Diversity in Literary Response: Revisiting Gender Expectations

IntroductionFor years literature has been seen as a gendered medium and reading has been viewed as a gendered practice (Bleich, 1986; Cherland, 1994; Flynn, 1983; Holland, 1977; Linkin, 1993; Millard, 1997). Much of the research on gender and literature preference is more than ten years old, yet book and media marketing relies heavily on gender stereotypes based on the findings of those studies. Teachers and librarians still say, "I don't know if I would use that book because it would only appeal to girls" or "boys won't read a book with a female protagonist." This demonstrates the continuing pertinence of the question of whether literacy practices are gendered, and what that might look like today.When responding to literature, the reader approaches the text through the lens of their sociocultural identity constructions. These constructions are reflective of our interpretive communities and are based on shared assumptions about language, the nature of knowledge, cultural models, and social expectations (Gee, 2008). These invisible, common sense assumptions are the basis for ideology and ideologies are often local constructions built on the values of the communities in which we claim membership (Fairclough, 2001).Experiences with literacy help shape our ideologies. The texts that are read or written and the social and cultural contexts in which they are read or written position readers within discourses of gender and sexuality (Davies, 1990). Societal discourses define certain texts and activities as feminine or masculine. The social discourses on gender that normalize certain characteristics and practices as masculine or feminine have a great influence on how we see ourselves in relation to many activities, including literacy practices. This is one reason it is often assumed that those literacy practices are gendered.The problem with the notion of gen- dered reading is that it assumes that all readers take up social constructs the same way. It also avoids looking at the ways we resist social and cultural constructs. Gender practices are neither innate nor omnipresent. Gender essentialism creates a norm, based on our sex characteristics, for how we are expected to engage in literacy practices. This does not consider the economic, social, and cultural factors that also influence identity and literacy. Although the professionals in libraries and schools are attempting to motivate struggling and alliterate readers, the result of such essentialism is text selection, book discussions, marketing of materials, and reader's advisory that reifies gender differences and promotes gender opposition.Revisiting Prior ResearchThis study examined participants' responses to literature in order to revisit research that postulated the concept of gendered literacy. It questioned whether assumptions, based on research more than ten years old, should be used to guide reader's advisory, collection development, and pedagogical decision-making today. Because it is likely that gender expectations have changed over the last twentyfive years, this research looked at the assumptions about gender and literacy from early research done ten to thirty years ago and the current assumptions that the participants in this study brought to the literature they read and to which they responded. The study also sought to understand how those assumptions and expectations may have changed, how they shaped participant responses to the texts, and how the texts and the socially situated classroom discourse reproduced or resisted the gender norms described in earlier research.Gender and Literacy PracticesBecause we understand how to perform gender through our experiences with our communities, this research was guided by social constructionism, which looks at cognition as an external process, occurring during the negotiation of understanding in a discursive interaction (Hruby, 2001). We leam through talk and interaction with others. …