Sunday, July 24, 2011

Socialization in to Gender?


Hello, this is a paper I turned in earlier this week.  I hope you appreciate it.
This assignment is in response to "Essentials of sociology: a down to earth approach: by James Henslin, the porting of it is called "Socialization into Gender".

Week 3 Discussion 2 Important Idea of “Socialization into Gender”
Important Idea of “Socialization into Gender”
Let me start by saying I don't like the title “Socialization into Gender”, I don't like the main idea of gender messages by stereotyping gender roles. You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it.
This is from an on-line definition:
Definition of SOCIALIZATION:
: the process by which a human being beginning at infancy acquires the habits, beliefs, and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training for adult status
Another on-line definition:

Definition of SOCIALIZE

transitive verb

1: to make social; especially : to fit or train for a social environment
2a : to constitute on a socialistic basis <socialize industry> b : to adapt to social needs or uses
3: to organize group participation in <socialize a recitation>
intransitive verb: to participate actively in a social group


The first definition is a medical definition from Merriam Webster medical section, that a problem for me. The second definition is a dictionary definition, and it is okay, but with understanding that socialization is a trained skill as defined. So who trains?
The first paragraph in the article “Socialization into Gender” by James M. Henslin is a problem to me that it states “To channel our behavior1, society also uses gender socialization. By expecting different attitudes and behaviors from us because we are male or female, the human group nudges boys and girls in separate directions in life.”
Let me put it in a nut shell in my own words. A boy is trained by his farther and mother growing to play cowboy and indians, with his tonka truck, and get dirty. A girl is trained by her farther and mother to play barbie dolls and with her doll house and have tea parties, and stay clean.
The second paragraph bring the question up of how we learn gender messages and the influence in a persons life of gender messages. It introduces the family and mass media were the rest of the article talks about gender massages influences.
This article reminds me of Amy Chua in how they put bad media influence on her in raising her children. To me, Amy Chua, in shielding her children is not cause of week children rather giving them time to explore their human qualities that world will soon take away from them at school, work, and general contact in the world. The world will gnaw at us all soon enough, so why rush it! It is the parents job to build the communication and socialization skills of our child, not the worlds. The balance of socialization is yielded by the lack of these unbuilt skills replaced by rebellious contact in the world. That we released our children to early in to the world, with out proper eduction and monitoring of their activities while they growing up. We only heard about bombs in other countries, then government buildings, then colleges, and now high schools are not safe because we don't properly educate our children on the skills of communication and socialization, keep in mind these skill do dialog on behavior that is to say internal and external stimuli, our feelings, our thought process, our reaction to, in the circumstances.
The way the industry of medical society want you and I to believe or understand something is their problem. You raise your children with knowledge and understanding from information you know the best you can. Yes we have influences on our children because they love us, and we managed to keep then alive loving and freely because we love them too. With effort and striving we can become better than the sum of the ones who raised us. The excuses of setback is not a sign to stop, rather an opportunity to learn something. "Every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." from Thomas Edison; "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." from Albert Einstein. The same holds true to us raising our children and the socialization influences on them and us.
In closing I can choose to react negatively or positively to a problem. I have the power of choice, I can choose to work in an industry as a school teach, a nurse traditionally dominated by females. A car mechanic, a corporate boss traditionally dominated by males. It is my choose, not the worlds to influence me because I am a man or woman. You too have the power of choose to be and not influenced by the world because you are born a boy or girl, you can also break the lines you may not like, that you were raised with, keep what you like and believe in, love yourself for you, not in what the world loves you for. Believe in yourself.

1 Definition of BEHAVIOR http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/behavior

1a : the manner of conducting oneself b : anything that an organism does involving action and response to stimulation c : the response of an individual, group, or species to its environment
2: the way in which someone behaves; also : an instance of such behavior
3: the way in which something functions or operates

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