When Everyone’s To Blame for Gender Stereotyping
Remember when you were a kid and your mom or dad first gave you a little responsibility for yourself? Maybe it was the opportunity to hold your own lunch money or the task of sorting your own laundry (you are a big girl now, so you can figure out whites versus colors!).
Once you took on even a small degree of responsibility for your own place in the world, you DID feel a little more mature and you WERE open for more of it because you liked feeling that way (right?). It seems like our society underestimates how willing people, especially in their adulthood, might be to engage in this way.
But -
I am sensing a tide change, in the immediacy of this election process (more people seem to be responding to the call for participation) and, on a grander scale, with regard to gender stereotyping. More men and women are realizing they’ve got their own work to do - whether that be to stop stereotyping the opposite sex or to stop perpetuating the stereotypes of their own sex. We can’t keep pointing the finger elsewhere, so we have to look in the mirror.
I wrote more about it in my recent HuffingtonPost piece, and here’s an excerpt:
At this critical and historic political juncture, he said/she said
gender stereotype slinging abounds. When gender is called out, leaned
on or defaulted to as an exciting (hmmm) difference to discuss, is it
really as simple as one particular man slurring women or one particular
woman slurring men? No. Stereotype slinging is actually evidence of a
gender relations cultural transformation cracking the ice of years and
years of traditional perspective. The growing pains have been around
for a while, but only now are we actually experiencing the symptoms.
Since the U.S. women’s suffrage movement in the late 1800s, and the
more broad-reaching women’s movement of the 1960s, the average citizen
– male and female — has become much more aware of gender
stereotyping. And, to give credit where credit is due: many people are
honestly trying not to perpetuate such stereotypes.
February 27th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Gotta tell you, Andrea, that I “felt” a little disappointed that Hillary made a point of the media leaning toward Obama.
But this is some kind of a year, isn’t it?
February 27th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Despite the fact that “historic” and “pivotal” are over-used in describing moments in time, I really do think this is a pivotal year, Roger. If people are ready to embrace it, there will be huge and exciting cultural changes in 2008 about which future generations will write.
March 5th, 2008 at 1:40 am
The fact that we recognize stereotypes is a sign that we are no longer just tolerating tradition. But you also have a point in that we have to look ourselves in the mirror. Change begins with one person. From that one person follows an entire community.