Caitlin: I completely agree with their take on how we categorize people. We always seem to do this with people, usually on a subconscious level. In everyday activities, the way we view people is often stereotypical. It is usually based on what they are wearing or what activity is being done. I think that this statement really brings home what I view as gender. It says exactly what I think: that people categorize others based on what they look like, instead of by their personality.
Ridgeway & Correll: "We should expect that the behavioral expectations for men and women that are contained within gender beliefs also will be implicitly evoked for individuals in social relational contexts. Indeed, social cognition experiments demonstrate that sex categorization automatically activates gender stereotypes, including gender status distinctions, and primes them to affect judgements and behavior (515)."
Caitlin: I think it is interesting that this has been proven in an experiment. I agree that the way that people react to a situation is based on the behaviors that they have been raised with. It is influenced greatly by what people believe to be the social norm and what values they have learned to be considered in this context of the social norm. How we view others is greatly affected by what the media has portrayed to a person as ideal and also by what the people around us have deemed acceptable. I think that people are very often quick to judge and very rarely take a second look if it seems like someone is a stereotype that they don't necessarily like. Without that second look, one will often miss that person's unique personality or if it is an activity, they may bypass a good experience.
Works Cited:
Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations
- Gender and Society, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Aug., 2004), pp. 510-531
- Published by: Sage Publications, Inc
2 comments:
I also think that it's interesting that an experiment was performed to identify the source of the behaviors. I agree somewhat differently with the first quote. If a guy was to walk in dressed like a girl and acting like a girl, we would still know he was a guy, but we would think of him as a transgender. The same would go for a female. If she was dressed and behaved like the opposite sex, we would know she was a woman, but we would call her a dyke. However, there are those in-between people where you can't tell the gender because they look so much like both sexes at once. So, I agree a little bit with the cues on appearance, but I believe that behaviors just vary among the sexes. For example, if a woman was to play football, we would still know she was a woman (unless she took steroids).
Excellent point Caitlin. I also believe we are too quick to categorize people we see in our daily lives. Although I am constantly trying to not do such an act as categorizing someone before I get to know their true character, I find myself, as I'm sure many others do, rushing to place a person into an already established category in my head.
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