Talk:Gender role/Archive 2

message: Before too much ink or blood is spilled over this subject, it would probably be a good idea for those of us interested in this question to go back to John Money's work. If memory serves, he originally spoke only of gender and then found that single term inadequate because society not only looks at clearly male genitalia, clearly female genitalia, and cases that are either in-between (is it a big clitoris or a small penis) or mixed (e.g., and individual with both a penis and vagina, one testicle and one ovary) and assigns these individuals to sexual categories like "male" and "female", but societies frequently are insistent about the appropriate behaviorisms, manner of speaking, clothing, etc. (gender signals), and also about the appropriate roles these individuals may take up in society. He had a rather odd-looking term, something "gender-role/i.d.", which IMHO did not convey his insights very well. That being said, I would rather define a term like "theory of relativity" according to the way that Einstein spoke of it than to define it in terms of the way the multitude of casual and often ignorant users of the term speak.
Patrick0Moran
----
Whoa... Patrick I can't say that I like any of the new text at all. Both in tone and
in length, it seems more appropriate to a sociology journal than to an encyclopedia. 
As far as the length goes, an encyclopedia article doesn't have to expand on every detail of the subject
- often briefer is better. I think people got the idea of gender role pretty well in the
original article, and the reiterating of details and examples just made it longer, not better.
As far as tone, the new text seems vague and weird. E.g. I guess I can figure out
what "the external representations and the internal representations (self image) of what sex one is"
means, but it takes me a while to parse it (as a non-sociologist). I can't figure out
at all what "once clothing and shaving were invented" has to do with anything.
And using the term "human beings" so much sounds weird and doesn't flow well. What's
the benefit of using "male human beings" over "men" everywhere, other than making it
sound like it was written by the Coneheads? ("Greetings Earth creatures...")
The new text also doesn't integrate well with the rest of the article. I thought
the "Cultural views of gender roles" section was a good intro to the topic, but now
it's prefixed with a lot of strange specifics in the new text.
I do agree that the difference between gender role and gender identity is both clear and useful, if you think hard enough about it, and they should be kept as separate articles. A simplistic way of putting it is that gender identity is whether you think you are male or female, while gender role is whether you tend to act in a masculine or feminine way. E.g. a man who stays home and takes care of the kids has a male gender identity but could be said to be acting in a female gender role.
GGano 14:56, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Can/should Gender Identity, Gender Role, and Sex be Segregated? (1)

message: "People who practiced cross-dressing (transvestites) were subject to criminal prosecution in many places before the third quarter of the twentieth century."
(1) What does "before the third quarter of the 20th century" mean? Are you talking about the 1940s or 1970s? 
(2) Does "many places" mean many places in the U.S., or many places in the world?
130.57.22.69 17:01, 6 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments on latest edit (prosecution of transvestites)

