Talk:Gender role

"... all gender roles became much more flexible"

I'm not sure this is true. Most of my female friends still feel they *have* to wear makeup. -- Tarquin 10:59 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

Well they're certainly more flexible than they were, but obviously they're still a lot less flexible than they could be. Perhaps "much" is going too far?

I wonder. Maybe we perceive flexibility, but when it's tested we find there isn't much. Maybe it's just an impression, but most people who don't conform to their expected gender role don't just slightly deviate, they break right out. -- Tarquin 14:40 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

This page is seriously flawed, as it confuses gender role and gender identity. These are two different things. You can see this in Google's glossary matches: http://labs.google.com/glossary?q=gender+role and http://labs.google.com/glossary?q=gender+identity. (This comes from the discussion at Talk:Gender.) --GGano I fixed this Feb 21 2003. --GGano

I removed the following, which were listed as examples of gender roles, but really aren't:

A "transsexual", who is a "man trapped in a woman's body" or a "woman trapped in a man's body" .
A "gay man", who is homosexual. According to stereotypes, he has a good dress sense.

Transsexual is a gender identity issue, not a gender role issue. Homosexuality isn't really either.

I also removed several things from the See Also list. Hate crime, Patriarchy, and Psychology are only tangentially related. "Role Homogeneity" sounds like it would be relevant, but if you look at its page, it's not. I removed Transgender because it's already more-or-less covered by the Gender Identity link.

--GGano

There is an argument that sexuality is part of gender roles - see heteronormativity, for example. That said, I think you were probably right to remove that stuff. In the links, I think transgender and patriarchy should be kept, and probably psychology too. I'll edit appropriately... Martin

The article looks OK but I have to comment one specific paragraph:

"Both since the center the 19. Century arising women's movement and political changes like the industrialization and in particular the world wars, which required it that women left the "traditional" place, led to strong changes of the possibilities within the sex roles; the female sex role was substantially more strongly liberalisiert than the male , so that today the range of the possibilities for women is substantially larger than for men."

"the range of the possibilities for women is substantially larger than for men" is a very striking generaliaztion, does it means that in all societies in the world there are more possibilities for woman. Any research supporting this?

"Also the scientific bases of the distribution of roles were ever more frequently disproved. And also the premise that it gives at all exactly two strictly from each other separate sexes, comes increasingly into the wanken, here is above all the transgender movement and the increasing perception from intersexuality to to be called. "

This is unintelligble for me, I suspect that again logical fallacies are involoved and some serious citing for related research is needed.

I will remove this whole paragraph unless a good explanation is given of what this paragraph about, and what relevant factual information it contains, cause I don't see any. -- Rotem Dan 19:55 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

According to user:Vkem, it is (new text from German wikipedia). Looks like machine translation - delete it. Martin 20:12 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Agree 100%! Paige 20:44 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

This text was added with the comment that it was intended to be "slightly more readable:"

"Women's movement in 19. century and political changes like industrialization and in particular, the world wars, required that women left the "traditional place" in home. It led to strong changes of the possibilities within the sex roles; the female sex role was now substantially strongly liberal than male. That causes that today the range of possibilities and roles for women is comparable larger than for men."

I'm sorry to say that it was no more readable than the last version and is not NPOV, unless some one can provide factual evidence to prove any of this. (Please see masculism.) Thanks, Paige 19:06 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

This point of view seems to be true in North-Europe countries like Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway.

What does "Women as on a hunter instructed breedingservicer inside" mean? What about "kaempferisch" and "compensatorily"? I assume these are translations that haven't been proofread.JPB

Today metrosexualism is a rising direction among men, mostly because of many metrosexual celebrities.

