Erin Cavazos
Doing Gender
Doing gender is something we all learn as infants. It becomes second nature to us and it is impossible to stop once it is learned. I see people doing gender all day every day of my life. One example is washing dishes. When I lived at my parents house my mom, my sister and I always did the dishes but my dad never did. When I would confront him about it he would complain that he worked hard and didn't have time or was too tired for dishes. Looking back I see that we were all unknowingly submitting to gender roles. Although my mom works, my dad is the primary bread winner. As a result my mom, my sister and I are left to do the housework. My mom even ironed and prepared his cloths for him every day. Now that I live with my boyfriend I try to limit gender roles to a minimum but I still find myself arguing with my boyfriend to do the dishes.
Another experience I had was when I went to a family gathering and all of my little cousins were playing together. There was a good amount of boys and girls and they were playing with all sorts of toys. My nephew decided to put on a toy pearl necklace and I was shocked by the reactions he received. The other little kids did not care or say anything but the adults immediately told him to take them of because that was for girls and he was a boy. They told him to take it off and go play with boy toys. These are the experiences that molds us to doing gender. It has gone so far that we apply it to our pets. People put collars and outfits on their pets that are gender appropriate. Their pillows are usually a certain colors too. Animals do not care about gender and gender roles yet we do gender when it comes to the things we buy them.
I agree with you Erin when you claim that doing gender is something we learn as infants (and continue learning throughout life). But I disagree when you claim that it is impossible to stop it once it is learned. I agree to the part where you mention how our definitions of doing gender makes us react as in the case of your little cousins because of the tradition of having separated men and women into just two disjoint groups. If gender were impossible to stop once learned then there would be no variations of gender but that it is not the case since we can see its variations at a bigger scale other than our own little circle. Gender then is just a set of definitions but such definitions depend on the exterior world as much as in the interior world (our own thoughts). The exterior world depends on you because you are part of it and if you change your internal thoughts then you are reshaping and redefining the exterior world as well. Thus I believe doing gender can be stopped if we so desire it. Have a good day.
ReplyDeleteSincerely, Álvaro Sosa.