Socializing Agents in Theoretical Perspectives

Biology and Gender Socialization

Humans also appear to be biologically "programmed" to respond to others in a social manner to
learn language and to interact with others in their environment.
Males and females experience different exposure to hormones prenatally, again at adolescence,
and during adulthood.

Social Learning Theory (Bandura)

Children develop sex-typed behaviors because other people reinforce activities that conform to
expectations for their sex group and do not reinforce those that do not conform.
Cognitive Developmental Theory (Jean Piaget and Laurence Kohlberg)
Children's views of appropriate gender roles. change as they grow older, reflecting their
changing cognitive development·

Gender Schemas and Cognitive Learning

Theories

Children encounter models that they believe conform to their gender schema; they may be
especially likely to model those behaviors.
Children's choices of who and what gender roles to model appear to be related to their cognitive
understandings of gender and what they believe is relevant to their own self definitions.

Peer Group Interactions and the Culture of Childhood

• Children do maintain cross-sex friendships, but they tend to occur within their homes or
neighborhoods and are often hidden from the larger peer group
•Children's activities may be seen as involving a "culture of childhood," a pattern of games,
activities, roles, norms, and even jokes and folklore that are passed on from generation to
generation of children with little, if any, active involvement by adults.

Psychoanalytic Theory
Oedipus complex and its resolution to differences in male and female development
• As children grow older, their role relationships expand and they gradually develop more
independence, loosening this first tie with the mother. At the same time, they become more
aware of their identity as a boy or a girl and begin to learn roles associated with this gender
identity
Teachers, Schools, and Gender Socialization
• Unintentional gender bias occurs in virtually all educational settings.
• Teachers devote more time, effort, and attention to boys than to girls
• Self-esteem of girls and boys
Many teachers use sex segregation as a way to organize students, resulting in unnecessary
competition between females and males

Media and Gender Socialization

·
Individuals, like actors in a stage production, occupy particular roles.
The effect of television
programs and
advertisements upon the gender role expectations of both women and men has received
considerable attention.

Media and Gender Socialization

Popularity and accessibility of video games continues to increase, the question of the effect of
the portrayal of women in video games upon gender role expectations as well as upon the use
of violence arises.

Workplace and Gender Socialization

• Concentration of women and men in different occupations, jobs, and places of work
• Men still dominate the management ranks and that workplace segregation, based on both
gender and race, is increasing in many employment sectors.

Instinct and Culture

● System of Meanings
- These tell humans what is good or evil, right or wrong.
● Instinct in Religion
- Procreation drives people; Chastity for the member of religious order; number of
children for happiness or survival

● Culture
- The system of symbols that allow people to give meaning to experience

● Interpretation of Meaning
- Meaning of stimulus and the kind of response appropriate to it depends on its
system of understanding
Instinct and Culture
• Culture provides people with systems of shortcuts for meaningful interpretation and responses.
• Example: Women raise children; men should set time to drink with friends

Cultures Can Change

• Culture is superior to instinct because it is malleable or adaptable.
• Changes when its framing of reality is no longer useful (e.g., BPO industry, self-promotion in
social media)
• Unjust things that we do is not the act of out free will. • Microaggression - acts that send subtle
messages about one's inabilities and roles because of gender. (Men as strong and masculine is
good, and men as feminine is bad as defined by culture)

Stereotypes
• Extremely generalized belief about a group or class of people
• Could be positive or negative
• Positive: Students from Ivy Leagues Schools are intelligent; Filipinos are known for being
hospitable
• Negative: Muslim countrymen as terrorists; Farmers are lazy and uneducated
• It reflects our expectations and beliefs and is largely based on the social circle we belong to as
we try to conform or agree to the standard way of thought.

Prejudice
• Unjustified or incorrect attitude (usually negative) towards an individual based solely on the
individual's membership of a social group.
•Emotional response upon learning of a person's membership to a specific group (e.g. age, skin
color, race, nationality)
• Sexism - a negative attitude towards the other sex and sees them as lesser sex that could
manifest into action such as bullying, discrimination and violence. • Sexist or misogynist thinking
is inherited, which is why sexist jokes or harassment come so naturally to
some.
•If the people of the world can understand that there are certain benchmarks of humane and just
behavior, then nations and their governments could be criticized and held accountable for
violating universally agreed upon rules

Discrimination
• An action or behaviors towards an individual or a group of people that involved some form of
exclusion or rejection.
• Genocide - the action of recognizing someone as different so much that they are treated
inhumanely and degraded.
Discrimination
• Apartheid - a form of racial discrimination wherein one race is viewed as less than the other
• Example: separation of black and whites and the mass murder of jews in concentration camps
Discrimination
• Gender Discrimination - another form of discrimination
• Example: women earn less than men and are often relegated to be solely responsible for
child-rearing and house chores; stay at home husband perceived to be less manly; right to vote
Discrimination
• LGBT Discrimination - when LGBT people are treated as lesser than straight people •
Example: Bullying at school when they act differently; they get judge or physically assaulted as
they explore and express their sexuality

Who is a transgender?
• An umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression, or behavior does not
conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.
• The gender identity or the "uncomfortable feeling" is not something that changes through time,
usually a feeling that they have since childhood.