Well, I'm not sure of the accuracy of this statement (celebrity-driven? I thought it was largely manufacturer-driven). In any case it would need to be rewritten to use more common and less ambiguous words - perhaps talking about increased sales of male moisteuriser. Martin 08:52 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Would a merge to gender role and identity be a good thing? When disambiguating gender I often have difficulty deciding whether to link here or to gender identity. Martin 12:00, 19 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think this could be a good thing, but would have to be handled carefully. I think gender role and gender identity often do, and with good reason, overlap. But these terms are often used in different contexts by different people, and I don't think the terms can be used interchangably without misconstruing the point being made by the people who use these terms. In my experience, gender role is most often used by social scientists describing "normative" or "ideal" positions within a given society. I think "gender identity" is most often used by people who either do not identify with these socially normative or ideal roles -- or who are critical of the very idea of normative or ideal roles, and often in a political context (and, of course, used by social scientists who want to study such people, their political or social movements, and their critiques of their own society). I am sure there are others out there who could say more, and more nuanced things, about the sometimes subtle differences between these terms, or at least between the ways they have been used. Yes, I think a good article could include both, but only if it also gives a good account of these differences. Slrubenstein

Slrubenstein said: "In my experience, gender role is most often used by social scientists describing "normative" or "ideal" positions within a given society." What do you mean by "position within society"?

Slrubenstein also said: "I think "gender identity" is most often used by people who either do not identify with these socially normative or ideal roles -- or who are critical of the very idea of normative or ideal roles, and often in a political context (and, of course, used by social scientists who want to study such people, their political or social movements, and their critiques of their own society)." By whom a term is used does not determine its meaning. The term started with a fairly clear meaning in the works of John Money, who invented the term to deal with situations where, e.g., an XY person has a feminized body and his XY status is not discovered until after he has learned all of the ways of doing things that are associated with XX individuals. His sex is male, but his gender is female. If someone is aware that despite their external male genitalia they think and feel like a woman, that may be due to their having XX chromosomal sex and perhaps a brain that was grown under female specifications (so to speak). Such a person will challenge his male gender before he knows enough about himself to challenge his alleged status as a member of the male sex. Naturally such a person would not easily acquiesce to being forced to live the life of a male human.

Before too much ink or blood is spilled over this subject, it would probably be a good idea for those of us interested in this question to go back to John Money's work. If memory serves, he originally spoke only of gender and then found that single term inadequate because society not only looks at clearly male genitalia, clearly female genitalia, and cases that are either in-between (is it a big clitoris or a small penis) or mixed (e.g., and individual with both a penis and vagina, one testicle and one ovary) and assigns these individuals to sexual categories like "male" and "female", but societies frequently are insistent about the appropriate behaviorisms, manner of speaking, clothing, etc. (gender signals), and also about the appropriate roles these individuals may take up in society. He had a rather odd-looking term, something "gender-role/i.d.", which IMHO did not convey his insights very well. That being said, I would rather define a term like "theory of relativity" according to the way that Einstein spoke of it than to define it in terms of the way the multitude of casual and often ignorant users of the term speak.

Patrick0Moran

Whoa... Patrick I can't say that I like any of the new text at all. Both in tone and in length, it seems more appropriate to a sociology journal than to an encyclopedia.

As far as the length goes, an encyclopedia article doesn't have to expand on every detail of the subject - often briefer is better. I think people got the idea of gender role pretty well in the original article, and the reiterating of details and examples just made it longer, not better.

As far as tone, the new text seems vague and weird. E.g. I guess I can figure out what "the external representations and the internal representations (self image) of what sex one is" means, but it takes me a while to parse it (as a non-sociologist). I can't figure out at all what "once clothing and shaving were invented" has to do with anything. And using the term "human beings" so much sounds weird and doesn't flow well. What's the benefit of using "male human beings" over "men" everywhere, other than making it sound like it was written by the Coneheads? ("Greetings Earth creatures...")

The new text also doesn't integrate well with the rest of the article. I thought the "Cultural views of gender roles" section was a good intro to the topic, but now it's prefixed with a lot of strange specifics in the new text.

