Our "Born" Identity?
By: Mounira Altairi

        What do we think when we hear the word woman?  We think mother, housewife, soccer mom, caring, weak and someone who needs a man to support her.  What do we think when we hear the word man?  We think father, worker, strong, independent and someone who takes care of his family.  We instantly find ourselves assigning gender roles without even thinking about it.  People have grown to believe that these roles are essential in society.  But, does each gender play these specific roles?  Essentialism is a belief that explains how gender is determined by physical features and is categorized by fixed characteristics, not allowing change within the group.  Constructivism, on the other hand, is a belief on our own lived experiences; that we construct our own understanding of the world and our identities.  Constructivism, instead of essentialism, shape our lives, identities, and roles.

            Essentialists believe our roles are determined the day we are born.  It is simply black and white, no shades of gray.  If you are a woman, you will bear children, take care of the family, and be a housewife.  If you are a man, you will be the head of the household, make the money, and depend on your wife to cook and clean.  Girls are dressed in pink and wear cute dressy shoes because girls are supposed to like pink and dressing up.  Boys are taught to play football and are to think that tea parties are “girly.”  Essentialists believe women are naturally nurturing and less aggressive.  They believe men are naturally aggressive and independent.  According to the essentialists, these qualities should be valued more in society.

            Constructivism is a belief that is known to be social construction.  We “construct” our own identities.  People through experiences, develop their own traits.  Men and women have been socially forced into specific roles.  Since the beginning of civilization, women were to run the household while the men made the money.  Constructivists believe there are no stereotypical traits or specific roles for men or women.

            Women have fought for years to abandon their stereotypical gender roles.   In Sojourner Truth’s speech, “Ain’t I a Woman,” she describes how she was a woman and how she never got the “treatment” as women did in those days.  She describes how a man says, “that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere,” (Truth 298).  She was never helped over ditches or carried into carriages.  She did as much work as the men and did that work better than a man.  Her speech really makes us think.  Are women as helpless as some may think they are?  Do women need men to care for them or can women be just as independent as men?  In those days, women were not supposed to vote, after all, they were just women.  They had no say.  Women have been forced into certain roles.  This is why the Women Rights Movement began.                                   

            Women have fought for their rights because they wanted and continue to want to be equal to men.  Women had no rights.  They were just as ignored as minorities.  It seems that women are always in the struggle, and this struggle continues today.  This struggle includes the right for women to look the way they want to look.  Women are not only excluded from things, but are now supposed to look a certain way.  Popular representation gives a detailed description on how females are supposed to look.  “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy is a good example of this.  So many young girls and women strive for the “look.”  Simply looking at a Barbie doll has influenced females that this “look” is beautiful.  Women look at the magazines and the T.V. screens, and think that they need to look that way.  It gives females the impression that they are not so good looking.  But, who is to judge what is beautiful and what is not?  Each gender should feel comfortable in the skin they are in.  As the struggle within each gender continues in popular representation and through institutional systems, which is how popular representation operates to sell itself and its information (Prof. Kearly), it also continues in the employment world, without the realization that it exists and as some would rather ignore this inequality.

            Women have not only struggled in the fight to be “beautiful,” but also in the workplace.  Some women are overqualified for jobs, can perform the job better than a man, and still, are shut down from jobs.  This is what is known to be the cause of the “glass ceiling” which prevents women from moving up the employment ladder, or at least, above the males.  As a recent report shows in The Record and The Sacramento Bee, Jennifer Waxman-Recht was very qualified for a sales promotion at Novartis, one of the world‘s largest drug companies, however, the suit says, the promotion was not given to her but to less-qualified male employees (Krauskopf).  Waxman-Recht, as well as 12 other women, filed a suit against Novartis for sex-discrimination.  The lawsuit alleges a “systemic pattern” of gender discrimination in which women are barred out from obtaining better, higher-paying jobs that are held by men.  The lawsuit also includes allegations that Novartis failed to provide equal training opportunities for women (Krauskopf).  The women believe that they are being paid about 10 to 20 percent less than the male employees (Krauskopf).  There is obviously a gender gap.  Despite the women’s actions taken towards the Novartis Company, the fact is that Novartis has been named one of the top 100 companies for working mothers for six years by Working Mother magazine.  Although Waxman-Recht was one of  the top performers in Novartis, she still was being paid less than her male counterparts.  With the similar story as Waxman-Recht, Minel Tobertga was one of the top 50 sales representatives in the country and was not allowed to enter a management training in Novartis Corporation (Osterman).  “If I can pave the way like Rosa Parks did, I’m willing to be the person to make that change,” said Tobertga.  “It’s such a disservice what they’re doing to the many qualified women who are putting the work in.”  Women’s continuous fight to be equal to men has been almost a lost cause. “There’s one system for men and there’s one system for women,” says attorney Grant Morris in The Sacramento Bee.  “Everyone has the identical story.  Women cannot move up.”  Each gender has it’s own struggles and men also continue to fight them.  