Other sexualities of transgender

• FTM - female to male, transitioned female who's living a life of male
• MTF - male to female
Crossdressing - some people want to dress as the opposite gender from time to time, however,
unlike the transsexual, they are comfortable identifying with their biological sex • Drag
king/queens - people who dress as the opposite for entertainment which they do out of passion
or for work
• Gender queer - people who feel like their gender does not fit the gender binary view that is
limited to male and female category because they feel that these are too restrictive. The

Transitioning Process
• Consultation to a psychologist if a person wants to go through permanent changes like sex
reassignment
•Transitioning to another gender is a very challenging because of social stigma, discrimination,
medical cost and treatment, oppressive laws, and the threat of violence from prejudiced people
The proper use of pronouns should be observed when talking to a transgender person to show
respect
Beginning of Masculinity
• Masculinity is an internalized role or identity, reflecting a particular (in practice often meaning
US or Western)
culture's norms or values, acquired by social learning from agents of socialization such as
family, school, and the mass media.
• Women are trained since childhood to be caring and nurturing, hence women's ways of
knowing are relational. • In a traditional household, men learned to be men through
disassociation and separation.
• Men learned masculinity from what they see in the media and interactions in school.
• Hierarchy of masculinity - The meaning of masculinity in working class from the meaning in
men in middle-class and same goes among the very rich and the very poor
• Hegemonic masculinity - a position of cultural authority and leadership but not total dominance
as other forms of masculinity persist alongside (popular heroes, role models, and fictional
characters); an act that dominates both men and women (concept of western society); It is an
expression of the privilege men collectively have over
Women

What makes a man a man?

•Manhood - rough, brave, strong, successful, capable, reliable, in control, keeping emotions in
check, adventurer, oughtness in mind and body
•Rules of masculinity
- No sissy stuff - girls' stuff are not boys' stuff
- Be a big wheel - size of paycheck, wealth, power, status
- Be a sturdy oak - reliable in crisis (rock, pillar, tree)
- Give 'em hell - aura of daring and aggression (risky, live life on edge, go for it)

Proving Masculinity
• Men perform their masculinity mostly to and for other
men.
• Women as the objects or the means to the end of
impressing other men.
• Lad culture - often linked to the concept of masculinity; perpetuate traditions that objectify and
sexualize other
• Raunch culture - binge drinking to harassment that cause harm to students
• Hookup culture - sexual activity is regarded as the transition marker from boyhood to manhood
Collective Masculinity
• Masculinity also exist impersonally in culture • Example: video games, cinema and TV shows
(abandoning father, disgruntled student, abusive partner, drug convict)
• Men are unlikely to talk about their worries and more likely to drink and engage in other
destructive behaviors when stressed
Men are urged to practice strict emotional control
• The physical version of hegemonic masculinity has been promoted by globalization via film,
toys, and other goods

Masculinity as Homophobia
Suppressing "other" to project their identities as winners. • A true man must have aversions to
anything feminine, or consciously declare themselves as secure with their masculinity before
doing anything stereotypically feminine (ex. lalakeng lalake ako...)
• School shooters in US usually take revenge (to prove themselves as masculine) due to their
experiences such as bullying, teasing, and beating.
• Homophobia - not the fear itself of gay men, but the fear that a man can and will become gay
or feminine

Masculinity as Power
• Masculine man is powerful man who has control on various resources.
• Silence was mistaken as consent especially when someone was making sexist, homophobic,
or racist statements (gay bashing, rape jokes, and sexist comments)

Men as the Masculine Generic and Male Entitlement

• When we talk about gender, we think of female or LGBTs, rarely the male.
• Men are viewed as masculine generic, and masculinity was defined mostly by women
• There are no societal barriers that hinder him from accessing the resources.
• Men are privilege; therefore, they need to prove their manhood even through violence,
addiction, and oppressing non-dominant groups.

Men and Fragile Masculinities

• Masculinity is fragile because it can be easily lost.
•Having ones' masculinity challenge causes the greatest stress in most men, and that those with
high levels of this type of anxiety are less likely to seek counseling.
• Women indeed have been changing their ways of life, but maintaining manhood is difficult.
The Responsibility of Man
• It is necessary to change the attitudes of men toward gender equality, to show them that it is
beneficial to them as men to be allies.
• Women's rights radically change, while men's rights stay the same because men didn't see
themselves as a gendered being.

Men's Rights
• Men are now the gender victims as a result of feminism having gone too far, with men having
increased responsibilities but few rights around issues of marriage, divorce, child custody, and
access to children.

Is the Philippines a Masculine Country?

• Filipino masculinity is changing due to migration and globalization, more westernized.
• Male barkada is seen as brotherhood, a space to be men, free from their wives and
responsibilities as it is accepted that men often needed a break from their work and home life. •
•Filipino masculinities are driven by their status as the main actors in the public realm.
The Journalistic View
•Masculinity has many faces because its
the definition continues to change. Redefinition of the role of man as many women go abroad,
leaving men or other women to take care of their children.
•Masculinity is a human project. The path towards gender equality is one that sees all person as
gendered beings.