Talk:Gender role/Archive 3

message: Debates pre-2003 have already been moved to an archive: 
(Moved older material to Talk:Gender role archive) GGano 15:45, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

message: I saw that there is a lot of debate about this article, and actually, I see a point there. Much of what is said is not so much a presentation facts, but preaching. While the facts mentioned are, as far as a singe reading could tell, mostly correct (but see below), the article sounds like a seremon. It's quite likely this is causing the problems, far more than the content. Talking about gender makes many people uncomfortable, so rejecting what has been said is made much easier when it looks like preaching. Anyway, besides that general observation, I also found some serious problems in the text:
A person's gender role is a term to describe all of the things a person does to express their gender identity. 
That's wrong. A transgendered person, especialy before transitioning, and many intersexual persons, are forced to present gender roles that definitely don't express their gender identity. Also, there is not just one male and one female gender role, but there are many. And many cisgendered people don't feel particular comfortable in some of these roles. However, this fact should be treaded rather seperately, otherwise, the article will become completely confusing
However, in some instances, a person may identify as a woman and have elements of a male gender role, or vice versa. These behaviours are less common, and are often known as butch and femme, for these instances. 
There are many words for a male person behaving in a more feminine way, but femme is not one of them. Femme is the word for a feminine lesbian. And I don't see what's so rare about that, either.
The examples for intersexual people are also rather strange. Male genitalia with XX-Chromosomes are extremely rare, there is exactly ONE case known of those. And "man" who mensturate don't usually do so through their penis, but through a vaginal opening, which might be very small, but opening where one would expect it to open. A uterus has no connection to the system leading into the penis, unless the anatomy is considerable more "messed up" than it usually is in intersexed "men". That bit led me to believe that the person who wrote that had more enthusiasm than knowledge.
One consequence of social unrest during the Vietnam War (...) Somewhat later, in response to other social changes, many women began to cut their hair to lengths previously considered appropriate only to men. The practical consequences of these changes were not onerous.
Short hair for women began to become fashionable during the 1920s, slightly before the Vietnam War. Any what exactly is the "onerous" supposed to mean here? Either it had consequences or it had not, but that is one of the semi-preaching bits.
In Problems, transgendered people are not even mentioned. That is rather strange, since transgendered people have by definition more problems (and especially more basic problems) with gender roles than cisgendered people. With intersexual people it depends on whether they are satisfied with the gender assigned to them or not.   -- AlexR 00:28, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with a lot of what you say, Alex. Just one thing: femme is sometimes used to describe men, but it's not that common. I'll fix that, but please pitch in the article and be bold :) I'm sure you will have a lot of good things to say. Dysprosia 02:05, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hm, I have never encountered "femme" for a man, but then I am not a native speaker. Together with "Butch" I assume, though, that most people would not see it as a reference to male bodied people. Anyway, your correction is fine, thanks for it. -- AlexR 15:57, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some more problems 

message: I think the biggest problem is not what the article actually says, but what's written between the lines. Throughout the article we get the feeling that these people are the innocent victims of a cruel, heartless system. These poor people are forced into their "assigned" gender roles at birth, and then expected to play along, or else. They are doomed from birth to live awkward, miserable lives, through no fault of their own, all because of the terrible system that has been imposed on them. Now who is responsible for this awful system? The reader can only guess, but there are a few hints. Words like assigned, prescribed, expectations, mandated: these point the finger squarely at society, and that means you and me, and the reader himself. We are all the unwitting perpetrators of a system that victimizes these poor people for no other reason except that they were born different. Of course, the article never says this outright, but the message is there, hidden behind a lot of technical language.
: Convention here is to keep the chronologically newest comments at the bottom of the page. As to your point, the words assigned, prescribed and so on are not intended to "blame society" but are to describe how society operates. A person is assigned a gender role, based on the person's sex. If that person's gender identity happens to line up well with that gender role and physical sex, then there's no problems. When it doesn't problems arise. 
: There is no blame here, no one is blaming anyone else because of this, problems arise because of a consequence of mindsets such as heteronormativity by some, who expect that individuals come into line with a heteronormative system. In some societies, these so-called "problems" may not even be a problem.
: Whether the article says that society is to blame, implicitly or otherwise, needs to be demonstrated explicitly. Dysprosia 04:28, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: [P0M:] I am puzzled by Anon, who mentions "their 'assigned' gender roles" as though that were part of the article. I searched for that in the current version and also for a version written some time ago, but didn't find it. Anyway, I agree with what Dysprosia has written. People with male external genitalia will receive strong reactions from others if they wear or do women's whatever. Some societies are more tolerant of gender bending than are others. Other societies seem to be unable to deal with any kind of difference.P0M 05:15, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: [I recant these paragraphs.] 69.111.188.162 05:53, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ok, you say the article portrays people (which people, intersexed people? transgendered people? I assume you mean these groups) as victims. How should we portray them, then, in the context of gender roles? Are they to blame? Dysprosia 05:09, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Victimisation? 