I do agree that the difference between gender role and gender identity is both clear and useful, if you think hard enough about it, and they should be kept as separate articles. A simplistic way of putting it is that gender identity is whether you think you are male or female, while gender role is whether you tend to act in a masculine or feminine way. E.g. a man who stays home and takes care of the kids has a male gender identity but could be said to be acting in a female gender role.

GGano 14:56, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I reverted all my changes. Patrick0Moran 02:09, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Martin started me thinking about this page and how to distinguish between gender and gender role. I wasted my time by trying to answer his needs in one fell swoop.

Let's look at this article point by point, just picking things that I see as problems.

"biology of gender"

What is that supposed to mean? Gender is a social construct that may be based on biology, but is something that needs to be clearly distinguished from biology and its sub-category, sex.

Women used to wear blue jeans that had zippers at the side -- to distinguish them from men's jeans that opened in the front for obvious reasons. But before long it was just easier for unisex jeans to take over -- still adapted to male physiology thank goodness. So sex can be operative in suggesting ways that gender can be signaled without making men pee over the tops of their trousers, but there does not have to be a connection.

I changed the sentence: "Considerable debate exists as to whether gender roles are biologically mandated, in the sense of the behavioral traits arising primarily from the biology of gender; or culturally mandated," to speak of the "biology of sex" because it seems to me that if a gender role is mandated by anything in biology, it is probably sexual dimorphism and/or innate behavioral differences between the sexes not some difference between the genders. It makes some sense to have large animal veterinarians be males, but my female veterinarian is larger and stronger than I am. It would make a lot of sense that most farriers are males because there are not many people around who can hold up the hoof of an uncooperative Clydesdale, and the number of women who can do that is most likely much lower than the number of men who can do it. But when you make it a social convention/rule that women should not be large animal veterinarians or farriers (and men should not be hairdressers) that is a social construct that goes beyond the biological facts to mandate that all guys are big and tough and all gals are small and fragile. There is a biological fact behind a sociological fact that gives the sociological construct some measure of rationality (and not purely conventional).

If we say that gender roles depend on gender, that is virtually a tautology. They are both matters of social definition and not matters of "biologically mandated" decisions.

So, what do people think? Shall we leave gender confused with sex in this case? Patrick0Moran 02:42, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Another problem with this page. It begins with the words:

"In sociology, gender roles (or sometimes sex roles) describe the behaviors and responsibilities prescribed for each sex by a society."

This sentence amply illustrates the kind of confusion that makes it a problem when society imposes gender roles (and punishes those who do not conform) on the basis of superficial characterists. Is there any difference between gender and sex? If there is a difference, then what is the author of this sentence trying to say here? The main reason that John Money diverted the grammatical term "gender" and invented the term "gender role" is that people were being caused to suffer when the society in general was prepared to deal only with male human beings who acted like John Wayne and female human beings who acted like Ann Sothern. Society looked at the external genitalia, saw male and said, "Dress and act in such and such a way." It saw female and said, "Dress and act in such and such a way." If it saw anything other than "standard" genitalia it freaked out. The basic problem with the sentence quoted above is that it assumes that sex is unambiguously determined by external genitalia.

If there were two sexes, or any number of sexes, and they were unambiguously determined by external genitalia, then it would not likely be problematical for society to decree that individuals should keep their genitalia under cover but to announce what was kept covered by unambiguous and truthful symbols. It would still be problematical if the authorities jumped from the observation that most individuals of sex V were large and relatively aggressive and that most individuals of sex Z were small and relatively nurturing to the assertion that all individuals of sex V were aggressive and all individuals of sex Z were nurturing, and that therefore Vs should be lawyers and things like that and Zs should be nurses and things like that.

Since external genitalia do not unambiguously determine the minds, motivations, and other characteristics of individuals, major social problems can result from the simplistic assumption that one knows "the sex" of a human being.

A quibble: To me "sex role" sounds like it means the kinds of things one is expected to do (or does do) as a sexual partner, not the general kinds of things that an individual of one sex is expected to do as a normal part of daily life.