            Women are not the only ones that have been forced into stereotypical gender roles, but men have also been put into stereotypical roles, especially through popular representations.  Through advertisement, the stereotyped imagery of women as housewives and who were told to do things by their husbands are almost disappearing.  Now, many campaigns have portrayed men in general, especially husbands and fathers, as objects of ridicule and pity.  Bud Light, Domino’s, Hummer, T-Mobile, Budweiser, J.C. Penney and Verizon are among the ads that portray men’s “stupidity” (Kane, The New York Times).  Today, it is almost impossible to watch commercials or read ads without seeing helpless men, hapless men (Kane).  In the campaigns, the men act dim-witted, love cars and women, and almost could never dominate the household chores without the help of a woman.  Many beer and pizza ads include this kind of “male-bashing” ways.  As most men see this as harmless comedic insight, many male rights activists are speaking out against these ads.  “Negative imagery in advertising is part of negative imagery in popular culture in general,” Dr. Nathanson says to The New York Times.  “If you add up the way men are presented in popular culture, then it is a problem because the message is that that’s what men are.”  Dr.  Nathanson also adds that there are the longer term effects.  He says, “How do boys form a healthy identity if they are constantly exposed to anti-male stereotypes.”   Popular representation continues to add the stereotypical ways of men and the stereotypical jobs and positions that men hold.

Men have worked in ‘men‘s jobs” from the beginning of time. “The Men We Carry in Our Minds” is a essay by Scott Russell Sanders.  He describes to us how men, like his father and other men in his town, were in the workplace while the women were doing the household work.  Sanders describes to us that working conditions were terrible.  “The nails of their hands were black and split, the hands tattooed with scars,” (Sanders 315).  The men got sick and at the end of the day their body’s ached.  He wonders why women would want to work.  “But when the pay stopped coming in they were not the ones who had failed…They went to see neighbors, to shop in town, to run errands at school, at the library, at the church,” (Sanders 317).  Growing up, Sanders saw how women’s work was much easier than the work of a man.  “It was not my fate to become a woman, so it was easier for me to see the grace,” (Sanders 317).  In this quote, Sanders says it was not his “fate” to be a woman; in other words, his “role” as a man is much different than a “role” of a woman.  “But if I had been asked as a boy, to choose between tending a baby and tending a machine, I think I would’ve chosen the baby,” ( Sanders 317).  So, maybe males would rather do the housework than go out into the workplace.  Again, each gender is forced into these roles.

It is clear that males are also forced into certain roles.  As young boys, they become used to dressing up in blue clothing and playing sports.  They are taught that to be  “manly” they must enjoy particular things.  To be a man, they must take care of their families and “bring home the bacon.”  A lot of pressure is put on men.  If they fail to fulfill these “roles,” they are looked down upon.  It is a man’s job to run things, because it is a “man’s world.”

            Constructivism is a belief that many would agree with. Our traits are influenced by our surroundings, no matter the gender of a person.  Who we are and what traits we possess are not primarily defined at birth; as essentialists believe.  “Boys Don’t Cry,” a motion picture starring Hilary Swank, proved the essentialists view as being untrue.  In the movie (based on a true story), Brandon Teena (born Teena Brandon) was a “born-girl” who possessed “roles” and the “attitudes” of a male.  She was born a girl, but had all the characteristics that a boy is supposed to have and psychologically believed she was male.  This “girl” lived two lives.  Teena Brandon was a person that lived in a world where she was not accepted, while Brandon Teena was a fun-loving male who swept girls off their feet.  Unfortunately, Brandon Teena was raped and murdered by two young men, which revealed the true life of Brandon Teena.  This movie brought to life the reality of a person who pulled off living two, completely opposite identities.  This person became someone different than what they were born and were supposed to be.

