Identifying Our Assumptions - Philita Johnson

For many years, the world has had a conflict with “gender roles”. Gender roles are collections of factors which answer the question, “’how do I need to function so that society perceives me as belonging or not belonging to a specific gender? Some people would include appearance, sexual orientation, and methods of communication under the term, but I think it makes more sense to think in terms of things like jobs, economic roles, chores, hobbies, in other words, positions and actions specific to a given gender as defined by a culture.

Sexual appearance and sexual orientation is what distinguish a person the most. Sometimes these characteristics can come from a way people talk. For example, if a boy sounds like a girl when he speaks, people automatically assume that he is a girl. When a girl dresses in baggy jeans or sweats, people think that she is a dyke. Even in the business world, things can get hectic because in some businesses; men tend to make more money than women.

In the 50s, gender roles used to take place as they do today. Women were treated badly and they were not acquired to play a part in men roles as they do today. Women were not allowed to work or vote. Men were the ones who went to work while the women at to be stay at homes wives. They were required to take care of kids, cook, and clean. Basically they were the ones who kept everything in order at home.

When I was young, I was always taught that “girls wear pink and boys wear blue”. I was also taught that “girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks”. I never asked why, but I knew that there was a reason for being raised that way. I guess people just used it as a way to distinguish boy----girl gender. I think that gender roles should be ceased in today’s generation. They are not as bad as they were back then, but I still think that there should be some sort of guidance as to when and where gender roles should end. It was a depressing way of how the roles existed back then for the women because they were the ones working hard at home day and night. The world would be so much better and we would have a totally different outcome of the way we perceive the world to be in our generation.