So I'm in my third year of university. Over my summer break I had a "summer job" working in the local super market, I also started attending church. In these two social arenas I got to meet new people and make some new friends :-) In meeting these new people, I discovered how generally apathetic I am when it comes to... everything.
It is in this that I have found some curiousity and comedy in my current situation. I am living in a shared house with three other students, three female students who I did'nt know untill I moved in with them. These three (I'll say for ease) girls all commented several times on "how it's good to have a man in the house", hmmm what?
I wondered what that meant but soon dismissed it thinking nothing will come from it. This changed after an event of hilarity (for me at least).
4am I was being shaken awake by one of my house mates. When I came round she explained that another of my housemates had returned home from a night out to discover the front door wide open. She then added that she woke me up so that I could check the house for burgerlers, I thought fair enough, she then added "since your the man of the house". I went and checked the house, no burgerlers and came to the conclusion that we simply did'nt shut the door properly. The next day I was asked to call the repair man to fix the door, I thought fair enough. But it was accompanied by "since your the guy you'll understand him"... What?
Since that night I have noticed lots of comments, apparantly I'm the man of the house so I am meant to take the rubbish out, lock the doors at night, be a bad cook, not mind having my stuff used, be ok with cleaning the disgusting things in the house, automatically know whats wrong with bikes and know alot about cars, along with numerous other things, please don't misunderstand me! I'm not having a vent. I actually don't mind them using my stuff or cleaning up etc, it's the fact that because I am male there are all these expectations of how I'm supposed to behave. I just don't buy into this "men are like this, women are like that" thing.
I tried to play around and said one day that since I'm the man and I have numerous special tasks does that mean that they are gonna do my washing up and ironing. I was met with hostility, that we live in a modern world, men and women are equall and that the old expectations were stupid and pathetic.
Surely the stereotyping of men falls into the same category, in reinforcing the stereotype of the man they are indirectly reinforcing the old stereotypes of the woman. In saying your the man so you should... are they not saying woman should'nt have to... and so making a gender based difference in ability and suitablilty, to me it does anyway...
I personally wish we lived in a less gendered society.
Pleasde forgive any bad use of grammer or punctuaion, along with bad spelling. I may not have fully communicated my idea since I'm not so big on writing. So any misunderstanding please ask and I'll happily clarify!
And so I'd like to conclude, as I feel I left it out. If we are to break down old constraining stereotypes, we can't simply address the situation concerning women. We have to address stereotypes of men too. As keeping the views of men being a certain way will only recreate the old views of women being a certain way. The differentiation creates comparison. Saying women are the same as men, then men are like this only negates the first statement.
ReplyDeleteI think it runs deeper than stereotypes. It's about what creates "gender" in itself, and how it reinforces (either purposefully or not) its own cycle of established notions. Liberal Feminism is good but limited to breaking down legal structures etc and failing to delve much deeper, and it's exactly depth which Feminism requires. For example, you can't just militarize women as this reinforces the war structure (which is itself a gender problem for many reasons) and you can't just portray women as peace protestors, as this reinforces notions of militarized masculinity. So you have to get around these dilemmas by going to the root of gender and emancipating from there - ie a more postmodern approach.
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