            Being born one sex and taking the life and roles of the other has been a debatable topic.  Transgendered people do exist, no matter how one may view and feel about it.  San Francisco alone, which has the largest transgender population, has about 16,000, including about 8,000 transsexuals according to the city’s Human Rights Commission (Minton).  “Transgender” is what is to be an appropriate word for those who cross the gender boundaries, which include transvestites and transsexuals. They have existed throughout history.  Transgenders are those who challenge the boundaries of sex and gender and may do this through surgery or even with hormones (Gebroe).  The more recent definition to describe transgender is those “whose gender expression is considered inappropriate for (their) sex (Gebroe).  Once again, what is appropriate and what is inappropriate for each sex?  Leslie Feinberg writes about her transgender experiences in which she was born a girl but always felt as if she were a boy.  She says, “I learned very early on that boys were expected to wear ‘men’s’ clothes, and girls were not.  When a man put on women’s clothing, it was considered a crude joke.  By the time my family got a television, I cringed as my folks guffawed when ‘Uncle Meltie’ Berle donned a dress.  It hit too close to home.  I longed to wear the boy’s clothing I saw in the Sears catalog (Gebroe).”  Feinberg also mentions Joan of Arc who was burned at the stake because, not the cross-dressing, but her “cross gendered expression as a whole” (Gebroe).  Violence has stirred because of the transgender issue many years ago and as well as today.  Tony Green, a transgender woman was killed (Marech) because she was not taking the roles that others had given her.  This is just one of the many anti-transgender bias cases.  If a person feels they are not given the roles and life that they feel was not meant for them, then that should be their decision to take the roles of another sex, even if  society or popular representation does not approve of it.     

             It is not to be believed that if you are a female or male, you have certain traits.  Each gender has traits other than the ones they are supposedly born with. There are many females that do not like pink and would rather play football than do their nails.  Through childhood development, our gender identity is constructed with the social pressures we are exposed to.  There are “tomboys” out there.  For instance, girls that grow up with guys may be “tomboyish.”  There are men that care for the children while the woman works.  Although it may be rare, it does happen.  Our gender identity is influenced by our surroundings, not from nature.

            Men and women make up our society.  Each gender should be able to do certain roles without being categorized in a group.  We should not be forced into roles.  Stereotypical traits are nonexistent.  Women are not “born” into certain roles and men are not either.  Our identities are formed and influenced through experiences and social and cultural influence.  Being a female does not necessarily mean that a woman is naturally a certain way, and being a male does not necessarily mean that a man is naturally  a certain way, either.  There are a lot of “feminine guys” that do not do “guy stuff,” like playing football, and there are also a lot of “masculine women” that rather do the “guy stuff.”  The way they act or what they do is what they were influenced by as they were going through childhood development, like growing up with all guys or growing up with a single mother.  For example, if a girl was to grow up with all guys, she is more than likely to become a “tomboy” and a boy was to grow up with just his mother he may be a bit sensitive or feminine.  Essentialists’ beliefs are wrong.  It should not just be black and white, but also shades of gray.      

Work Cited

 Gebroe, Linda.  “Love Is a Many Gendered Thing.”  San Francisco Chronicle.  23 June           1996.  p6.

Kane, Courtney.  “As Spots Belittling Women Fade Out, Men Become Inevitable         Gender             Sneer.”  The New York Times.   28 Jan.  2005.  pC2.

Krauskopf, Lewis.  “Suit Alleges Gender Bias at Novartis.”  The Record.  18 Feb.  2005.         pB01.

Marech, Rona.  “Vigil Planned for Slain Woman.”  San Francisco Chronicle.  21 Aug.  2004.  pB4.

Minton, Torri.  “Not Ready for Prime Time.”  San Francisco Chronicle.  30 Mar.     2001.           p1.

Osterman, Rachel.  “Novartis Accused of Sexual Discrimination.”  The Sacramento Bee.           18 Feb.  2005.  pNA.

Piercy, Marge.  “Barbie Doll.”  Conversations: Readings for Writings.    Ed.  Jack  Selzer.          New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, Co., 2001: 132-134.

Sanders, Scott Russell.  “The Men We Carry in Our Minds.”  Conversations: Readings             for Writings.  Ed. Jack Selzer.  New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, Co., 2001: 154- 158.

Truth, Sojourner.  “Ain’t I a Woman.”    Conversations: Readings for Writings.  Ed.       Jack Selzer.  New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, Co., 2001: 174-175.