Personal Awareness Paper: Gender and Sexuality



Personal Awareness Paper: Gender and SexualitySOC-SCI 1020-03Dr. Sharron A. ClaytonAdri SietstraApril 4, 2012Gender and sexuality help make up part of who we are. In many cases, our gender and sexuality are solely defined by other people’s views and awareness of us. Our world tends to define and classify our population into specific groups in order to analyze them more. Throughout history, our world has been associating certain stereotypes and falsehoods with specific genders and types of sexualities. In this paper, I hope to show the reader how I have become aware of both gender and sexuality within my own life as it relates to the people, institutions, and world around me. Through three time concepts and a deeper look into three specific contexts dealing with one’s interactions with people in each of those concepts, the reader will be able to more thoroughly understand the differences between both gender and sexuality. Although gender and sexuality are commonly brought up together, they are two vastly different concepts that are important and must be distinguishable from the other. Gender is the socially defined roles expected of both males and females. Sexuality involves attraction on a physical, emotional, and social level as well as fantasies, sexual behaviors, and one’s self-identity. Firstly, gender plays an important role in our society. As we mature, we begin to discover how the world treats both the male and female genders in respect to one another. I, being a female have endured different events in my life than a male has. Our society treats men and women differently. Many times it is incredibly noticeable. As I have matured I have begun to see just how our society truly treats both men and women. The first time frame where I became aware of gender differences was early childhood. I was four years old at the time. I was at preschool. It was playtime and the teacher let the boys go first so that they could get the machines, toy trucks, and dibs on the sandbox first. All of the girls in my class were left with the options of playing with the dolls, coloring, or napping. I realized that the boys were supposed to play rough with the “boy” toys and that the girls were supposed to play with the “feminine” toys. Within the school institution, I was taught that boys and girls were treated differently because there were different expectations laid out for each gender. The second context that came into play at that time was the intrapersonal contact with the rest of my classmates. No girl reached for a toy in the sandbox because they knew that the boys would be playing with it. Ironically, both the boys and girls had no problem with this and interacted normally. The third context that I feel was associated with this gender issue was the internal context that I felt. Because of the teacher’s influence, I began to understand that this should be one of the concepts that I took away from preschool. I internally started to believe that it was natural and normal for the boys to only play with the heavy equipment in the sand box, and for the girls to play more quietly with the more feminine toys on the side. Although at this time I didn’t have a full grasp on why the two genders played differently and with different toys, I began to see that this was simply how it was supposed to be.As I grew, I began to see more differences between the way that both men and women were treated. The second life phase where I saw a concrete difference in genders was when I was a young adolescent of thirteen. I began seeing a difference in how our teachers treated the boys verse the girls. My P.E. teacher would not let the guys throw dodge balls too hard at us for fear of us girls getting hurt. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated that, but found the idea that all of the girls in my class not being able to take a hit or hit a guy with any force whatsoever, was kind of strange. The girls in my class were still able to throw their hardest at the guys however. I feel that in this scenario, the physical education teacher complied with the stereotype that all men are big and strong and all women can’t fend for themselves and are weaker than the “superior” male. Within our nation, it is plain to see that this stereotype is fulfilled many times over. We expect every couple to consist of a taller muscular man and a smaller fit, but not muscular, woman. Our society has brought us up to view males as the dominant species and women as the submissive followers. The media plays an extremely large role in gender roles. Whether it is on a television show or in a magazine, we expect every elite couple to bear the resemblances of the aforesaid stereotypes. A third context in this situation would be the school as a whole. Whenever sports and gender are mixed, many issues come up. For example, the issue of letting men and women play on the same sports teams or the fact that men play more aggressive sports like football. I think that my awareness was raised to a whole new level here because I was old enough to understand why our gender roles have different expectations to be lived up to.As I have matured into a young adult and have begun experiencing college, I think that the gender roles that men and women have is at a whole new level. Males are expected to go out and party and are basically praised when they have a one night stand, whereas if a female goes out to have some fun and ends up having a one night stand, she is labeled a whore. I have many friends who party it up on the weekends and are knocked down a social level because of the social stigmas associated with females and partying. My awareness about gender was highly raised during my first semester of college. Usually the institution of family knows nothing of the partying, but knows of the stereotypes and associates them with women or men whom they think identify the tell-tale signs of the stereotype. The second focus of this paper concerns sexuality. Sexuality is a complex topic. There are three time frames in my life where I encountered or became more aware of my sexuality or more aware of someone else’s sexuality. The first time frame in which my awareness was raised was early childhood. I had barely started elementary school at the time. I started crushing on one of the boys in my Sunday school class. I was only six at the time so I thought that I just liked him more than the rest of the class. I hadn’t really understood that I was attracted to him emotionally and socially. I think it would be difficult to be legitimately physically attracted to someone at such a young age, however. I was around my crush quite a bit when we were younger so I feel as though we had a lot of great intrapersonal context. Also, our families were very familiar with one another which made my liking him grow even more so. The third context that relates to my crush is the Sunday school education that I got because it supplied me with both the information about my crush and the crush himself. As I grew up I became increasingly aware of both my own and other guys’ sexuality. I became physically attracted to a guy from one of my neighboring high schools. I also think that during my adolescence, I became more aware of my own sexuality and how it came across to others. I began to identify myself as conservative and modest whereas many of my schoolmates went in the complete opposite direction. Socially, I began to understand that as a woman, I could use my sexuality to my advantage because that is what the media told me to do. On the other hand, my internal beliefs told me that although my sexuality was a good thing, I should not use it to get my way or to harm others, but instead treasure it and use it wisely.At my current stage in life (young adult) I have seen sexuality become a vice rather than a virtue. I recently went to Victoria’s Secret and saw the majority of the women in the store commenting on their own sexuality and the sexuality of their partners or shopping buddies. These women were all buying different items from the store in order to enhance their sexuality. I think that stores like Victoria’s Secret have told our society that in order to be attractive and truly showcase one’s sexuality. My family taught me that one’s sexuality is an important part of who they are, but it is also necessary to retain part of it to keep one’s reputation intact. Our world relies on sexuality to sell clothes, magazines, and other products. Whether or not we like it, sex sells. Although overall, I believe that our sexuality only helps define who we want to be.In conclusion, both gender and sexuality play key roles in our world today. Although they both aid in defining a person, sexuality and gender should not be able to overrun who we all are characteristically. ................
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