Becoming Gendered In The Early Years Summary

This chapter is about becoming gendered in the early years. It mainly discusses to themes that are growing up masculine and growing up feminine. I believe these themes were well chosen and I don’t think there is an addition to it considering that although today, we have more than masculine and feminine characteristics, they remain the most general ones, the standards to society, and the categories where most people are raised to classify themselves in during their early years. This part of the book discusses these themes more deeply showing us how college students view becoming gendered.
When asked what it meant to grow up masculine, several responses were shared. These responses were don’t be female meaning to not embody feminine traits and
The first one was that appearance still counts. People felt like women are still judged on the way they look. Another theme was that women are expected to be sensitive, caring, and helpful. In addition to that, there was a theme that men and women disagreed on which is negative treatment. Women believed that there was a lot of mistreatment against women such as beating and sexual assaults and objectification that can be seen in many popular video games. On the other hand, men believed that women received better treatment than men and a main example or argument that was given to that was the free drinks and “ladies nights”. Personally, I believe that both points are valid and real but the free drinks that women get are from the men themselves and the ladies night are in my belief, a sort of commercialization of women because they attract more men –customers-. Another theme that was given was that they were expected to be “superwoman” (159) which means that they are expected to do it all. The final theme is that there is no single meaning to be being feminine anymore. Women can be all they want but they will always meet approval, disapproval, criticism and all kinds of opinions from