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swag 4700 - Similiarities between genders

Lexie Gerson

SWAG 4700

Tristan Bridges

Similarities between Genders

Question: Why do we constantly choose to study the differences between genders rather than similarities?

Abstract: There are so many studies on how different men and women are when there should be more on how similar they are. How could you know what you are if you don’t know what you are not? (58) If men and women were not so similar sexuality and masculinity would not be as fluid. There is so much gray between sexes and only the black and white is researched.

In Alan Peterson’s “Research on Men and Masculinities: Some Implications of Recent Theory for Future Work,” he shares his different theories of research on men and masculinity. Peterson acknowledges on page 58 that there is no real way of trying to define masculinity especially without incorporating its binary. He states that “ the precise empirical definition and that such identified traits at best represent ‘tendencies and possibilities that individuals have more or less access to at different points in time, and coexist in an uneasy and messy alliance’”(58). Peterson next acknowledges that so many studies and research has been put forth towards the differences of the genders instead of the similarities.

Peterson says “it is difficult to speak of masculinity without implying a binary notion of gender” (58). Even though it is said to be hard to talk about masculinity without comparing it to femininity, why does one have to? The Post-Enlightenment theories of sexual complementarity which say that the brains or men and woman are so different that they work well together is interesting theory, but maybe out dated. There are already so much research on how men and women are so “genetically built” differently physically and emotionally. “The essentialist belief that there are large, stable, innate difference between the sexes and encourages biological explanations for those few differences that are resilient,” he says on page 59 to support his studies.

I think that men and women are a lot more similar physically and emotionally than that are given credit for. If men and women are so different that they are compatible than where does homosexual relationship come into play? Or even people who are transgender who were born a particular sex and believe in their mind they were born the wrong one. This theory of binary compatibility sounds as if it is something that came from the bible. I believe that two men and two women can be just as compatible together as a man and a woman can.

The documentary “Bigger, faster, Stronger” on the body builders is an example of how women and men could be completely similar in body physique do to drugs. There were women body builders who along with the men indulged in testosterone and other performance enhancing drugs. These drugs made their bodies physical stronger and more muscular, and if both men and women took them they could be competing at the same level physically.

As Peterson acknowledged in the beginning of his research that even defining the word “masculinity” is too hard to put in only a few words because of all the differences between different men and themselves. Alan Peterson brilliantly stated that “knowing who we are implies knowing who we are not” (58). This statement can apply to just about everything, but if we do not have studies on how we are all similar then how will we ever know how truly different we are? There is too much pessimistic research about how different everyone is because everyone is constantly trying to stand out and be an individual when in fact by doing that is being just like everyone else. People, both men and women together and apart, physically and nonphysically obtain lots of similar characterizes that are overlooked.

DMU Timestamp: April 18, 2012 21:11





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