Within western culture, gender is assigned by means of sex assessment which dictates everything they should and should not do. Gendered interaction is enforced starting from birth—messages of gender and its expectations guide children as they grow, drawing influences from the media, religion, and community. Failure to follow the expectations of an assigned designation can result in children forced to play with toys and engage in occupations that they do not enjoy to avoid social ridicule and neglect. Some believe that gender is innate while others encourage reformation of gender in hope of a more accepting society. Despite the insistence of the necessity of gender roles for an efficiently run society, traditional gender roles are dangerous
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Previous to 10,000 BC— the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution— Syeda Jafari (2015) states that men and women retained similar duties that would help them function more efficiently in their hunter and gatherer society. In the Paleolithic Era, members of both sexes worked together to hunt animals for their meats and gather nuts, berries, and other various herbs. Hunting provided 20 percent of food consumption while gathering provided the rest. Only when members of Neolithic society could take under their belts further expansion of land and were able to maintain settlement did women stop working in the fields to birth more children for means of increasing the population to fill workload. Jafari (2015) found through research that as time went on, this act by the women of Neolithic times has turned into a stereotype of women being weak and belonging in the house as men did more labor-intensive work as society has developed. The further this stereotype has been passed along, the more has been added to it, such as women being incapable of tasks other than taking care of the household and only being good for serving their husbands— both a sexist and heteronormative assumption. Due to various harmful and misinformed stereotypes being passed down through generations such as women being weak, girls have been put down and excluded out of …show more content…
Data scientist Nathaniel Givens (2014) argues that gender roles were not invented, stating that they predate history and gender is directly linked to biology. It is claimed that if one is born with a certain set of genitalia, one is suited for one role and one role only, hence gender designation. Givens uses gender and sex interchangeably, though this is not the case: sex is physical and biological, whereas gender has little to do with one’s physical anatomy (Gender is Not…, 2009). Gender, instead, is defined by “one’s outward presentations and behaviors related to [outward perception]”. In the article Gender is not Inherently Connected to Biology (2009), many cultures, such as two-spirit Native Americans, calali and calabai of Indonesia, and the hijra of India show gender variation outside of a binary western model, and all cultures are found to thrive just as well as western society. Gender variance exists even inside of western culture though is oppressed (transgender, nonbinary, and agender individuals) due to the strict imposed binary. A transgender female is a female because she feels like a female, thus making genitalia irrelevant. This argument also spans to intersex individuals who are forcibly assigned to one gender or another
Previous to 10,000 BC— the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution— Syeda Jafari (2015) states that men and women retained similar duties that would help them function more efficiently in their hunter and gatherer society. In the Paleolithic Era, members of both sexes worked together to hunt animals for their meats and gather nuts, berries, and other various herbs. Hunting provided 20 percent of food consumption while gathering provided the rest. Only when members of Neolithic society could take under their belts further expansion of land and were able to maintain settlement did women stop working in the fields to birth more children for means of increasing the population to fill workload. Jafari (2015) found through research that as time went on, this act by the women of Neolithic times has turned into a stereotype of women being weak and belonging in the house as men did more labor-intensive work as society has developed. The further this stereotype has been passed along, the more has been added to it, such as women being incapable of tasks other than taking care of the household and only being good for serving their husbands— both a sexist and heteronormative assumption. Due to various harmful and misinformed stereotypes being passed down through generations such as women being weak, girls have been put down and excluded out of …show more content…
Data scientist Nathaniel Givens (2014) argues that gender roles were not invented, stating that they predate history and gender is directly linked to biology. It is claimed that if one is born with a certain set of genitalia, one is suited for one role and one role only, hence gender designation. Givens uses gender and sex interchangeably, though this is not the case: sex is physical and biological, whereas gender has little to do with one’s physical anatomy (Gender is Not…, 2009). Gender, instead, is defined by “one’s outward presentations and behaviors related to [outward perception]”. In the article Gender is not Inherently Connected to Biology (2009), many cultures, such as two-spirit Native Americans, calali and calabai of Indonesia, and the hijra of India show gender variation outside of a binary western model, and all cultures are found to thrive just as well as western society. Gender variance exists even inside of western culture though is oppressed (transgender, nonbinary, and agender individuals) due to the strict imposed binary. A transgender female is a female because she feels like a female, thus making genitalia irrelevant. This argument also spans to intersex individuals who are forcibly assigned to one gender or another