gender et al
I was thinking recently about gender roles and it occurred to me that I and my siblings had a very unusual upbringing. Our family is and always has been quite conservative and religious, but my sister, my brothers and I were most definitely not raised to fit into the traditional gender roles; in fact, we were raised up in what I would consider an extremely gender-neutral way.
Partly, this may be explained by the fact that I and my sister are older than our brothers, and that there are only 5.5 years between me, the oldest, and my youngest brother, but we were never taught "this is something for only girls to do" or "this is something only for boys to do." Chores were handed out on a basis of who was capable and/or available to do them; I was responsible for the bulk of heavy yard work from age 13 till my brother gained a lot of inches and decided the riding lawnmower was a fun toy. My sister and I were expected to do such things as a matter of course, and our brothers were expected to do housework and wash dishes as a matter of course. No one was allowed to complain about these things, and we just assumed that it was normal for this to be this way.
We weren't given any kind of gender restriction on our future plans, either; although at our house, Dad worked and Mom homeschooled, it was just one of plenty of variations, and we were encouraged to think of our futures in terms of what we wanted to do and what would bring us a good living, not in terms of "this is what is suitable for a man or a woman to do."
I think it had a fairly interesting effect on us, because none of us really conform to gender stereotypes---my sister comes the closest, but she also has several behaviors that lie outside the "typical" norm for a young woman in today's society. My brothers are very respectful of women as equals, and see nothing amiss in doing "women's work," or in women doing "men's work."
I myself have noticed that in terms of comparing the general stereotypes about men and women, I seem to lie along a narrow bridge exactly in the middle. Sometimes I jokingly tell my friends that I'm just a guy with boobs, but in all honesty I don't think it's necessarily so far off the mark. I really do seem to think and act in traditionally masculine ways far more often and naturally than I do in traditionally feminine ways, and I believe that it's because I was brought up to be who I am and not forced to conform to some idea of what a girl ought to be. It's as normal for me to act "manly" as it is for my sister to act "womanly," and neither of us was shamed or trained to be anything else, because our parents realized that we would be who we should be and didn't try to malform our personalities.
When I left my parents' house two years ago, I was flabbergasted at the gender stereotypes and ideas and paradigms that I encountered in my new friends, because these things simply didn't occur in my previous worldview. It really gives food for thought, because, as I noted in the beginning, my household was very conservative and religious, yet we are so much more free in our views of gender roles than the more liberal people that I've been living among.
Partly, this may be explained by the fact that I and my sister are older than our brothers, and that there are only 5.5 years between me, the oldest, and my youngest brother, but we were never taught "this is something for only girls to do" or "this is something only for boys to do." Chores were handed out on a basis of who was capable and/or available to do them; I was responsible for the bulk of heavy yard work from age 13 till my brother gained a lot of inches and decided the riding lawnmower was a fun toy. My sister and I were expected to do such things as a matter of course, and our brothers were expected to do housework and wash dishes as a matter of course. No one was allowed to complain about these things, and we just assumed that it was normal for this to be this way.
We weren't given any kind of gender restriction on our future plans, either; although at our house, Dad worked and Mom homeschooled, it was just one of plenty of variations, and we were encouraged to think of our futures in terms of what we wanted to do and what would bring us a good living, not in terms of "this is what is suitable for a man or a woman to do."
I think it had a fairly interesting effect on us, because none of us really conform to gender stereotypes---my sister comes the closest, but she also has several behaviors that lie outside the "typical" norm for a young woman in today's society. My brothers are very respectful of women as equals, and see nothing amiss in doing "women's work," or in women doing "men's work."
I myself have noticed that in terms of comparing the general stereotypes about men and women, I seem to lie along a narrow bridge exactly in the middle. Sometimes I jokingly tell my friends that I'm just a guy with boobs, but in all honesty I don't think it's necessarily so far off the mark. I really do seem to think and act in traditionally masculine ways far more often and naturally than I do in traditionally feminine ways, and I believe that it's because I was brought up to be who I am and not forced to conform to some idea of what a girl ought to be. It's as normal for me to act "manly" as it is for my sister to act "womanly," and neither of us was shamed or trained to be anything else, because our parents realized that we would be who we should be and didn't try to malform our personalities.
When I left my parents' house two years ago, I was flabbergasted at the gender stereotypes and ideas and paradigms that I encountered in my new friends, because these things simply didn't occur in my previous worldview. It really gives food for thought, because, as I noted in the beginning, my household was very conservative and religious, yet we are so much more free in our views of gender roles than the more liberal people that I've been living among.