Good Example Of Breaking Out From Femininity Essay

When we talk about feminine and masculine, look around you and evidence of its pervasiveness is all over. One of the many evidences is during one of our discussions in my Women and Gender Studies class. Our instructor broke us into two groups separating women and men. We were asked several questions and at the end of the session, it was noticeable that women successfully answered questions that are female stuff and men answered male stuff. This exercise alone gives us a hint that the two rigid gender categories namely the feminine and the masculine are already part of our system. I realized that we were raised thinking that we are masculine and the women, feminine. Our roles since childhood constructed our mindset that there is a demarcation hindering us to do roles that are far from our gender orientations.
When we discussed about how this happened, it began to sink into my mind that indeed, being masculine and feminine are not born characteristics. Heather Hackman in her introduction to “Sexism” mentioned that gender roles in contrast to what we were taught as children are not natural. It does not go along when we were born. “These gender roles are social construction (something created by the dominant social identity group i.e. men, then repeatedly reinforced through socialization so they seem real)” (Hackman, 318). It dawned on me that indeed, what we were taught on gender roles were just reinforcements of the imposed rules. I also thought that maybe, these social constructs had been passed on from generations to another. As a result, we were made to believe that women should be behaving as feminine and men like me should behave as masculine. It answers the reality where men who act feminine are ostracized or even tagged as gays.
On the other hand, Judith Lober in her article entitled “Night to His Day” cited Simone de Beauvoir saying that “one is not born but rather becomes a womanit is civilization as a whole that produces this creaturewhich is described as feminine” (Lorber, 325). This is another assertion that femininity is not acquired by birth but society molds us to be one.
When our discussion furthers, my attention was caught when my other male classmates agreed that women should know how to cook and take care of the family. Again, we are back in the old and backward mindset that women are caretakers and are confined at home. I cannot help but frown with the biting reality that up until today, women are reduced to housewives and other roles that are disempowering. The mentality especially among men like me that views women as subordinates of men is causing the very slow empowerment among women. It is causing women to reduce themselves into caretakers of home. Because of the dominant perception in the society that women are better in homes than outside, women, despite their desire to move out from the zones of femininity choose to be at home.
As a student in women and gender studies, I am beginning to feel angry against male machismo. As a man, I am ashamed that I also acted that way previously. One incident as I have mentioned is when my fellow male classmates said in a discussion that women should know how to cook and take care of the home. In a situation where women are also working outside the home, I think that this way of thinking oppress women twice. It oppresses women twice because women provides for the family from working outside and when they go home, they still need to exert more effort as they need to cook for their family and let the children sleep while their husbands after going home from work just eat, watch television or read books and go to sleep. Instead of doing a shared labor of household chores, femininity compels women to suffer the double burden.
As a public administrator, I would become a model for a genderless view of the female and male employees. I will strive to walk my talk by relating to my co-workers and to every person without the color of femininity and masculinity. As an enlightened man, I will be a model among my fellow male employees that cooking and taking care of the home is a shared responsibility of the family regardless of gender.