Patrick0Moran 23:52, 23 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The first sentence, ""In sociology, gender roles (or sometimes sex roles) describe the behaviors and responsibilities prescribed for each sex by a society," is not adequate because it does not reflect the facts. What actually happens is that those in authority (at least in the dominant culture of the U.S.) look at the external genitalia of an infant, and declare that it is a boy or a girl. If it isn't clear whether it is a boy or a girl, then a decision has to be made whether to surgically "repair" the problem or to leave an individual that is not going to fit in. So the first thing society does is to declare that "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!" And along with that announcement come blue blankets or pink blankets, "Francis" or "Frances", and "He'll make a great baseball player like his dad," or, "She'll look beautiful in a prom dress some day!" So immediately after the announcement of external sex comes the assumption of a gender identity. This is how you will be known. You will wear trousers, and you will wear skirts. You will cut your hair short, and you will let your hair grow long. Etc., etc. First comes external genitalia, second comes sex, third comes gender, and only then do people get around to saying things like, "Boys don't cry!" and "Girls don't spit!"

The sentence in question would be more accurate if modified to say:

"The behaviors and responsibilities prescribed for each gender by a society are called gender roles by sociologists and sexologists."

Patrick0Moran 14:07, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree with both the change you made and the one you propose. We should be accurate about sex vs. gender identity but we should avoid talking about this distinction in this article - that's for the gender identity article, it would only confuse the matter here. One issue with your proposed change is that IIRC it's a wikipedia custom that the first sentence of each article should begin with the name of the article's subject and then define it - e.g. "George Washington was the first president of the U.S." So it should probably be switched around so that the subject comes first (or close to first anyway).

GGano 15:17, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I believe that it is clear that the following list is flawed precisely because it does not distinguish between sex and gender:

A man, who enjoys sex, has a career, and has difficulty expressing his emotions.
A woman, who wears cosmetics, and wants to get married, start a family and be a housewife.
An effeminate man, a man who is more or less like a stereotypical woman.
A girl, who wears skirts and dresses, plays with dolls, likes the colour pink, has long hair, and wants to wear make-up.
A tomboy, a girl who behaves like a stereotypical boy.
A boy, who wears rugged clothing, likes the colour blue, plays with toy soldiers, participates in competitive team sports, enjoys fighting, doesn't cry, and has short hair.
A sissy, a boy who behaves like a stereotypical girl.

There are problems with the wording of these list elements. They are not sentences, for one thing. The heading is: "Examples of western gender roles." In an odd, but probably unintended way, the heading works very well with the list elements. The reason is that if you read it carefully it gives "man," "woman," "effeminate man," "girl," "tomboy," "boy," and "sissy" as gender roles. Actually it should be "gender" for each of those seven, and then the remainders of the seven phrases would be the behaviors and activities that form the roles for each of these genders. So this list is saying, for instance, that "girl" is a gender, and that the role to be played by a girl is to wear skirts and dresses, to play with dolls, to like the colour pink, to wear long hair, and to look forward to wearing make-up. But then the definition of the gender called "tomboy" is bad because it defines the gender "tomboy" by the gender "girl" on the one hand and then says that this tomboy=girl has a role which is like that played by members of the gender called "boy."

Let's go back to the beginning. Society finds a newborn infant, checks out its external genitalia, says, "male" or "female," and then everybody knows what color of blankets to buy, whether to buy the child a pitcher's glove or an oven mitt, etc. If we make no reference to the putative sex of the individual, the obvious external genitalia, we cannot make sense of the difference between "man," "woman," "effeminate man," and so forth by looking at this list. A person who wears cosmetics and wants to get married, start a family, and be a housewife could equally well be called a woman or an effeminate man if nobody looks under the clothing. Similarly, a person who wears rugged clothing, likes the color blue, plays with toy soldiers, etc., is equally a boy and a tomboy. Any sissy could equally well be called a girl -- unless we check out the external genitalia. (And of course the tomboy may actually be a boy boy with androgen insensitivity syndrome and a body that has been sexualized as like that of a female, so things get even more complicated.)

