Gender Bender Soc 101 PDF

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Willow Anderson Sharon Patterson Gender Bender October 22, 2018 Gender Bender For my “Gender Bender” project, I decided to break the social norms that surround women and their expected mannerisms. Most people expect women (and men) to act in very specific ways that portray proper, gender normative (ladylike) manners. I’ve been following these social norms my whole life without even realizing it. While looking around one of my classrooms last Wednesday I noticed that men and women carry themselves and sit very differently. Men tend to sit with a power stance that many people call the “man spread.” This is when a man sits with his legs parted and takes up more space than needed. Girls tend to sit with their legs crossed taking up very little space. I decided to sit with a man spread in social settings so I could observe people’s reactions to a woman breaking I started sitting with a man spread in my Wednesday and Friday classes to see the reactions. I chose these classes because they are very large classes. My Music 100 class is a huge lecture hall and people are crammed into the tiny seats which are very restricting. People also have a very hard time getting to their seats since everything is so tight, I noticed that I’m always the person that moves to let people by or I’ll put my feet up on the seat to make it easier for others to get to their seats. Once I stopped doing this and sat with my legs parted I started to get tons of glares and people got very uncomfortable when trying to get past me. Once the class started, I looked around the room and noticed that about 50-60% of the men were sitting with their legs parted and they were lounging in their seats and no one seemed to take any notice of it.

When I sat like this I got a lot of uncomfortable and rude looks from people. I got the same reaction in my other class. While I was doing this experiment, I found myself feeling very guilty and uncomfortable. I’m used to getting out of people’s way since I was taught that this was the proper and courteous thing to do. Structural functional theorists view society as a system of interlocking parts that all work together to keep the system operating. These theorists value social norms for their functional purpose that they provide society. Social norms reinforce many pre-existing stereotypes for both gender and race divisions. This plays into the social concept of hegemony, where one party is constantly getting favored by society causing the less fortunate citizens to accept their places in society and take one the role of serving the privileged members of society. Structural functionalists believe that society shapes and constraints individuals in the social system, forcing them into accepting the role life has handed them. My experiment would be viewed as deviant from a structural functionalist theorists perspective since it revolves around breaking social norms. While my experiment was very simple and somewhat discrete it would still raise the eyebrows of a structural functional theorist. By breaking the small social norms surrounding women's manners, structural functionalists would view this as the first stepping stone to social change. As women begin to reject their social obligations more and more, it raises the question of how this will inevitably change our social system. If the role of women changes then it will affect many other social systems. This is why breaking these social norms is viewed as deviance from this sociological perspective. By sparking social change in one area of society it causes a ripple of rebellion that could change many different aspect of our social system. Critical theorists believe that social change stems from the reinforced inequalities that create tension and division between the classes. My experiment would still be viewed as deviant

from this sociological perspective, since the breaking of social norms is expected to spark social change. In my experiment the inequality that sparks social change is seen in the constant conflict between men and women's expected behavior. While men aren’t criticized or scornfully rejected for sitting in a comfortable and open manner, women are seen as improper and deviant if they sit in this same position that men use consistently. Critical theorists explain social conflict by further understanding the underlying inequalities within the population. According to these theorists, gender bending is a form of deviance because it sparks social change and challenges the general ways individuals are initially perceived. In this sociological perspective deviance is viewed as the key to social change, without the act of breaking these social norms, many social structures wouldn’t change due to our stagnant society. Conflict theorist view social deviance as a beneficial way for society to achieve change. Boundaries must be broken to create equality. Symbolic interactionist theorists say that people interact in a variety of settings using symbolic communications. An example of a symbolic communication in my experiment would be me sitting in an “improper” and “unladylike” manner. These actions send a much different message than the way that I usually sit does. It stands out if a woman sits with her legs spread apart, taking up as much room as possible than it does if a man sits this way. From a symbolic interactionist theorists perspective, they would say that society created this inequality by interpreting men and womens mannerisms differently. While performing this experiment I found myself interpreting other people’s reactions to my mannerisms as negative. Most of the people expected me to move or get out of the way when they were trying to walk past me and as soon as I didn’t they glared at me. This made me very uncomfortable since I’m very used to being polite and out of people’s way. The reaction I got from my peers ensured that I won’t be sitting in a manly fashion very often. There were tons of unspoken social norms that I broke by sitting this

way. Looking at it from a symbolic interactionism perspective, I found that the public interpreted the way I was sitting as rude, disrespectful, and unladylike. I also interpreted the public's reactions as uncomfortable, shocked, and cold. Due to the uncomfortable social strain this caused, I will not be engaging in this deviant act again. While completing this project, I found that the reactions to my gender bender were somewhat shocking. I was expecting people to move on and not pay much attention, however people openly started and glared if I was in their way at all. These reactions were shocking due to the way the men are treated compared to the women. The men that were sitting in the same ridiculous manner as me didn’t get any backlash from society, in fact people went around them without taking a second glance. It always shocks me when I learn how much discrimination and separation still lives throughout America. People don’t enjoy having social norms broken, and there are consequences that people face when they don’t follow the norms of society. After seeing how much deviance impacts the social systems, I realized that it was normal for me to be very uncomfortable throughout this whole experiment. Deviance is one of the main factors that contributes to social change, so even small examples of it (like changing the way you sit) make individuals uneasy and unsure how to react. I was way out of my comfort zone when performing this experiment, and that was due to people’s judgemental reactions that made me feel as though I needed to follow these social norms. This gender bender has taught me that I shouldn’t fear breaking the social forces that are expected from women. Without deviance change is impossible, and without change improvement is unattainable....