"Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meanings of Gender" by Aaron H. Devor

I wasn't looking forward to reading this selection at all. Gender Roles and Society has always and will always be a problem that we have to deal with. We also recently talked about this in my sociology class so I'm kind of tired of discussing something that isn't going to change. Then when I read that Aaron used to be Holly I had hope that this selection would be different. Unfortunately I was sadly disappointed.

I feel as though the topic of gender roles is so played out! We all know that women act a certain way and men act another way. No one at the moment is willing to change and if we do decided to change its going to take a while. Gender roles is something we're literally born into; we're either wrapped in a pink or blue blanket. In the article it says that by two years old we begin to settle into a gender identity and by the age of seven we're convinced that we are a permanent member of that gender grouping. This is so young. We still have so much to learn and experience in our life but we will only experience girl or boy things because we have already decided what road we want to go down.

My favorite paragraph in this selection is by far the one where they talk about the different cultural view on gender roles. Its always so interesting to see how other cultures view things that are just not right here in the United States. Many of the other cultures have a group where people can be whatever they want to be; like the aborigines having more than two gender categories or the native people of South America and how they have a social category for people who want to live like the opposite sex. My question is, why do we even have to have labels?

The selection goes on and on about the characteristic that make you feminine and masculine but why cant we just be human. Why does there have to be a separation? There are some women out there that are aggressive, we actually all have to be in order to get to the top and even have a chance to compete with the men. On the other hand there are males out there that are single dads and way more nurturing tan some others. At the end of the day we are all humans but we will never be able to see that as a society.