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Gender (Click to select text)
Gender Differences – “Separate but Equal” The world today must deal with many problems. Our society has been struggling to cope with difficulties ranging from environmental problems to economic problems. Solutions to these problems, however, are not too hard to find. There is one problem, however, that our society has been dealing with for a very long time. The problem is gender discrimination. When thinking of discrimination, one tends to think mostly of sexism directed towards women. Sexism towards women has become a noticeable part of our society through the media, and it is slowly on its way to a solution. That is only part of the problem. With all the focus on discrimination towards women, few understand the sexism directed towards men. Women and men should be treated as equals; however, more attention is directed towards discrimination towards women. In society today, women and men are not socially equal, but ultimately, men are favored more than women are. In the short story, “Only Daughter,” by Sandra Cisneros, Sandra wanted more attention from her father. She wanted her father to acknowledge her for her writings. “I wanted him to interrupt.” Sandra wanted her father to see what she was doing. Everything that she wrote was for her father and she wanted to win over her father’s approval. But since she was the only daughter, she was thought of as very highly by her father. When she told her father she wanted to go to college, they both had different visions. She wanted to go to college to become a writer but her father wanted her to go to college to meet a husband. Her father his sons to go to college to become masters with their hands. The sons in Sandra’s family have the advantage because they are going to college for what they want to. After Sandra completed two years of graduate school, she disappointed her father because she still had not found a husband. She said she could see her self being erased. In the end, after she published some of her stories, her father finally accepted her because of her accomplishments. In addition, men and women are constantly concerned about looking "good," even though they are physically different. In order to look appealing to others ideally, men are supposed to be big, strong, and athletic, whereas women are ideally supposed to be thin, pretty, and big- breasted. I often wonder why we put so much emphasis on the way a person looks. I think females feel more of the pressures of looking "good.” In the past, I have talked to some of my girlfriends, and they told me that the pressure and competition they are faced with is stressful and painful. I am not too critical when checking out girls, and when it comes to seeing other males bigger and stronger than myself, I do not feel too much pressure of trying to look better than them. Rather, I am more concerned with my health and ways to improve it. I was really surprised when my ex-girlfriend told me that other girls are the ones who usually criticize or pressure them. When I was aware of this, I did notice, at times, while walking around casually with my girlfriend, when they weren't looking appropriate, would get stares, hisses or comments from other females at the clubs or on the strip. I was even surprised when I heard my girlfriend talking about other girls right in front of me. Even though most of these times I did not notice anything wrong or different about the other girls they were talking about. Girls, I think, are faced with enormous pressures to look good. In addition, television almost never features old, heavy, or unattractive women. Even if a character is a doctor or a scholar on television, she looks like a Playboy bunny. A part of male sexism is the pressure that men feel to be successful. Many men have come to view their obligation as having a good education, getting a high-paying job, getting married, having kids, and being the sole “bread winner” of the family. They are the ones who have to support their family, and they are looked down upon by society if they fail to do so. Men are literally not worth as much without money because of how they are perceived. The media and society as a whole need to bury the popular myth that male success consists of making money. The pressures on males and females to be successful are highly unequal. Men see becoming successful as a responsibility and obligation, whereas for women, becoming successful is an accentuation of life. It is a tradition in our society for women to marry successful men and not work, but it is definitely seen as strange when a man marries a successful woman and does not work. He is accused of marrying her for her money, whereas she is not accused of anything. Being a successful male has become the rule of society. Occupational achievement, measured by job status and financial stability, has become the yardstick of contemporary masculinity for many of us in America. How successful or how highly educated a man is is not a basis to see how valuable he is to our society. Even though women and men are not socially equal in many situations, men have more advantages than women do in today’s society. Our society has produced many confusing expectations of what men should do to be "real men." There are many ways in which women are treated unfairly by men, however, this should not mean that the treatment of men should be ignored. If men and women are fighting to be equals, they must realize that they both have problems. Men and women both experience unfair treatment, and the only way to stop it is for both sexes to take time to see how and why the discrimination happens. Equality of the sexes will begin with equal attention. Men and women should receive equal treatment, and the only way it will happen is if our society realizes that there is no such thing as a "better sex."
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