Believing Is Seeing Summary

For decades, people have been hypnotized with this idea that the male gender is superior to the female gender. Many people such as Judith Lorber, Jean Kilbourne, and Julie D. O 'Reilly believe that males have rights that they are not empowered to. In the short story “Believing is Seeing” Lorber explains how soon after gender was categorized and introduced to the people, the social life between male and female change. Kilbourne states that the media has a huge influence on the way women are looked at and the way a woman should act. O 'Reilly argues that the world we live in has this idea that women cannot make their own decisions and males are believed to be more privileged than the women and are also questioned about their where abouts less than females are. Society’s mindset is set on the thought that females are weaker than men physically and …show more content…
Lorber explains how “ such anatomical differences between male and female destined them for an entirely different social life from men.” (Lorber 727). The male gender is known to be rough, get dirty, fight, and play with bugs. While the female gender is suppose to be nice, petite, clean, respectful, and girly. Lorber gets across the point that it is society that creates the boundaries between males and females leading people to believe they must act a certain way to fulfill the social norms for that gender. This goes back to Kilbourne’s point that the media has a huge influence on the social behaviors of male and female. Lorber deconstructs the technological aspect of the social life by stating “Men create, program, and market computers, make war and produce science and art with them; women microwave them in computer factories and enter data in computerized offices. (Lorber 730)”. Lorber is describing that the males are doing the more complex thing and the females are just the people who input data and the unsophisticated