Taking James Brown's suggestion, I had already "faced the facts" long ago. However, through learning about sexual deviance, gender deviance, and even gender variance, this point seems to have only been underscored even more. I've come to realize just how intricately this has been incorporated in so many more aspects of not only all that our history has been comprised of, but our present day-to-day realities as well. As we've discovered in class, the acceptance of and amount of power wielded by gender deviant members of society varies among communities, suggesting the recurring theme/theory of the class that gender and deviance are both socially constructed. Yet, with respect to each culture, the way these issues are treated almost always regard biological variance and human behavior in accordance with whatever perspective or result necessary, to correspond with and benefit the male role in each respective patriarchal society.
[...] Humans as a species have been seen as ‘mankind', with men in the primary focus of studies, and women and our behaviors in the background (after all women have in the past been thought of not as a separate sex, but as ‘imperfect man'). Additionally, when the sexual deviance is homosexuality, the ‘deviance' aspect of it is almost applied in a lesser extent to women/lesbians. The idea that two women would be attracted to each other is more accepted. When Jason Slone delivered his guest lecture, he covered some of the reasons why this may hold true through the evolutionary psychology theory, including one example that on an instinctual level (or one controlled by our selfish genes) women, as child bearers seek long term commitment from a partner, who will be there long after the children are born, while the males have the opposite drive to try and spread their seed and guarantee passing on their genes. [...]
[...] Are all the restrictions of norms placed on men to keep a very specific idea of masculinity/man in check out of fear? To maintain their status, they must maintain the ultimate ideology of man with little to no room for straying from the original and successful mold? Or is it just that women have gained more equal footing with men over the years, as we've accumulated more of their characteristics. If that's the case, and women are allowed to keep growing and sharing stereotypically male behaviors, then perhaps there really is a future like the one outlined in Jason Slone's theory of evolutionary psychology where women will become entirely self-sufficient in matters of procreation and existence. [...]
[...] They are generally the first thing noticeable about a person, and not only display our view of ourselves (or how we want to be viewed) as well as how the world views us. In representing gender, clothes can shape us more than we can shape gender expectations. Interestingly, over time, women have gained more rights and powers of equality while on a parallel timeline, acceptable dress for women has also broadened to include nearly every outfit a man would wear. [...]
[...] It's the first label announced upon one's entrance to the world (“It's a or “It's a before a name is even given. Violating gender norms may be considered one of the simplest, yet most offensive forms of deviance, because we organize our worlds almost entirely on gendered behavior. There is an innumerous amount of unspoken rules delegating acceptable behaviors for each gender, and only two acceptable genders at that; anything in between or indistinguishable runs the risk of crossing the lines into what is considered deviant. [...]
[...] In the world of hegemonic masculinity, this other- ness is "typically defined as 'effeminate.'" (McGuffy and Rich, 1999) So these hate crimes against perceived homosexual men are often committed by those who feel a need to protect their own masculinity and/or heterosexuality by targeting males threatening this ideal masculinity by exhibiting feminine attributes or characteristics (and assumed to be homosexual) for exclusion and/or abuse because as noted by RW Connell we live in patriarchal society in which hegemonic masculinity is defined as exclusively heterosexual" (Connell, 1992). [...]
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