message: a bit of help, if you will. Sam [Spade] 18:36, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Talk:Effeminacy]] 

message: § A new (?) contributor, Fenice, has changed the top of the article to the following text, which I have moved here for discussion:
:The term gender role denotes a set of expectations of behaviours and actions that is either individually expressed or is concordant to what society expects of them (a set of norms), to express their gender identity.
--- Dear POM - The sentence you are quoting was written almost entirely by the user Dysprosia. (I do not support the sentence - on the contrary I think it badly needs editing.) I only added the two words "of expectations" - for the reason given in my edit summary - but I understand, these two word are disputed by you.--Fenice 16:43, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Fenice, I rewrote the paragraph you originally added because I think it did not in fact carry the proper meaning of what a "gender role" actually is. It is much broader than just a set of social norms, as POM has already said below Dysprosia 00:41, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

text: the widely accepted definition of role in sociology says it concerns expectations or norms, not actions or behavior
§ The problem is that gender roles are not norms that were established de nova by some authority. Gender roles reflect the changing habits and customs of concrete individuals in actual societies. The human behavior is there first, and the ideologies and norms grow up by an inductive process that occurs informally within the societies and, later on, more formally by researchers.
§ The sociologists did not initiate use of the term "gender role." The sexologist John Money describes his reasons for borrowing the term "gender" to talk about the concrete behavior of individuals who were getting themselves into trouble with society by behaving in atypical ways. Each person acts out a role that "he" or "she" creates by a complex process of self-understanding and understanding what other people in "his" or "her" society do to express their genders. The sexologists call the resulting complex of behaviors the person's gender role. 
§ It is inappropriate to reduce the understanding of this concept to what may or may not be "widely acccepted" in sociology because it both cuts off the historical and conceptual roots of the concepts and it ices the sexologists out of the discussion. P0M 15:00, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent disputed change 

message: context women earn less than men:
However, this interpretation has been challenged on several levels. Firstly, in Western societies, any overt direct or indirect discrimination is illegal. Secondly, the statistics refer to the outcome of women's choices, not to the opportunities open to them. Thirdly, it ignores other ways of measuring value e.g. the joy of having and raising children. Fourthly, although women may earn less than men, studies also show they control the majority of expenditure.  
::§ I agree with what Fenice says below. Also, the very fact that there need to be laws to regulate discrimination in the job place against women is indicitive of the underlying traditional social values. P0M
:There are numerous arguments against this piece of writing. The most important one is: its out of place in an article about gender role.--Fenice 13:20, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: To respond in detail: the first argument belongs into a juristical article, it is irrelevant for feminism on the whole. The second argument is pure speculation (and I seriously doubt John Foley means this seriously???), and I do not see how it makes the orignal statistic false. Thirdly: the value measuring unit in the critisized phrase are dollars or euros not the 'joy of raising children'. The fourth argument: does one right make up for one wrong?--Fenice 13:20, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit by John Foley that I removed

message: You deleted the points I made in Gender role challenging the assertion that women are discriminated against. This is part of a well-established debate which analyses simplistic interpretations. It is an important area which needs full discussion. I would be grateful if you could give arguments for your decision. JPF 13:38, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: whether women are discriminated against. 

