Tolbert 1

DeShon Tolbert
Professor Jon Beadle
English 115
8 December 2016
Society Takes Over Gender
Gender usually gets paired up with sex because they go hand and hand with each other in
conversations but do have their differences. Gender roles and behaviors are big when growing up
because it will determine what society will think of those that act differently from what society
wants them to. The common idea that was seen in From Women, Men, and Society and No
Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents Responses to Childrens Gender
Nonconformity when it was read that society shapes our gender roles and behaviors because
society wants us to behave like a female or male, to see how active children are and what toys
the children are supposed to be playing with , and want parents to raise their daughters and sons
how society wants them to be raised. It applies to me from my parents raising me like a boy
according to societys standards.
Society basically controls what females and males do in their favor to keep the culture of
what society is. In an article called, From Women, Men, and Society, Claire Renzetti and
Daniel Curran state, That parents associate their childs sex with specific personality and
behavioral traits is further evidenced by the effort they put into ensuring that others identify their
childs sex correctly (Renzetti and Curran 77). What exactly Renzetti and Curran are saying is
that parents have to make their kids associate with the correct personality and traits specifically
for a boy or a girl. An example of how parents make sure their child is identified correctly is

Tolbert 2

using different colored beanies when they are born. Boys would get blue ones and girls would
get pink ones, that would indicate what sex the child is. Renzetti and Curran also states,
Although there are few physiological or behavioral differences between males and females at
birth, parents tend to respond differently to newborns on the basis of sex (Renzetti and Curran
76-77). The meaning by this is that boys usually get less attention than girls do by their parents
because the parents knew once they were born that the daughter would get most of the attention
then the son would. The authors purpose was to show that by the way you act or behave when
you are a child would be based on past ideas from old generations that society enforces. Society
puts us in these positions because they want us to follow their guidelines as a society so others
dont look at society differently.
Society want parents to experiment their children to see how active their children are and
the toys that the children are supposed to play with. In the article by Renzetti and Curran stated,
Girls in frilly dresses, for example, are discouraged from rough-and-tumble play Boys are
expected to be more active than girls (Renzetti and Curran 77). They talked about how boys
should be really active and should be getting dirty while girls should be staying clean usually at
all times. The authors mentioned this to tell their audience that boys are never clean at all
because males tend to be the ones doing all the messy and dirty work while females clean around
the house and try not to get themselves dirty to keep society happy. In the article called, No
Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents Responses to Childrens Gender
Nonconformity by Emily Kane, A heterosexual mother that lets her son play with dolls from the
article states, He had been curious about dolls and I said, you know, usually girls play with
dolls, but its okay for you to do it too (Kane 92). She is basically talking about how girls are

Tolbert 3

learning to nurture with the dolls they play with and she also found out that some boys were
playing with those dolls too. In society, this is what they want girls to be doing when they are
little but they will not accept boys to be doing that because they think the boys who are playing
with those girl toys might be turning homosexual. The purpose of Kanes article was to show
that boy and girls are shaped by the toys they play with and how they play with them. Toys
usually set roles for children depending on what kind of toy it is. For example, girls play with
dolls because they are going to be future mothers while boys play with trucks and action figures
for the reasoning that boys tend to be really active.The toys that girls tend to play with puts them
in roles where they will see themselves in the future like being stay home mother or caring for
their children. The toys that boys usually play with put them in certain roles that they will be
doing as a career like being a professional athlete or being in the military. Society wants males
to be playing with toys that will make them very masculine because they are males and vice
versa for females because that is how society want it to be.
Society shapes our gender roles and gender behaviors because they want parents to raise
their daughters and sons like how society pictures it. In the article by Renzetti and Curran, they
mention that parents tend to play with their sons roughly and have that tight father & daughter
bond. The authors talked about this because society portrays males as the getting down and dirty
type so that is how they want parents sons to be raised like. While females get that close
connection with their parents because once they grow up and have their family of their own then
they can care for them. In the Renzetti and Curran article they state, Both fathers and mothers
are more likely to believe- and to act on the belief-that daughters need more help than sons
(Renzetti and Curran 79). Renzetti and Curran talked about how parents usually care for their

Tolbert 4

daughters more than their sons because sons are expected to be independent while the daughters
are dependent. Boys are being trained to be independent and girls are being trained to be
dependent by their parents. That is how society looks at those males and females when they grow
up and they find it odd that females nowadays are more independent now because before they
always needed someone to rely on. What I found in Kanes article was that she talked about how
some parents should not let their sons play with dolls or do anything caring because that is not
the correct way to raise a son and that is only way to raise your daughters is by using dolls and
kitchen sets. Society wants parents to make their sons play with toys that are adventurous and
dangerous because those boys we be the brave man that society wants them to be.
My parents raised me like a boy should by buying me all the action figure toys that made
be look like a boy and buy anything that was red or blue . They made be stay away from
anything that looked pink or girly to them because that was how my father was raised. They got
me into football at a really young age and I would be really dirty when I came into the house
after playing. This is how society would view a boy being raised and they would not have it any
other way because for generations that is how it was growing up as a boy. They want boys
getting dirty and going outside to be really active. Also they viewed boys only wearing those
primary colors like red or blue. Now that I have grown up that I could not see myself playing
with dolls or having kitchen sets because it is built in my head that boys do not do those types of
things. Also I would not look at myself the same if people knew I did those things because
society would think that I might be gay. That is how I related my growing up experience to how
society would look at it.

Tolbert 5

Society enforces the gender roles and behaviors that we go through when we grow up
because they do not want those people that are non-conformists ruining what has been going on
for generations. Society has changed recently over the years and now some things are okay for
boys and girls to do. Girls can basically play any sport a boy can and boys can play with dolls if
they really want to without anybody questioning them. Gender has changed drastically because
we are able to do things that would be unheard of years ago. The articles from Composing
Gender have shown that gender is moving in a direction where we worry about what kinds of
things that females and males do. Society is worried about those that do not conform society
think and it is spreading through this generation that we are in today. This new look that we have
on gender is changing the way we live.

Tolbert 6

Work Cited
Kane, Emily. No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents Responses to
Childrens Gender Nonconformity. Composing Gender, Edited by Rachel Groner and
John F. OHara, 1st Edition, Bedford/St. Martins, 2014, PP. 91-97.
Renzetti, Claire and Curran, Daniel. From Women, Men, and Society. Composing Gender,
Edited by Rachel Groner and John F. OHara, 1st Edition, Bedford/St. Martins, 2014, PP.
76-84.