Gender Constraints

In my lifetime I have witnessed a dramatic change in how gender roles are perceived from when I was a child. During my earliest years in the 1980s, gender coincided with the sex that a person was assigned at birth. According to our class textbook “gender roles (also known as sex roles)” are defined as; “the different activities that society expects of males and females” (Kalat, 2017, p.173). During generations prior to mine (Gen. X), “Gender roles [would] sometimes constrain people’s choices,” and I am fairly certain this led to identity foreclosure centuries ago (Kalat, 2017, p.177). With the notable exception of the Amazons and the Agogi tribe of Africa, there were not many societies where women were raised to become warriors. Women were expected to be the cooks and gatherers. In contrast, men were basically raised to be hunters from birth, and also expected to be the warriors who protected their tribe.

As I reflect on the role gender played in my household while growing up in the Bronx, I realize it conformed to previously set stereotypes. Although my siblings and I were not raised in a primitive hunter gatherer society, gender still imposed limitations on women and men. Mom was the homemaker, and dad was supposed to be the classic hunter protector. My mother did the grocery shopping (gathering), cooking, and housework. Meanwhile, my dad was Mr. Fixer Upper, maintained the weaponry for home defense, and planned annual hunting trips with some of those weapons. That being said, it’s easy to recognize how gender roles in the late twentieth century resembled those of our ancestors from bygone millennia.

In hindsight, I recognize that mom was forced to pull double duty, because she also worked during the evenings on the three to eleven shift. Before mommy left for work, she would leave the food she prepared for us in pots on the stove. One would be full of rice and the other usually contained curry chicken, or another type of stew. My father headed to work before we left for school, he worked the six to two shift, and got home in the afternoon before we returned home. Unfortunately for us, by the time we walked in the door, dad was already in his cups and had put a dent in another bottle of rum. Apparently men were supposed to drink hard liquor when they got home from work.

Due to my parent’s work schedules, dad was our primary care taker [my brothers and I] during the business week. Considering that taking care of the children regularly, is a duty expected of women, during the era of my youth it must have been considered feminine. As I write this, I wonder if dad viewed being stuck watching the kids after his shift as women’s work? There were times that he certainly seemed bitter, and it felt like he would take his anger out on us. However, I also now realize that my dad tried to love us the best way he knew how, considering he grew up in Guyana without his father around, and witnessed his brother die during a swimming accident.

The old saying goes, “hindsight is twenty twenty,” and this reflection paper feels cathartic. It’s helping me to see things previously misunderstood much clearer, especially with what I know now. I mentioned that my father was a hunter, so from a very young age I received lessons on how to handle various hunting implements, and watched my dad intently as he performed maintenance on his hunting gear. At home, when Sober dad was around, I controlled my actions and usually planned ways to avoid him at all costs. However, when I was taken on scheduled hunting trips, he was a different man, one I loved to be around. This version of my dad was warm, smiled frequently, and I was extremely comfortable around him as he taught me how to move through the brush silently. I recognize these are things which are considered masculine. Therefore, while in his element there was no reason for dad to exhibit the bitterness he did while babysitting.

As I became an older boy, not quite an adolescent, concepts that were drilled into my head began to take on a life of their own. For example, I was continuously told not to cry, especially during moments when I happened to be crying, and I was often deterred from speaking about how I felt, in addition to being told, “you have to be tough.” As I approached adolescence, I practiced not crying, or talking about my feelings, until these were included in my version of normal. I believe these lessons contribute to the many instances of violent behavior seen in young men; who develop what I liken to an internal pressure cooker of emotions with no pressure release valve. All while their brain development is at a critical juncture because “in mid-adolescence everything feels more intense than it does before or after” any other period of their lives (Garbarino, 2018, p.46).

In conclusion, times have progressed to where we see more women in roles of leadership today than ever before; and our Vice President, Kamala Harris, a woman, recently ran for the presidency. When I reflect on how our earliest ancestors defined gender roles for us, it’s easy to recognize there have always been outliers who challenged societal norms. A relevant scenario was depicted in a movie I recently watched, set in “the Northern Great Plains” of America in “1719”; “Naru” a young squaw of “the Comanche Nation” believes she is ready for her “kuhtaamia” (literally big hunt) in a traditional hunter gatherer society. The protagonist, played by Amber Midthunder, has a conversation with her mother that went something to the effect of: “I almost caught a buck with it” her mom says “We cant eat almost. You’re good at so many other things, why do you want to hunt?” To which Naru replies: “I want to prove I can become a hunter to those who think I cant be” (Trachtenberg, 2024, Prey). While this was a hypothetical scenario in a science fiction movie, where a female character used her smarts to outwit a technologically advanced alien predator, the sentiment of that scene is genuine. Personally, I believe gender roles cannot constrain those who are daring enough to be true to themselves, there are figures who challenged social norms and have been immortalized in the annals of history for the pivotal roles they played; and they also happen to be of the female gender — e.g. Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, and Amelia Earhart.

References:

• Garbarino, J. (2018). Miller’s Children. University of California Press.
• Kalat, J. W. (2017). Introduction to Psychology. Cengage Learning.
• Trachtenberg, D. (Director). (2024). Prey [Film]. 20th Century Studios.