message: this is a quotation from the biology section:
Some people even argue, that biological factors sometimes can have an impact on which occupations are judged by a society to be appropriate for men, and which are judged appropriate for women. There is no reason why a large woman could not successfully shoe horses or deliver freight shipments from railway stations to the recipients' homes. However, there are not even very many men who have the strength and stamina to put shoes on a strong and uncooperative draft horse. Some societies sometimes seem to frequently jump from a valid observation to a false conclusion in cases such as these. A society may jump from the valid observation that only very few women would be physically suited to shoe a heavy draft horse to the conclusion that no woman should be a farrier, or jump from the observation that only few women would be physically suited to serve as a fireman to the conclusion that women should not be eligible to apply for those jobs.
In Europe, jobs dealing with horses are much more popular among women than among men. The percentage of men in a riding class is about as high as that in a ballet class. Now, Patrick, you are into equitation. Isn't it so that riding and handling horses has very little to do with strength. And in the occasions where it does the horse will always be stronger than the strongest man anyway. So I say, the above argument is false and dated.--Fenice 15:47, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: *To try to clarify the issue further I did a google test. In German there is a specific term for female farriers, "Hufschmiedin". So I used this characteristic of the German language for a test, to see how many female farriers there might be. This query brings 824 results, for the male term "Hufschmied" there are about 21 times as many. So if - very roughly, I know - we could conclude that about one in twenty, so about 5 percent of farriers are already female, that's a lot. And it is a lot more than the above mentioned quota of men in ballet classes. I completely trust Patricks description of handling horses above. I don't think your conclusion is correct however. Few people (and not 95 Percent) still hold the norm that women should not become farriers or vets. Most people, like you and me, will say they don't care. I'd say that the norm is ahead of reality in this case and will cause more and more women to go into these fields. The practical obstructions for women to become vets, farriers, firefighters or sailors are often not role-related. Take firefighters for example: in many countries this is an honorary function that involves a good deal of camaraderie, that is: it is more important to meet regularly and have a beer than actually fighting fires. Also in any profession you deal with professional unions, you go to school together with other people of the same profession and you have contact with teachers in this profession. There will be mostly men in these situations. So, entering these fields as a women, you take over the role of a pioneer. Even if everybody accepts you, there is still a threshold, and it is a matter of (not gender role-related) personality if you want to be a pioneer or not.--Fenice 09:09, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: *No, that's not at all what I maintain.  Yes, there are valid gender roles and sanctions. It's just impossible to list behaviors that no woman can ever do in all of Europe and the US. Socialization is the base for gender roles. It is plausible that gender roles are based on nurture. But it cannot be proven that any of it is based on biology. --Fenice 12:50, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: § I think I see the problem, and I think it indicates that the article needs to be tightened up. There are two ways something can be based on biology, one is a direct way, e.g., being white, I'm likelier than some people to get another skin cancer if I move to a place with lots more UV. The other way is an indirect way, a case in which there is some objective information that a social construction can be hung on, e.g., some religious figure could claim that it is a sin for white people to live in some parts of the world, and that I was punished by God for living in Taiwan and in Denver. Even the idea that males should not nurse infants is a social construct. Even the idea that males should not gestate and give birth to infants is a social construct. (The experiment was done with baboons in the 1950s. As far as I know, no male human has been sufficiently interested or sufficiently courageous to try it.)  There is absolutely no reason that a guy should not wear a bra, but there is hardly ever a physiological reason for wearing one. I don't think that is the real reason that bra wearing is not part of the masculine gender role. It seems more likely to me that people think of it as something that a man does to try to look like a woman, and for some reason that bothers some people very much.P0M
*I have changed the section accordingly.--Fenice 15:16, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: § The real question is how Lukie would be treated "on the street" in a typical community. A few years ago I had back trouble so my chiropractor said I should wear shoes with heals, not the flat martial arts shoes that I favor. Since I'm a rider and don't like having the hair rubbed off my calves, I picked up a pair of cowboy boots of the real kind that have a substantial heel intended to prevent one's foot from going through the stirrup of a western saddle. (If that happens when you get thrown you are going to get dragged to death too if you are not lucky.) So I was wearing my boots and a red pullover from Guatemala, and as a mother and her teenage daughter walked toward me as they were going to their car and I was going into K-Mart, I very clearly heard the mother say, "Here come a faaaag!"  I wonder what she would have said if I had been wearing a kilt and a training bra. ;-)  In an ideal world people would not judge others on the basis of appearance. Personally, I think we'd probably all be be better off with no need for gender signals. But if I can't wear cowboy boots and I can't wear yellow work boots and I can't wear "fancy" shirts without getting negative comment in a fairly normal college town...  P0M 06:17, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: § Yes, the pendulum keeps on swinging, especially in areas such as psychopathology where purely environmental theories such as psychoanalysis lost influence to the more biologically-oriented neurosciences. But it doesn't swing as much as it used to, ie very few people in the scientific community seriously advocate extreme positions such as genetic determinism and "blank slate" theories.  Although it sometimes seems like the nature/nurture debate is hopelessly mired in issues of politics and not science, I have some hope in recent developments like Developmental systems theory that might help (in the long term) reach a scientific consensus. Sadly, there's a long history of bad scholarship and weak data around this controversy, the biology of IQ being one of the worst examples. I think that paragraph should make that clearer, and so should the Nature versus Nurture article. Sbarthelme 10:53, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Biology section