Gender and Family Life

On Tuesday in class this week we talked about something that is a very sensitive subject for a lot of different people. We began by talking about the different gender roles that we have in society. Women tend to have more characteristics of nurturing, cooperative, relational, and better communication skills. Men tend to be more competitive, aggressive, action oriented, and more body strength. We naturally have these different gender roles from birth. These male roles force men to feel like they have to provide, preside, and protect. Naturally as children we tend to be more drawn to the toy of our gender. Boys like trucks and swords. Girls like dolls and flowers. We naturally do this as kids without our parents doing or saying anything. Every now and then we have boys who will want to play with dolls and girls who will want to play with trucks. This is totally normal. Let your children try and experience different things without making assumptions about them and without forcing them to play with their gender specific toys. We need to embrace and honor differences. Our teacher shared this example of a Dad who was getting upset and trying to get “help” for his son who liked playing with dolls. Our teacher gave this man the suggestion of playing with dolls with his son and not getting angry at him for playing with dolls. He told him that when he plays with his son that he should be barbie and his child should be Ken so that his son gets to play the more masculine role. 

On Thursday we dove into more about what creates homosexual feelings and why people decide to have sexual relations with their same gender. I know that this is a sensitive subject and I think we all know at least one person in our life who is gay or struggles with homosexual feelings so I am going to try my very best to be as sensitive and careful as I can as I talk about this subject. The first thing we talked about was how there is no gay gene. You can not be born gay. The reason we know this is because of research that has been done on twins. If you could be born gay and if there was a gay gene then when you took two identical twins who have the same genetic make up they would both have to be gay or both would have to be straight. We know that this doesn’t work because only 11% of identical twins are both gay. So if you can’t be born gay why are people identifying as gay? As we brought up this topic we talked a lot about the gender roles I went over in the last paragraph. When little boys are into girly things what do all the other boys at school call them? Gay. They immediately start telling this little boy who he is because he doesn’t like to do what all the other boys like to do. What do we call girls who like to play to boy’s toys? A tomboy. There is no negative association for them, it's only for the boy’s. So when you are told you are one thing from a very young age wouldn’t you start to believe it. Our teacher said that this is about how 75% of gay men say there homosexual attraction started. It started when they were young and they felt like they were different from everyone else. I guess yes they were different from everyone else but not in the sense that they liked other boys. No 2nd grade boy knows that he likes other boy’s. They are different in the sense that they like things that other boys don’t. Then other people decide for that boy what he is because of his likes. When in all reality he is fine just let him play with dolls and embrace his differences. Eventually he will grow out of it and live a way less confusing life.