If one does not distinguish between gender and sex, then messed up formulations must inevitably follow. One other problem is that the way these things are set up there is no way to know that the terms with "boy" and "girl" in them apply to a different age group than do the terms with "man" and "women" in them. There are probably many adults who fit the description given for "boy."

For society to be willing to call someone a woman, that person must have female genitalia in addition to all of the other characteristics. Otherwise society will call the person a transvestite or maybe a transexual.

Unless we use the minimal amount of required unambiguous terms, we cannot hope to give a useful explanation of something for which many people need a clear understanding since they presently have no idea of "what is going on with these weird creatures."

To avoid saying ridiculous things we need to say things that are carefully worded. We need to be very careful of how we formulate statements because the situation is very complex and because misconceptions are rife. There can be two or more views on the sex of an individual. Society may look at a person, see male genitalia, and say, "This is a male." The individual may look at "his" desire to bear children, tendency to be nurturing, abhorance of acting in an aggressive way, etc., and decide that "he" is, despite the genitalia, a female. Then misunderstanding and conflict will often occur.

Society says to this individual, "You are a boy/man and you should behave in such-and-such a way." In so doing, society asserts both its interpretation of what the person is and also its expectation of how the person should act. The person looks inward and says, "I am a girl/woman, and I should behave in such-and-such a way to properly group myself with other girls/women." The society may look at the person and ask, "Why are you behaving in this perverse manner?"

Maybe the easy way to say all of this is that if one is presumed to be a male then one is expected to behave in a certain way, and if one is presumed to be a female then one is expected to behave in another way. One is expected by society to display the matching gender signals (dress or trousers, etc.) and to do the appropriate kinds of things. On the other hand, if the onel actually feels about oneself and other people in a certain way, then one interprets oneself to be a boy, man, girl, woman, or whatever. That gender may or may not match the appearance of one's external genitalia. But once one decides whether one is a "he" or a "she", once one has decided what one's gender is, then one will tend to identify with other people of the same gender and will tend to want to dress and behave in a way that is in agreement with one's gender. Western culture acts to socialize individuals with male external genitalia to the gender and the role of a man, to socialize individuals with female external genitalia to the gender and the role of a woman, and regards any other kind of external genitalia as an abnormality that needs to be corrected. Conflict results when one regards oneself as of one gender and adopts the matching gender role, and society regards one as of the other gender and insists upon the other gender role.

Apparent sex-> Socionormal gender-> Socionormal gender role

male-> man-> Actively impose will on the outside world in various ways.

(immature m.)-> boy-> Irrepressible attempts to actively impose will on the outside.

female-> woman-> Passively adapt to the wills of males, nurture infants, etc.

(immature f.)-> girl-> Learning how to achieve active goals via passive techniques.

intersexual-> none-> none

Apparent sex-> Sociocontrary gender-> Spoiled gender role

male-> woman-> Passively adapt to the wills of males, nurture infants, etc. "Effeminate man"

(immature m.)-> girl-> Learning how to achieve active goals via passive techniques. "Sissy"

female-> man-> Actively impose will on the outside world in various ways. "Virago"

(immature f.)-> boy-> Irrepressive attempts to actively impose will on the outside. "Tomboy"

These descriptions of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" gender roles need to be filled out.

Patrick0Moran 21:06, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Most of what you've said is true, but... I think much more appropriately explained on the gender identity page than here. Trying to explain both concepts at once would be very confusing I think. The issue of the gender roles of people whose gender is unambiguous is an interesting enough concept, and should be explained first. The gender roles of others (sorry, what's the right term for that?) should be discussed separately, because it adds another layer of complexity. My ideal solution would be for this article to explain the former, and then link to a (new) second article about the latter. The current article can explain that, to make the discussion easier, we're assuming that the person's gender is unambiguous and is identical to their sex; for discussion of cases where that's not true, see article two. In other words, I'd like to sweep the issue of all the bits about "external genetalia" under the rug for a bit, just until people can see what "gender role" is about, and then add them back. Otherwise it's way too hard to explain. Does that sound like a reasonable plan?

