Society and Its Effects on Gender Roles

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Society and its Effects on Gender Roles Many people don’t know the difference between gender and sex. Sex is anatomical and biological. Gender roles are expectations of how a person should act, dress, and talk based on our sex. Gender roles are learned mainly through social interaction instead of biologically. When we are born we have very little concept of our gender and we learn “proper” behavior through society and our relationships with others. Our gender identity is constructed through interaction with the media, our parents, and our peers at school, at work and at home. How we are raised in society reflects how we act as we grow older. Our society changes our attitudes and views on life more than our biological make-up. In some cases gender roles can be altered in spite of society, were as a female inherits male behavior or a male goes outside of normality and engages in a relationship with another male rather than a female. An example of these situations maybe found in the poem The Willing Mistress by Aphra Behn and in the short story The Smells of Home by Sandip Roy. For instance, the poem “The Willing Mistress” shows a switch between the male and female gender roles. The character in this poem is represented as a powerful, forward, and decisive woman. She knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to pursue it. In this poem the “willing” mistress was an eager participant in their erotic endeavor. The reader should be able to distinguish this in the following statement “A many kisses did he give And I returned the same, Which made me willing to receive That which I did not name” (13-16). In this passage, the writer demonstrates the woman’s right to express her sexuality. The reader may notice that the woman feels totally free to do whatever she wants. Her gender is empowering to her as revealed in “His charming eyes no aid required To tell
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