by Jing Wang
Dr.Watt mentioned in class that: “Gender is the
social construction of the biological differences between men and women.” When I sit down and think about words such as
“women,” “female,” “feminist,” “men,” “male,” “patriarchy,” and “masculine,” I feel
that yes, gender is “a learned and socially determined behavior.” Then I start to reflect on how people tend to
tag men and women in different countries and cultures. In fact, it is unfair to both men and women
when people assume how men and women should perform regardless of their
individual characteristics.
Adichie
talked about the stereotypes that people have for feminists in South Africa:
they should look sexless, single, aggressive and not feminine at all, which
reminded of people’s attitudes towards feminists in China. Feminists should be a neutral word but it is
more of a negative word in China. One of
the famous sociologists specialized in gender studies in China, who is
definitely a feminist, told me that never claim yourself as a feminist if you
want to achieve success in this research field.
People will regard you as radical and aggressive and question your work
as biased.
Another
thing that Adichie mentioned was that some of her male friends do not
understand why women still think there was gender inequality since the society
has given tremendously more rights to women in the past twenty years. I still remember the student Union election
back in high school. Our director said that this school valued gender equality
very much so we needed one girl there to show this. Many people understand gender equality in
this way. It is something that we should show and brag about. I do not care who
this woman is and what she can do. All that I care about is that she is a woman
and be there to show how much I value gender equality. I am not denying that it has been great
progress since the time when women could not vote back in the early 20th
century. But what I am saying is that it is far from enough. This so-called equality has tricked us and
blinded us with ignorance and indifference.
All these stereotypes and tags are unfair to both
women and men. I question why men must
be masculine, what is the whole point of this since we are not cavemen and will
not starve to death if men did not go hunting.
And I do believe that there should be some cavemen who loved and were
better at caring for babies and sewing while they were forced out to hunt. Just like how people talked about “male
nurses” in China. And to be honest, I doubted their ability to be nurses as
well because I have been taught and seen a lot how women are born
caregivers. But it turned out they can
be great nurses not only in ICU and OR, but also in neonatal department. I was wondering how many good male nurses we
have missed because of the stereotypes and to generalize it, how many good
career women we have missed in traditionally men-dominated fields. Almost all
of us tend to assume what women and men should do and be like to different extents. Just to keep in mind, even baby steps from
thinking in this way will take us to a better world.
