Feminine vs. Masculine

 Hello everyone!

This week I have been learning a lot on the topic of gender. Gender is something that is very important to me. There are two genders that many of us have always been familiar with. Those two genders, male and female, are what I learned about the most this week and I would like to share the information that I found insightful with you all concerning that topic. 

I learned about how characteristics of females and males differ. There is a lot of research that studied the differences between young boys and girls. This research was done to see if female and male characteristics are taught by culture or if they are involved in natural development. Most of the studies could conclude that there are many untaught characteristics that countless boys and girls show from a very young age. Some characteristics that were found for females included being relationship oriented, detail oriented, able to multitask, cooperative, and nurturing. Girls also tend to develop quicker than boys, have greater fine motor skills and tend to communicate sooner in life. The characteristics found related to boys included, a larger startle response as babies, they had better gross motor skills, competative, destructive, constuctive, and violent. Boys also were found to be more spatially oriented and were better at focusing on one thing at a time. 

I had heard some of these differences before this week but I really enjoyed being refreshed on the various differences between boys and girls. Now sometimes in society today these differences are looked on as a negative thing. Sometimes we dont see a nuturing women as a positive attribute. There is such a push for women and men, to be equal that at times there is a loss of these important qualities that I find to be very beautiful.  We should be different from eachother and appreciate those differences. I also have learned this week that at times these qualities that were specific to girls or boys, can be shifted for different people. Sometimes a girl may tend to share similar qualities and interests that boys may generally have. Vice versa some boys may have more of an interest in some steriotypical femanine interests and may even have more personality traits that align more with the femanine side. I learned in my class that these shifts in interests are common and we called them atypical gender trends. It was sad to learn though, that the view on these atypical gender trends can be very negative at times. Society tends to have boxes with very specific expectations for genders. Boys are expected to act and be interested in very specific things. Girls are also put into similar boxes that have expectations. When an individual doesn't completely fit into this box, it can be very common for bullying to happen. Sometimes when a kid shows these atypical gender traits adults will speculate that that kid will be gay. I find that to be so sad that our society is so focused on the boxes and expectations that when an individual doesn't fully fit into those categories, we sometimes jump to the conclusion that the child will develop same sex attraction. I do not believe we should do that to children. I especially believe that we should allow everyone to express themselves and be interested in a variety of things. If a girl or boy completely fits the steriotypical interests of their gender, that is completely fine. If a girl or boy doesn't completely fit those interests, that also is just as normal. I especially would like to see this normallized with young boys. When I was young, I considered myself a, "tomboy" which basically means I was following atypical gender trends. This is actually a very common term that I have heard through my life. But I have never heard a positive term for boys that follow the atypical gender trends. In fact, there are some pretty negative and harmful words that are commonly used towad boys that express those atypical gender qualities. I wish this were different and I wish that boys had the same general freedom and acceptance that girls get through development. 

Every person is different. I understand that not everyone experiences the same things in life. I especially understand the feeling of being interested in things that generally are different than other your family members and kids your age and gender. So with that, I want to encourage myself and all of you to consider how you would like to change your perspective on development of gender. Maybe consider your future children and how you would like them to feel about their freedom to express themselves. I enjoyed learning this week and I hope that this post can help you change some things in your life if you feel it is necessary.