Gender roles and stereotypes influence the formation of society and each individual, especially in youth. High school turns out to be the space where stereotypes about normal appearance and behavior are a requirement for students. Young people are identified in society through the identification marks of subcultures and gender roles. It is at this time that young people are trying to understand themselves, their aspirations, their sexual representation, and their preferences. The documentary film “Straightlaced” tells about those people who are not able to fit into the required framework of appearance and behavior (New Day Films, 2017). The film tells numerous stories of people with gender dysphoria, that is, those who are dissatisfied with their gender and therefore create a unique gender model that matches their personality. They are faced with misunderstandings from their peers, inconvenience before the administration, and finally, even disappointment, annoyance, and anger from their parents. All this happens because modern culture was formed as patriarchal and, accordingly, requires the separation of gender roles. At the moment, modern culture, as expressed in social media and advertising, is vague about gender roles. On the one hand, the culture of tolerance and acceptance implies that each person is free to look the way he wants to embody himself, and what he wants to express with his appearance. On the other hand, social media and marketing agencies are interested in acquiring capital and therefore see no shame in playing along with traditional gender stereotypes. Concepts of masculinity or femininity can make people want to take communion because it will make them feel comforted by being part of society. Thus, some people are more comfortable fitting into the established gender model, while others tend to abandon this in search of their real selves. The problem of women’s inequality throughout the history of the development of society has been quite disturbing and demonstrates the entrenched order of patriarchal ideology. Gender division occurs according to the roles prescribed by society for women about men. In the two genders, completely different qualities are valued to combine them into an effective social unit. However, the union of a man and a woman according to gender roles only levels the role of a woman and deprives her of independence. A woman is perceived as the keeper of the hearth, who must keep the man’s house in order and take care of the man while he does real things, changing the world around him. The world’s order of the female gender role is connected with the need to be an addition to a man, his support, but not an independent human unit. Gender segregation usually works the same way in workers’ organizations. Joan Acker (1990, p. 139) points out that there is an offensive inconsistency between the asexual model of the universal worker and the reality in which women fill a subordinate role. One might conclude that gender neutrality and abstraction in offices are only a cover to maintain the basis of gender injustice. Those few women in high positions at work behave like men in social aspects. This indicates a systemic unsettledness in the institution of interaction between men and women, where the female role is automatically associated with a lower role relative to the male. Bureaucracy and office space thus look like muscle-centric formations whose default tasks include control and oppression of the opposite sex.
Works Cited
Acker, Joan. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations”, Gender & Society, 1990, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 139-158.
“Straightlaced — How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up (New Trailer).” YouTube, uploaded by New Day Films, 2017.