children are usually advised to have their child’s geni- tals surgically assigned to either male or female and also to give the child a new name, a different hairstyle, and new clothes—all intended to provide the child with the social signals judged appropriate to a single gender identity. One physician who has worked on such cases tells parents that they “need to go home and do their job as child rearers with it very clear whether it’s a boy or a girl” (Kessler 1990: 9).

Physical differences between the sexes do, of course, exist. In addition to differences in anatomy, boys at birth tend to be slightly longer and weigh more than girls. As adults, men tend to have a lower resting heart rate, higher blood pressure, and higher muscle mass and muscle density. These physical differences contribute to the tendency for men to be physically stronger than women, but this can be altered, depend- ing on level of physical activity. The public now rou- tinely sees displays of women’s athleticism. Women can achieve a high degree of muscle mass and muscle density through bodybuilding and can win over men in activities that require high levels of endurance, such as the four women who have won the Iditarod—the Alaskan dog sled race considered one of the most gru- eling competitions in the world. In other words, until men and women really compete equally in activities from which women have historically been excluded,

Women Men

Less aggressive (women)

More aggressive (women)

Less aggressive (men)

More aggressive (men)

▲ Figure 11.2 Gender Differences: Aggression Even when men and women as a whole tend to differ on a given trait, within-gender differences can be just as great as across-gender differences. Some men, for example, are less aggressive than some women.

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256   CH APT ER 11

modest correlation between aggressive behavior and testosterone levels. Furthermore, changes in testoster- one levels do not predict changes in men’s aggression (such as by “chemical castration,” the administration of drugs that eliminate the production or circulation of testosterone). What’s more, there are minimal dif- ferences in the levels of sex hormones between girls and boys during early childhood, yet researchers find considerable differences in the aggression exhibited by boys and girls as children (Fausto-Sterling 2000, 1992).

Arguments based on biological determinism assume that differences between women and men are “natural” and, presumably, resistant to change. Like biological explanations of race differences, biological explanations of inequality between women and men tend to flourish during periods of rapid social change. They protect the status quo (existing social arrangements) by making it appear that the status of women is “natural” and there- fore should remain as it is. If social differences between women and men were biologically determined, there would also be no variation in gender relations across cul- tures, but extensive differences are well documented.

In sum, we would not exist without our biological makeup, but we would not be who we are without soci- ety and culture. As sociologist Cecilia Ridgeway puts it, gender is a “substantial, socially elaborated edifice con- structed on a modest biological foundation” (2011:  9).

Who reports the news? Even with the increased presence of women as news reporters, anchors, editors, and writers, the news media continue to be dominated by men—White men at that. Women are the vast majority (74 percent) of those graduating from college with majors in journalism and mass communications (Becker et al. 2010), but their voices and words do not narrate the news of the nation. Some facts from recent research include:

● The number of women staffers in newsrooms is largely unchanged from 1999 at 36 percent;

● Men are quoted three and a half times as often as women, a finding based on a detailed three-month analysis of the front page of The New York Times;

Women in the Media: Where Are Women’s Voices? ● Men outnumber women four to one

on the editorial pages of the most prestigious national newspapers;

● Men write 82 percent of film reviews; ● Men vastly outnumber women as

experts and guests on TV talk shows.

Women are most likely to report on life- style, education, culture, and health, not politics, technology, or criminal justice. Women are most underrepresented as reporters of world affairs. Even when the subject matter is of deep concern to women—abortion and birth con- trol—80 percent of those reporting on these issues are men (4th Estate 2014).

Try observing these patterns yourself: Who writes the bylines in Internet news you read? Who is cited as an expert? Who covers what issues? Although sociologists would argue that the mere

presence of women does not necessarily change the presentation of ideas, do you think that it matters that men are the ones most likely to narrate our nation’s news?

Source: Women’s Media Center. 2014. The Status of Women in the U.S. Media 2014. New York: Women’s Media Center. www.womensmediacenter.com

a sociological eye on the media

Note: Percentage of women and men with bylines and on-camera appearances in major TV networks, newspapers, news wires, and Internet news services, 2013

Men; 63.6%

Women; 36.1%

Gender Gap in the News Media

we may not know the true extent of physical differences between women and men.