message: How about doing it this way:
Note: This article is in the process of revision. The proposed new text is followed by the original article, portions of which will later be moved to other articles.
One?s gender role is made up of all of the things that one does to express one?s gender identity. It then becomes the set of signals by which others infer one?s gender identity. For instance, if one identifies oneself as a girl or woman, then one will ordinarily do the kind of things that will let other people know that one is a girl or woman. And if one identifies oneself as a boy or man then one will ordinarily do the kind of things that will let other people know that one is a boy or man. A man who wants to attract girlfriends would rarely if ever use his clothing, behavior, etc., to present himself in the guise of a woman. Similarly, a woman would ordinary be ill-advised to seek a man by presenting herself in the guise of a man. In most cases, when a man appears in the guise of a woman, or a woman appears in the guise of a man, then most people will agree that they are disguising themselves, that is, that they are engaged in deliberately deceptivel behavior. (Because many societies impose expectations on the behavior of the members of society, and the expectations are linked to the gender identities of those individuals, there are prescriptions regarding gender roles, i.e., expectations that men and women will hold different kinds of positions in society. Failure to comply with these expectations can produce a wide range of sanctions.) It should be noted that some societies are comparatively rigid in their expectations, and other societies are comparatively permissive. Some of the gender signals that form part of a gender role and indicate one's gender identity to others are quite obvious, and others are so subtle that they are transmitted and received out of ordinary conscious awareness. 
Some elements of gender role are connected with  body differences related to sex. For instance, women?s blouses make room for women?s breasts and do not have pockets that cover the nipples. Men?s shirts, essentially the same garment, are flatter and do have pockets over the nipples. Men frequently find it convenient to urinate while standing, but women rarely do.  Women frequently nurse infants. Men have mammary glands but they only very rarely nurse infants because the special hormonal states that produce lactation usually follow only from pregnancy.
Another set of gender roles are related to body differences related to sex, but the body differences are things like height and muscular strength for which there is a substantial overlap of the abilities of men and women. Some women are stronger than some men. Some women are larger and/or taller than some men. But if you average the heights of all men and the heights of all women, they won?t be equal. If you are looking for the world champion weight lifter, it is unlikely that it will be a woman. 
In many societies, there is a strong tendency to exaggerate gender role differences. Starting with the belief that men are generally stronger than women, people conclude, somehow, that men should be stronger than women, and that there is something inadequate about a man who is not very strong. Starting with the belief that women are generally more gentle and nurturing than men, people construct a socially supported ideal that says that women should be gentle and nurturing and should not be harsh or aggressive.  Many societies jump from the observation that men are less likely to cry than are women to the practice of indoctrinating boys, virtually from birth, not to cry.
Some gender role differences are purely conventional. That is, they work the way laws about which side of the street to drive on work. As long as everyone in Great Britain drives on the left side of the road, and as long as everyone in the United States drives on the right side of the road, there will be no problem with head-on collisions.  In most societies, men wear trousers and women wear skirts. But in a traditional Malay community it is an ordinary practice for men to wear sarongs. In the traditional society of Scotland, men wore kilts. As long as the cultural context matches the choice of clothing it would be unusual for any negative comment to arise in such cases.
Gender role differences that are purely conventional are easier to change than are those that have some link to the biology of individuals. One consequence of social unrest during the Vietnam War era in the United States, Great Britain, and many other countries, was that men began to let their hair grow to a length that was previously considered appropriate only to women. 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.  
It would, to the contrary, be rather more difficult to get men to give up trousers that have a zipper that facilitates urinating while standing. It would likewise be difficult to get women to wear tight-fitting fly fishermen?s vests made of nylon netting with a half-inch mesh. Such a garment, regardless of how stylish it might be considered one fine year, would be too uncomfortable for a woman to wear unless she first bound her breasts with some other fabric to protect them from rubbing against the harsh netting and pocket contents of the vest.
Biological factors sometimes have a strong 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 an uncooperative Clydesdale draft horse. Societies seem to frequently jump from a valid observation to a false conclusion in cases such as these. A society may jump from the observation that only a very few women would be physically suited to shoe a heavy draft horse to the conclusion that no woman should be a farrier, of jump from the observation that only a few women would be physically suited to serve as a fireman to the conclusion that women should no be eligible to apply for that job.
In many other cases, the elements of convention or tradition seem to play a dominant role in deciding which occupations fit in with which gender roles. In the United States, physicians have traditionally been men, and the few people who defied that expectation received a special job description: ?woman doctor.? Similarly, we have special terms like ?male nurse,? ?woman lawyer,? ?lady barber,? etc.  But in China and the former Soviet Union countries, medical doctors are predominantly women, and in Taiwan it is very common for all of the barbers in a barber shop to be women. 
As long as a person?s external genitals are consistent with that person?s gender identity the gender role of a person is so much a matter of course in a stable society that people rarely even think of it unless for whatever reason an individual adopts a gender role that is inconsistent with his or her gender identity. When that kind of thing happens, it is most often done to deliberately provoke a sense of incongruity and a humorous reaction to the attempts of a person of one sex trying to pass himself or herself off as a member of another sex. People can find much entertainment in observing the exaggerations or the failures to get nuances of an unfamiliar gender role right. 
It is not so entertaining, however, when the external genitalia of a person, that person?s gender identity, and/or that person?s gender role are not consistent. People naturally, but too easily, assume that if a person has a penis, scrotum, etc., then that person is chromosomally male (i.e., that person has one X chromosome and one Y chromosome), and that the person person, in introspection, feels like a male. Mother nature is much more inventive than is our language and system of traditional concepts. The person may have a penis and scrotum, but may be a female (with XX chromosomal sexual identity) with normal female sexual organs internally. When that person reaches puberty, ?his? breasts may enlarge to ordinary female proportions, and ?he? may begin to menstruate, passing menstrual blood through ?his? penis. In addition, this person may have always accepted a gender identity that is consistent with ?his? external genitalia or with ?her? internal genitalia. 
Just as there are individuals whose external genitalia make them falsely appear to be male, there are also individuals whose external genitalia make them falsely appear to be females. There are individuals whose genitalia are intermediate in appearance between those of an ordinary male and those of an ordinary female. An examination of their chromosomal sex and/or other tests may be necessary to determine what these people really are. And there are even individuals who have both male and female sexual organs in the same body.
When we consider these more unusual products of Mother Nature?s inventiveness, the simple picture that we saw in which there was a high degree of consistency among external genitalia, gender identity, and gender role then dissolves into a kind of jigsaw puzzle that is difficult to put together correctly. The extra parts of this jigsaw puzzle fall into two closely related categories, atypical gender identities and atypical gender roles.
Language is a system of abstractions and frequently deals with idealized cases. The more sharply masculine gender roles are distinguished from feminine gender roles, the less likely it is that any individual human being will comply perfectly with the requirements of that gender role. And besides that fact, every individual in a society is likely to have his or her unique definition of the ?proper masculine gender role? and the ?proper feminine gender role.? Any individual, then, might well be expected to be in compliance with the gender role ideals held by some people and to fail to be in compliance with the gender role ideals held by some other people. When, for instance, a boy cries too readily for the tastes of some people, they will call the child a ?sissy? to indicate that in their view he is not a very ideal boy. There are many such  pejorative role-related terms .
Patrick0Moran 06:52, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope. Dysprosia 02:16, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Draft

message: Please give me some suggestions for a list of atypical gender identities and corresponding gender roles. I am looking for terms like "gigolo" which is a role in society that can only be played by a man, and one that involves an atypical decision regarding employment and sexual behavior. Hijra, xanith, wikte, castrati, etc., are also special gender roles. There must be similar roles for special gender identities that involve having female external genitalia. Prostitute would be one of them. What is the term for women who are paid to gestate the fetuses of other women? Even though society clamps down much harder on women in this regard, there must be some other atypical gender roles for those with female external genitals.
Patrick0Moran 05:32, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Information Needed