Gender Roles: Cultural vs. Biological People have been debating whether biological influences determine gender roles or cultural influences. To determine which side provides the best argument for gender roles, many studies and researches had been done to provide each claim. The following papers involve an article analysis of two viewpoints on gender roles from two author’s argument. The papers will analyze two articles by comparing the author’s strength and weakness, claims, reasons, evidence and ethos to determine the best analysis for biological or cultural influences. In analyzing Norman claims for biological influences, I will pay attention to the language in his writing, his choice of audience, and his strength and weakness. Norman claim on his section, Realistic Expectations that, “I base this on nothing more scientific than my own experience” ( 23). Though his claim is legitimate to his readers and make him a confident writer, his reasons and evidence could be more persuasive. ’s writing sound like he is intimidating the audience to be on his side. Basically, believes his life experience will convince his readers to take his position. Lets discuss Norman reasons and evidence for his claim. The audience ’s article intended for is the Men Health’s magazine reader that will buy into his masculine and assertive tone of voice. Norman quoted, “Men are aggressive and hierarchical, women nurturing and cooperative” and tying it to his example of the boy playing in the puddle and coaching his daughter soccer team display his reasons and evidence for biological influences (25). Norman descriptions of a boy playing in the puddle as aggressiveness in male were not persuasive enough to the reader’s interest in reasons and evidence. And Norman example of women being nurturing and cooperative could be identify with the relationship of a father and
girls and boys will be boys. “I’ve watched a young nephew of mine sit enthralled in front of construction videos that show lots of D-9’s, front-end loaders, and backhoes; his sister would rather take a nap than watch that video” (Norman 22). I have to agree with Norman, that influence and reinforcement of gender roles comes from the toys children play with. Norman didn’t share facts outside of his personal experience, “I base this on nothing more scientific than my own experience” (23). As discussed in chapter 4 in Reading Rhetorically, I would have to say both author’s facts, statistics, personal experience, and expert testimony offered support on their views of gender roles (Bean 74). Of course Kimmel’s article supported his claim in more detail. The diction (an umbrella term referring to speakers and writers expression of words) of Norman’s article was a little more inviting than Kimmel’s article, which leads to another approach discussed in Reading Rhetorically. “Ideology, is a belief system-a coherent set of values and concepts through which we interpret the world” (Bean, 78). Our perspectives are generally shaped by our family backgrounds, religion, personal experience, race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. In conclusion, analyzing these two articles between Kimmel’s research of cultural differentiation and Norman’s biological differentiation between the sexes, it is clear that gender roles vary. Kimmel and Mead argue that different cultures impose different expectations upon the women and men who share that culture. While Norman argues that differences between girls and boys is relatively biological and observational. Both sides had valid points but like I discussed previously Kimmel’s argument was a lot stronger. According to Reading Rhetorically, we want to believe the authors and in order to do this it is important to examine the author’s use of evidence. Kimmel clearly supported his