Biological determinism refers to explanations that attribute complex social phenomena to physical char- acteristics. The argument that men are more aggres- sive because of hormonal differences (in particular, the presence of testosterone) is a biologically determinist argument. Despite popular belief, studies find only a

Title IX, passed in 1972, has opened up athletic oppor- tunities to women that were not available to earlier generations.

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G EN DER   257

Culture defines certain behaviors as appropriate (or not) for women and for men; these are learned through- out life, beginning with the earliest practices by which people are raised. Understanding the process of gender socialization is then a key part of understanding the for- mation of gender as a social and cultural phenomenon.

Gender Socialization As we saw in Chapter 4, socialization is the process by which social expectations are taught and learned. Through gender socialization, men and women learn the expectations and identities associated with gender in society. The rules of gender extend to all aspects of society and daily life. Gender socialization affects the self-concepts of women and men, their social and polit- ical attitudes, their perceptions about other people, and their feelings about relationships with others. Although not everyone is perfectly socialized to conform to gender expectations, socialization is a powerful force directing the behavior of men and women in gender-typical ways.

Even people who set out to challenge traditional expectations often find themselves yielding to the powerful influence of socialization. Women who con- sciously reject traditional women’s roles may still find themselves inclined to act as hostess or secretary in group settings. Similarly, men may accept equal responsibility for housework, yet they fail to notice when the refrigerator is empty or a child needs a bath— household needs they have been trained to let someone else notice (DeVault 1991). Gender expectations are so pervasive that it is also difficult to change them on an individual basis. If you doubt this, try buying clothing or toys for a young child without purchasing something that is gender-typed, or talk to parents who have tried to raise their children without conforming to gender ste- reotypes and see what they report about the influence of such things as children’s peers and the media.

The Formation of Gender Identity One result of gender socialization is the formation of gender identity, which is one’s definition of oneself as a woman or man. Gender identity is basic to our self- concept, shaping our expectations for ourselves, our abilities and interests, and how we interact with others. Gender identity shapes not only how we think about ourselves and others but also influences numerous behaviors, including the likelihood of drug and alco- hol abuse, violent behavior, depression, or even how aggressive you are in driving (Andersen 2015).

One area in which gender identity has an especially strong effect is in how people feel about their appear- ance. Studies find strong effects of gender identity on body image. Concern with body image begins mostly during adolescence. Studies of young children (that is,

preschool age) find no gender differences in how boys and girls feel about their bodies (Hendy et al. 2001), but clear differences emerge by early adolescence. At this age, girls report comparing their bodies to others of their sex more often than boys do. By early adoles- cence, girls report more negativity about their body image than do boys. This type of thinking among girls is related to lower self-esteem (Jones 2001; Polce-Lynch et al. 2001). Among college students, women also are more dissatisfied with their appearance than are men (Hoyt and Kogan 2001). Idealized images of women’s bodies in the media, as well as peer pressures, have a huge impact on young girls’ and women’s gender iden- tity and feelings about their appearance.

Sociologist Debra Gimlin argues that bodies are “the surface on which prevailing rules of a culture are written” (Gimlin 2002: 6). You see this especially with regard to gender. Men and women alike practice elabo- rate rituals to achieve particular gender ideals, ideals that are established by the dominant culture.

Understanding gender socialization helps you see that gender, like race, is a social construction. We “do” gender—as you will see in the section near the end of this chapter on theories of gender. Understanding gender as a social construction means thinking about the many ways that gender is produced through social interaction instead of seeing it as a fixed attribute of individuals (Connell 2009).

The experiences of transgender people make this point even more obvious. Transgender people are those who live as a gender different from that to which they were assigned at birth (Schilt 2011). Transgender individuals experience great pressure to fit within the usual expectations. Because they do not necessarily display the expected routines of gender, they may be ridiculed, shunned, discriminated against, or even vio- lently assaulted. Their experiences show how powerful the social norms are to conform to gender expectations (Westbrook and Schilt 2014; Connell 2010, 2012).

