Our experiences as infants, children, and adolescents profoundly influence who we are. chapters seven and eight of Gendered Lives by Julia T. Wood helps to painstakingly examine various gender stereotypes and at length establish the roles of parents and schools as key agents of gender identification and formation. T. Wood explains gender identity as a person’s private sense of, and subjective experience of, his or her gender.
Firstly, the role of parents on our identities cannot be over emphasized and as much as the psychoanalytic theory agrees to the roles of parents as agent’s gender propagation, I do not agree with Sigmund Freud’s assumption about girls being envious of boys’ penises. Personally I envied my sisters while growing up, they were protected, and didn’t have to go to the farm to conduct rigorous hours of tasks, toiling the ground in the heat of the sun to plant tubers. Also, Freud’s claim that “anatomy is destiny” (pg. 143) proves true to some extent if one doesn’t consider homosexual relationships and transsexuals.
Secondly, I agree that for a male child to develop masculine gender identity, he needs to identify with a male not necessarily the father. Myself for instance, my dad was a busy man while I was growing up, always traveling from one state to another and from one country to …show more content…
For instance, I can relate to the masculine stereotype “DON’T BE FEMALE” because, I come from a culture that alludes itself to the biblical doctrine of “spare the rod and spoil the child” so sometimes when I erred as a child my parents occasionally punished me and if I cried while serving such punishment I remember my uncles vividly laughing at me and saying “he’s crying like a girl” unconsciously this resonated into my mindset that men are not expected to cry, it is a girl thing. Even though I felt the pain when my grandma died, I didn’t shed a single drop of
Firstly, the role of parents on our identities cannot be over emphasized and as much as the psychoanalytic theory agrees to the roles of parents as agent’s gender propagation, I do not agree with Sigmund Freud’s assumption about girls being envious of boys’ penises. Personally I envied my sisters while growing up, they were protected, and didn’t have to go to the farm to conduct rigorous hours of tasks, toiling the ground in the heat of the sun to plant tubers. Also, Freud’s claim that “anatomy is destiny” (pg. 143) proves true to some extent if one doesn’t consider homosexual relationships and transsexuals.
Secondly, I agree that for a male child to develop masculine gender identity, he needs to identify with a male not necessarily the father. Myself for instance, my dad was a busy man while I was growing up, always traveling from one state to another and from one country to …show more content…
For instance, I can relate to the masculine stereotype “DON’T BE FEMALE” because, I come from a culture that alludes itself to the biblical doctrine of “spare the rod and spoil the child” so sometimes when I erred as a child my parents occasionally punished me and if I cried while serving such punishment I remember my uncles vividly laughing at me and saying “he’s crying like a girl” unconsciously this resonated into my mindset that men are not expected to cry, it is a girl thing. Even though I felt the pain when my grandma died, I didn’t shed a single drop of