Gender Socialization Blog Post

How is gender socially constructed and what effect does this have?
Gender does not exist innately in individuals. It is a learned behavior that is taught through the agents of socialization: media, family, peers, education, religion, etc. These people and groups raise a child and teach them proper social behavior. Without this education, humans can appear oddly inhumane, as seen in Genie's case. Socialization helped her develop. Unfortunately these agents are teaching an unnecessary, oppressive, social paradigm: gender.
As discussed by West and Zimmerman, gender is an active choice in every mannerism. These social patterns exist in every expression of self, including minor details like speech patterns and appearance and major details like activities and careers. The crucial element of the definition of "Doing Gender" is the risk of judgement for fitting one's gender role at any time. These roles are enforced by social accountability. Individuals who defy these norms will be rejected.
The problem with society doing gender is that it is inherently oppressive to women. Missrepresentation demonstrated the display of women as predominantly sex objects. The media socializes young women to view their bodies and its status as a sexual object as their value. Men are represented as the objectifies, and women the objects.  As seen in Fiji's increase in eating disorders from the integration of technology, strict beauty standards and strong focus on women's beauty as their value damage women and girls livelihoods. Media is one of the most powerful forces of socialization because it removes the I, and only appeals to the Me. The viewer is only able to passively absorb social interactions and the lessons about the values of different symbols in those interactions. This power is extremely undeserved by the media because of their willingness to misrepresent and unfairly socialize individuals with prejudices.
Women were socialized to be sex objects because the agents of socialization wanted them to be usable to attain masculinity. Kimmel describes women as "currency" in male interactions. This social interaction approach uses women as a symbol for power. Masculinity is defined by Kimmel is a constant search to earn manhood from male peers, which causes a constant push down on others to validate one's own ranking. It is the result of socializing males to highly value the looking glass self, so much so that their is a constant fear of embarrassment.
This objectification of women for the sake of masculinity disenfranchises each woman's autonomy and is a result of the inherent dominance in masculinity. That is why the patriarchy (the social system created to perpetuate the power of white, straight, and cisgendered males) disenfranchised any possible threat to themselves: racial and ethnic groups and women as discussed by Kimmel. Masculinity is a force a dominance. In socialization of gender, power is a prevailing theme. I have learned in this unit that gender is the result of teaching one segment of the population that they are powerful and another segment that they are not. Subsequently those in power will perpetuate their own power as seen in the social conflict approach.

How has learning about socialization and gender effected the development of your own sociological imagination?
I can recognize that the way I formulate my looking glass self is through the gender that I was socialized. In myself, I notice more female patterns of thought: trying to appear kind, assuming guilt, and other thoughts routed in low self confidence. Someone who is male would have been socialized to formulate their looking glass self in the context of masculinity which is shown to be more confident by "The Confidence Gap." I can see how my individual narrative, in patterns of thought and behavior, was defined by the collective narrative of gender. I came out as non-binary because I saw that any femininity in me is the result of history and that I was then socialized based on this history. I didn't feel comfortable letting my biography be defined by a random circumstance that our collective history places significant value upon. To accept my gender as a result of my sex organs is to lack the sociological imagination to see the dependency of my biography on history.
Mills says that in analyzing an society in the context of the sociological imagination, one must ask "what is the meaning of any particular feature for its continuance and for its change?" Gender is a crucial feature in our society. I believe it has been continued by the dominant nature of masculinity. Gender has been enforced by men to grant them innate but undeserved power. Kimmel fundamentally described masculinity as fear of powerlessness in society. Capitalism perpetuates gender because it feeds the fear and subsequently competition and dominance. Our larger social structure perpetuates gender and therefore impact every individual narrative.

