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Joey Nguyen
Professor Ditch
English 113A
30 September 2015
Gender Roles of Society
In Becoming Members of Society by Aaron Devor and Rethinking Womens Biology
by Ruth Hubbard, writers share the same concept of gender roles, which is that society enforces
its own ideals into our lives. The author of these two readings, Devor and Hubbard, address the
same idea because gender is something that everybody is familiar with and can be found
anywhere in our everyday life. In his article, Devor explained that society demands people to
perform their gender roles. Moreover, Hubbard also shows that society tries to make us think that
womens biology is a scientific construction. As a result, gender roles create a big impact on
influencing the way people thinks about others in our society; this causes them to conform to
specific gender performances, such as masculine and feminine.
Gender roles are the means of becoming a member of society. To become a member of
society, one must find where he or she belongs. Gender identities act as cognitive filtering
devices guiding people to attend to and learn gender role behaviors appropriate to their statuses
(Devor 35). As we move through our lives, society demands different gender performances
from us and rewards, tolerates, or punishes us differently for conformity to, or digression from,
social norms (Devor 35). For instance, in my personal experiences, I have seen guys who were
noticeably more feminine than others, and they get treated differently by the majority, such as

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getting weird looks, getting laugh at, etc. Therefore, the only option for people to do is to
conform to what society wants them to.
The majority of people in society believes that womens biology is a scientific construct.
However in Rethinking Womens Biology, Ruth Hubbard explains that womens biology is a
social construct, and a political concept (Hubbard 46). Society really tries to deceive everyone
to see the truth behind womens biology: when women tried to get access to higher education,
scientists initially claimed we could not be educated because our brains are too small (Hubbard
46). This is obviously not true, but since it was claimed by scientists, people who research
and explore facts, everyone automatically thinks it is true. Hubbard also informs us that women
and men are physically not very different (Hubbard 47). Most of the times, a lot of women are
just as tall as men, or sometimes taller than men. The idea that men are taller is just a concept
that was made up by society because it is considered preferable for the man to be taller than the
woman (Hubbard 47), which is based on the view of men are supposed to be masculine, which
defines to be dominant, big and strong. Moreover, height is also social variable. Even though
men are usually taller than women because their puberty process ends a later date. Yet, women
can also grow to become taller through exercise. For example, female swimming champions,
who because of their intense, early training, tend to begin to menstruate later than most girls,
tend also to be taller than average (Hubbard 48), but women dont always get to sports because
society encourages them not to because sport is a masculine activity, which appropriate for men.
As a result, there is no ideological investment in whether women and men exhibit biological
differences. We cannot know whether such biological differences exist because biology and
society (or environment) are interdependent and cannot be sorted out (Hubbard 50).

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For one to perform his or her gender role, he or she has to show the gender characteristics
of masculinity and femininity. Masculine characteristics are used to identify individuals as males.
Individuals in this category tend to demonstrate traits of dominance and aggressiveness. For
instance, "persons who communicate an air of authority by standing erect and moving forcefully
tend to appear more masculine (Devor 42-43). On the other hand, females are exclusively
identified with feminine characteristics. People who keep their arms closer to their bodies, their
legs closer together, and their torsos and heads less vertical are considered to be feminine
(Devor 41). In this case, females are perceived as submissive based on their body postures. These
are the social definitions used to identify persons by gender (Devor 38). People use
femininity or masculinity to claim and communicate their membership in their assigned or chose,
sex or gender (Devor 38).
People recognize our sex or gender more on the basis of gender performance
characteristics than the basic of sex characteristics, which are usually largely covered by clothing
in daily life (Deovor 38). For example, if a person wears a shirt, pants or suit, that person will
be identified as a male. And to look feminine, individuals will wear skirts and dresses, and they
will be identified as females. However, in some cases, there are people who wear clothing that
are intended for the opposite gender. A common example would be females wearing masculine
clothing; but the strange part about this is that it is more acceptable for them to do so than males
wearing feminine clothing. In this case, females are usually called tomboys, which is not
necessarily an insult or a negative thing. Yet, according to the movie Tough Guise, males are
called a wuss, a wimp or even a faggot when they try to be feminine, which are clearly insults. It
seems like our society wants to maintain the image of males by making sure that they are doing
what they are supposed to, being masculine.

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Nevertheless in the time that were living now, more people are starting to disassociate
from the idea of being a member of society. For that reason, a new society is created; this allows
non-conformists to have a place where they can stay at. And for those who are still apart of the
traditional society, will be punished if they ever offend or disapprove the idea of being a nonconformist. For example, there was time that I was at mall, and I saw a man who was criticized
for buying a pink shirt by another person because in this persons perspective, pink was a color
that represented femininity. Nonetheless, some other people in the store defended the man and
started bashing on the other person.
In the traditional society, there are only certain activities that traditionally females play
in, and males that participate in. And I believe that these stereotypes needs to be diminish. If a
male decides to become a caretaker, he should be allowed to that. If a female wants to do
masculine activities, she should be to have the privilege to participate them. Luckily, we are
living in a very good time right now, where people are eliminating the concepts of activities, job
positions and titles that were originally gender based. If an individual enjoy doing something, he
or she should be allowed to do without any restrictions.

Works Cited
Devor, Aaron. Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender. Boston: A
Bedford Spotlight Reader, 2014. Print
Hubbard, Ruth. Rethinking Womens Biology. Boston: A Bedford Spotlight Reader, 2014. Print
"Tough Guise: Violence, Media & the Crisis in Masculinity." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 08
Dec. 2015.