Similarly, those who undergo sex changes as adults report enormous pressure from others to be one sex or the other. Managing such identities can be stressful, largely because of expectations that others have about what are appropriate categories of gender identity. Any- one who crosses these or in any way appears to be dif- ferent from dominant expectations is frequently subject to exclusion and ridicule, showing just how strong gen- der expectations are (Stryker and Whittle 2006).

→THINKING Sociologically Look at the products sold to men and women used as part of their daily grooming? How are they packaged? What color are they? What are their names? How do these artifacts of everyday life reflect norms about gender?

Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

25 8   CH A PTER 11

Sources of Gender Socialization As with other forms of socialization, there are different agents of gender socialization: family, peers, children’s play, schooling, religious training, mass media, and popular culture, to name a few. Gender socialization is reinforced whenever gender-linked behaviors receive approval or disapproval from these multiple influences.

Parents are one of the most important sources of gender socialization. Parents may discourage children from playing with toys that are identified with the other sex, especially when boys play with toys meant for girls. Research finds that parents are more tolerant of girls not conforming to gender roles than they are for boys (Kane 2012). Fathers, especially, discourage sons from violating gender norms (Martin 2005). Although fathers are now more involved than in the past in chil- dren’s care, they are less likely to provide basic care and more likely to be involved with discipline (LaFlamme et al. 2002).

Expectations about gender are changing, although researchers suggest that the cultural expectations about gender may have changed more than people’s behavior. Mothers and fathers now report that fathers

should be equally involved in child rearing, but the reality is different. Mothers still spend more time in child-related activities and have more responsibility for children. Furthermore, the gap that mothers perceive between fathers’ ideal and actual involvement in child rearing is a significant source of mothers’ stress (Milkie et al. 2002).

Gender socialization patterns also vary within dif- ferent racial–ethnic families. Latinas, as an example, have generally been thought to be more traditional in their gender roles, although this varies by generation and by the experiences of family members in the labor force. Within families, young women and men learn to formulate identities that stem from their gender, racial, and ethnic expectations.

Peers strongly influence gender socialization— sometimes more so than one’s immediate family. Peer relationships shape children’s patterns of social inter- action. Young people’s play also shapes analytical skills, values, and attitudes. Studies find that boys and girls often organize their play in ways that reinforce not only gender but also race and age norms (Moore 2001). Peer relationships often reinforce the gender norms of the culture—norms that are typically even more strictly applied to boys than to girls. Thus boys who engage in behavior that is associated with girls are likely to be ridiculed by friends—more so than are girls who play or act like boys (Sandnabba and Ahlberg 1999). In this way, homophobic attitudes, routinely expressed among peers, reinforce dominant attitudes about what it means to “be a man” (Pascoe 2011). Although girls may be called “tomboys,” boys who are called “sissies” are more harshly judged. Note, though, that tomboy behav- ior among girls beyond a certain age may result in the girl being labeled a “dyke.”

→THINKING Sociologically Is your pet gendered? People typically think of the social construction of gender in the context of human relations. What about pets? Almost two-thirds of all U.S. households have at least one pet. A recent study of dog owners found that people also gender their dogs, selecting dogs that reflect the owner’s gender identity and describing them in gendered terms. Female pets have names with more syllables and that are more likely to have a diminutive ending. You can find lots of advice how to appropriately gender your pet on the Internet. Try to observe this yourself. Apparently, gender norms pervade human relationships with animals as well as with each other! Sources: Ramirez, Michael. 2006. “‘My Dog’s Just Like Me’: Dog Ownership as a Gender Display.” Symbolic Interaction 29 (3): 373–391; Abel, Ernest L., and Michael L. Kruger. 2007. “Gender Related Naming Practices: Similarities and Differences between People and Their Dogs.” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 57 (1–2): 15–19.

Changes in gender roles have involved more men in parenting.

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