amy, out loud

Nov. 26, 2011 at 4:59am with 293 notes

Not to make it sound like guys aren’t victims of rigid gender roles, too, but…

Having strangers constantly tell you you’re beautiful, but with implication that that’s really important and it’d be bad if you aren’t.

Being bombarded by messages that your body isn’t good enough, and not enough that you should challenge yourself in athletics or intellect.

Being bombarded by images that your body’s purpose is to please men — the real “doers and thinkers” of society.

Being constant told, “When you get married…” “When you have kids…” — not if, or if you decide to. Being asked questions that assume you will do these things. Being told that you should be a teacher, even though it’s a generally underpaid job because, “then you will have the same schedule as your kid.” Being asked “why would a good little girl like you want to…?” if you talk about wanting to do something different like become a lawyer.

Being told that “girls are naturally bad at math” as an excuse for your poor performance in math rather than being pushed to work harder or blaming the teacher for not doing a good job explaining the work.

Being told that “girl stuff” is “special” in that it’s not the default. Books about male heroes are just regular literature, read by girls and boys. Books about female heroes are “chick lit”.

Worrying about being embarrassed by your period and when it will come. Worried about being seen as a slut. Worried about being raped because you’re always being told how to “avoid” it in vague recommendations that are pretty meaningless except to keep women scared.

It’s not all bad, though. Being a kid can suck or be fun in general, regardless of gender, depending on your parents and friends and teachers. And things are getting better. I was brought up in a particularly backwards conservative area, for what it’s worth and still not all people were like that — just enough to still be a problem as I couldn’t understand it when I was a kid and thought adults were generally right about stuff. Now, looking back (with a lot of help from [1] http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/tag/gender/ to point out stuff I once just took for granted), it’s easier to see how much bullshit there is when it comes to gender roles.

I think guys have it pretty rough being told so often not to be “girlie” or “sissy” (more implications that being female is bad) by being emotional. Though, I had a pretty tough mom who was the same way towards me. She was raised to be kind of a tomboy, but that still came the 1950s type mindset that women still had to do everything for their men and that you are bad wife if they ever have to cook or clean. Sigh.