Gender Roles In The Sword In The Stone

What is gender, and can we live without it? In theory, gender roles are great: they are, essentially, a guideline for both males and females to achieve certain evolutionary goals. Every living thing that reproduces sexually uses gender roles. In a particular scene from Disney’s animated classic,“The Sword in the Stone”, young Arthur is transformed into a squirrel and experiences a lesson in love and eternal devotion, and gravity, when a young female squirrel takes the poor boy for a real squirrel and proceeds to pursue him. This is a work of fiction, of course, but the behavior portrayed in this movie is quite faithful to the mating rituals of real squirrels. Having certain traits about you, and knowing how to work those traits, is a good thing
Judith Butler, author of “Gender Trouble”, postulates that the gender roles we know today are not core realities and are constructed by society. Essentially, if these roles are abandoned by everyone in a society, gender as we know it will no longer exist. Using two existing theories, Gender Essentialism and Social Constructivism, she proposes that while children are born with certain predetermined characteristics, society shapes a good amount of a person’s gender identity. Gender, in her opinion, is performative, which means that it is different from other roles in the fact that gender is not an identity that people take off at the end of the day; it is their identity, influencing every part of their life. Pretty deep
Like I said previously, gender roles are a society’s way of outlining a very efficient way to attract a mate and produce children, a key evolutionary need. As important as this is, gender roles do not leave much room for variance and can actually hinder someone from finding a potential mate. Humans attracted to those who show signs of health, and our society has historically had very exclusive ideals for both males and females, concerning what the healthy body looks like. I believe society has hurt itself by adopting such extreme standards, by people trying to attain this goal, and by people rebelling against it. Abolishing the idea that someone, either man or woman, has to have the responsibility of raising the children and teaching them values is detrimental, but in today’s world, it is difficult to survive on one income with more than one child. The point of assigning males and females with different roles is to ensure that they have an evolutionarily successful life, and even though the world is leagues different from how it was when the human race was young, we still have a lot the same needs as we did back