True Women and Real Men: Myths of Gender
“If a boy wants to learn ballet dance?” how the family members and friends will react as ballet dance is famous as a female’s sport. From the initiation of modern civilization, the society received a structural context within which it was entitled to deal with the surrounding social issues. To perform the role, society has been defined gender by imposing some sort of roles in a segregated pattern. In general, women represent the caregiver role in the family in association with nurturing and possessing innocent characteristics. On the other hand, males are designated to perform masculine roles which require physical efforts in a greater amount.
In addition, before middle age, women’s intellectual properties’ existence was more likely ignored or not noticed while signifying man’s role over woman’s role. “Gender roles in society means how we’re expected to act, speak, dress, groom, and conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex,” (Planned Parenthood, n.d.). For example, girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be polite, accommodating, and nurturing.
Human psychology is a very critical context. Though society may impose a certain role on a man or woman, it is not fair to humiliate an individual for performing the opposite sex’s role in life. Studies showcase that differential attitude or practicing opposite sex’s roles often leads to triggering discrimination, humiliation, bullying, etc. against that particular individual. The pre-fixed gender roles are deeply integrated with cognitive formation regarding what defines masculine and feminine. The socializing agents like parents, educators, friends, movies, music, books, and religion; influence to accept the role and observation of any sort of differential segment in the performance of prescribed gender role becomes a controversial issue. When an individual starts to practice or perform the opposite sex’s role in any aspect of society, the expectation disagrees due to the consisting prejudicial context’s existence. “A gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their abilities, pursue their professional careers and/or make choices about their lives,” (UN, n.d.). In addition, various other factors are associated to adopt the opposite sex’s role; biological factors, psychological factors, genetic factors, and so on. Gender stereotypes are the most simple general consideration about the gender attributes, differential segments, and responsibilities of individuals and/or groups. The existence or inclusion of gender stereotypes can be positive or negative. But, there is no such interrelationship between the negative and positive context to get a middle or overall accepted approach. When people automatically apply gender assumptions to others regardless of evidence to the contrary, they are perpetuating gender stereotyping.
This paper intends to demonstrate that any sort of discriminative attitude or activity against an individual who likes the opposite sex’s role is a violation of human rights.
The Myth of True Woman
Traditionally, the imposed female role in the society and family is to be getting married and have children to raise them. The woman is also designated to put the family’s betterment before personal betterment; be loving, compassionate, caring, nurturing, and sympathetic. Lastly, society also expects women will signify the beauty and the symbolism of sexy. In short, it is the Victorian time’s point of view about the role of a woman when they were treated as a follower of the male counterpart. Unfortunately, these theoretical elaboration mentioned in regards to the roles of a ‘True Woman’ is very tough to meet in a real-life context. Also, it is very unfair that one person will sacrifice always for meeting others’ expectations. Women are also human beings with certain desires, psychological needs, and different characteristics. So, ‘True Woman’ is a myth and the roles may include any sort of role of male as per their desire, choice, and psychology. For an instance, a woman with a higher degree of desire to wear dresses as male forever, this context will surely be bullied and disapproved by society.
The US constitution directs that segregation and discriminative contexts must not be included with governmental and social practices. So, people should come out from the stereotype thought process regarding the myth of ‘True Woman’. In the case of a practical scenario, the organizational leadership roles are mostly allocated to male professionals. “Research concludes that women are rated higher than men in a range of leadership attributes, from taking initiative to driving results, collaborating, innovating, and demonstrating high integrity,” (Laker, 2020). However, below is a graphical representation of the leadership statics of female professionals.
The above discussion in this particular section indicates that adaptation of other sex’s role triggers discriminative segment within the process. In general, parameters within which women are experiencing discrimination, females with opposite sex’s attitudes will receive more discrimination and psychological torture.
The Myth of Real Man
In consideration of the concept of “Real Man’, society has been firstly defined the male’s role as a financial provider for the family and does those types of works that require a greater amount of physical power and effort. In addition, society expected that male is also confident, aggressive, independent, brave, and career‐focused. Besides, the real man concept demands control over emotional segments and always initiates sex. These stereotypes are harmful as the ideal characteristics never include psychological factors, willingness, and desire to adopt any sort of practice of the opposite sex. This context can be considered as the obstacle on the path of creativity and innovative thinking with a progressive thought process.
In this way, the concept of ‘Real Man’ is not possible to find in real life while some sort of female’s tasks is performed by men now these days as per their wish. The Victorian ideologies are still active in the case of traditional gender roles which demonstrates social expectations of the so-called “stronger sex” are not applicable in the current context. A man is still responsible to provide a shoulder to cry on, and he is often the family provider even though masculine activities like hunting for food are not necessary now.
Here, men are now used to be the real partner of the female counterpart and divided the work between them as per their choices and decision within which a man may clean the clothes. Bullying and discrimination against them are against moral and ethical principles.
In addition, the freedom provided by the country’s constitution goes against the bullying and discriminative context. “Stephan Grünewald wrote that many men strongly define themselves according to what their partner expects, and no longer articulate their own wishes. They believe that this is how they can receive and hold onto love, but doing so makes people obtain a negative perception about them,”(Landsberg, 2020). So, social perception about ‘True Man’ should be changed and the discriminative segment against any individual for practicing opposite sex’s role should be a legal issue by means of a violation of human rights.
Conclusion
“True woman and real man” is a myth within which at a certain point both parties’ roles are overlapped and support each other. So, dressing like a man, doing household works, taking care of children, etc. should not be bullied or seen from a negative perspective. Performing the opposite sex’s role is not a sin or any harmful event for society. It is just the fulfillment of an individual human being’s desire or psychological need. Policymakers should address this context with greater concern as the transposition in the role of gender is increasing which demands the elimination of stereotype gender role’s definition. The centuries-long traditional gender roles are not valid for today’s context when diversification in every social aspect is a significant concern. Men are dealing with the new expectations of masculinity in different forms. From vulnerability to metrosexuality, gender is transforming.
References
“Gender stereotyping.” UN. No date. https://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/women/wrgs/pages/genderstereotypes.aspx
Landsberg, Torsten. “Masculinity and gender roles undergoing change.” DW. Nov 13, 2020. https://www.dw.com/en/masculinity-and-gender-roles-undergoing-change/a-55585195
Laker, Benjamin. “Female Leaders Are Being Discriminated Against During The Coronavirus Crisis.” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminlaker/2020/03/24/why-are-female-leaders-still-subject-to-gender-bias/?sh=4aaacc3b416e
“What are gender roles and stereotypes?” Planned Parenthood. No date. https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/sex-gender-identity/what-are-gender-roles-and-stereotypes