As to the list you mention, I agree that there are some questions about it. First of all, it's assuming that the reader understands that it's really talking about the "male gender role" when it says "man". Maybe that's not a good assumption. Second, it's not clear whether "effeminate man", "sissy", and "tomboy" are gender roles. I'm not sure - if they're not, then what are they? Gender stereotypes? That's certainly related. It seems useful to mention those in a list along with the other doesn't it, but then what exactly is it a list of?

A few minor points: (1) I think we can safely assume a bit of understanding on the part of the reader, e.g. than a "boy" is younger than a "man". (2) "Actively impose will on the outside world in various ways" is a weird view of the male gender role I think. In general the existing list matches my views of traditional Western gender roles much better, even though the enumeration may be flawed.

GGano 17:09, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I also have some questions about the proposed additions as I do not know that we should be aiming this article at graduate level sexology students. Perhaps we should work on making things more Plain English without losing the depth of meaning. As it is, the material is very dense and the Wikipedia should not really read like a scientific journal. Also, when information is added, we should try to be careful to keep it NPOV. Paige 17:31, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

What I wrote above was not intended for external consumption. It was written to try to get people to look at the fact that the formulation that is currently in use is fatally flawed. Let me repeat:

If we make no reference to the putative sex of the individual, the obvious external genitalia, we cannot make sense of the difference between "man," "woman," "effeminate man," and so forth by looking at this list.

Here is the list again:

A man, who enjoys sex, has a career, and has difficulty expressing his emotions.
A woman, who wears cosmetics, and wants to get married, start a family and be a housewife.
An effeminate man, a man who is more or less like a stereotypical woman.
A girl, who wears skirts and dresses, plays with dolls, likes the colour pink, has long hair, and wants to wear make-up.
A tomboy, a girl who behaves like a stereotypical boy.
A boy, who wears rugged clothing, likes the colour blue, plays with toy soldiers, participates in competitive team sports, enjoys fighting, doesn't cry, and has short hair.
A sissy, a boy who behaves like a stereotypical girl.

Let's take GGano's understanding that "man" = "male gender role", etc. I think that's equating sex to gender, which I thought we had agreed was not the correct way to do things, but for the sake of argument we would get the names of several gender roles... Actually, let's call them "masculine gender role", etc. Then following each "X gender role" we would have a thumbnail description of that role:

Masculine gender role: X enjoys sex, has a career, and has difficulty expressing emotions.
Feminine gender role: X wears cosmetics, wants to get married, start a family, and be a housewife.
Effeminate gender role: (same as feminine gender role)
Virago gender role: (same as masculine gender role)
Masculine jr. gender role: X wears rugged clothing, likes the color blue, plays with toy soldiers, participates in competitive team sports, enjoys fighting, doesn't cry, and has short hair.
Feminine jr. gender role: X wears skirts and dresses, plays with dolls, likes the color pink, has long hair, and wants to wear make-up.
Sissy gender role: (same as Feminine jr. gender role)
Tomboy gender role: (same as Masculine jr. gender role)

Do you not see what I'm getting at? If you only look at gender roles, there is nothing to distinguish between a sissy and a girl's girl, or a virago and a man's man. For instance:

If somebody says, "I am a woman," and that person looks like a woman, talks like a woman, leads a typical woman's life, that is what that person is ... But what happens if that person marries and her husband discovers that she is anatomically a male and therefore cannot complete, to the husband's satisfaction, her role as a woman?

Remember, it wasn't my list to begin with. I agree with GGano when he says: "It's not clear whether "effeminate man", "sissy", and "tomboy" are gender roles." That's the other way to fix the list. Just eliminate effeminate gender role, virago g.r., sissy g.r., and tomboy g.r. Then if somebody asks something like, "Well, then, what's a virago?" you have to say, "That's a female who adopts a masculine gender role."

Patrick0Moran 02:09, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)