How, if at all, can problems dealing with gender stratification and gender discrimination be solved?
Gender is inherently a power structure, as illustrated in the social-conflict approach. It would not serve it's function if it did not create discrimination and stratification. For centuries, in a structural functional perspective, it served as means to divide the labor force into raising the next generation (clearly the more important duty) and doing the physical labor needed to keep society functioning. As previously discussed, the divide has highly problematic effects. Moreover there is no need for division along those lines. Females are capable of serving society to the same degree.
Gender should be dissolved to eliminate this power structure that causes women to be disenfranchised. Although structural functionalist would see "I'm glad I'm a boy, I'm glad I'm a girl," as a demonstration of the complementary nature of masculinity and femininity. But what it demonstrates is that gender roles benefit men and put women in an inferior role.
There is no gender without this divide in power. To eliminate gender discrimination and stratification, we have to eliminate gender. The fundamental differences in the sexes are not enough that they require the amount of social divide we have created for them. Target demonstrated that not every children's product needs to be for girls or for boys. These products are ultimately designed to serve humans. From a symbolic-interaction approach, one can see that without gender defining the subtleties of daily interaction, women could finally exit their deferential role. In fact, there wouldn't be any roles. People would be able to dress, speak, and act how they want to based on their own individuality instead of their gender.

Genius Hour Reflection

I liked Mr. Vinluan's comment about focusing on the Federal Reserve's role in social stratification. So I spent time researching specifically what the social stratification is: how it occurs and what it causes. The Davis-Moore thesis is based on the structural functional approach, that it creates benefits for all of society if the best people have motivation to do the most important jobs. Unfortunately this approach pretends we live in pure meritocracy, but it is more defined by long-standing institutions. The awareness of these traditional institutions requires sociological imagination. Karl Marx offers a social conflict approach to social stratification: the bourgeoisie in power and the proletariat oppressed. I read more about how the Federal Reserve was offering too low of interest rates inflated the housing bubble, and how this furthers social stratification by keeping the poor in their state.

Genius Hour Reflection

I read about the Asch experiment and Milgram experiment. They both demonstrate individuals' susceptibility to society. This is fundamental to the sociological imagination. The individual is constantly acting and reacting to society -- and vice versa. Because it has been a quarter already, I will try to write my why this happened paper in the next week or two using this research and others about the Fed's history. Unfortunately the creation of the Federal Reserve Act is rather enigmatic. Information is not readily available, so I will visit the University of Chicago Library to look for more resources.
Considering that I also care about the modern context of the Fed, I researched the Fed's current state. They hold more US debt than China. Moreover the helped build the housing bubble and were not prepared for a crash.

Genius Hour Reflection

I spend Friday reading  an article titled "Herd Thinking and Investment" from the American Economic Review on jstor. It explained the "sharing-the-blame" effect: the idea that a mistake does not reflect poorly on an individual, because many people with good reputations made the same mistake. So in making any decision, an investor must consider whether it is wise based on the stock's information and who else is doing something similar. Although this concept was explained in terms of economics, it's universal in culture. If respected individuals in any community make certain choices, others will follow their direction. It's deeply rooted in socialization; we are prone to learn form our environment. The problem with herd thinking is when it gets in the way of smart decisions, e.g. buying a stock because other, smart people are even though there is good reason to suspect it's value may plummet. This relates to my topic because it shows why individuals crashed the market beforehand, which was considered the catalyst for the Federal Reserve Act, and it shows why Americans have accepted the Federal Reserve. The smartest, most reputable individuals of the time were behind it -- including Woodrow Wilson.
While reading the article, I realized how little I knew about the functioning of the American Economic system so I also read an article to better understand the historical context of a Central Bank in the US, because I don't remember enough from APUSH.

Genius Hour Reflection

I spend last Friday working on my topic proposal:

What does the Federal Reserve demonstrate about American culture? What systems of social manipulation created and perpetuated it? How is the Fed controlling/impacting the economy and consequently individuals?

I care about this topic because it impacts all American citizens. It is an injustice of which the American public is largely unaware. By controlling the monetary supply, the Fed is able to use sociological principles to control the market and the people. The goal of this project is to answer questions these questions in an interactive, educational website.

On Friday I also researched the Panic of 1907. JP Morgan was considered the savior after that event -- by keeping the large companies open and shutting down smaller ones. He was only perpetuating monopoly. Supposedly the panic was caused by a gold shortage after a earthquake in California, but I am trying to determine if JP Morgan had any role in causing the runs on the banks. The only banks with runs were in trusts, and I believe the public was whipped into a hysteria by rumors. Panics and stock crashes are the result of herd thinking. I will spend next Friday looking to back up or disprove some of my findings by reading sociological research on herd thinking.