Sex & Stereotype

Sexual stereotyping as Collins English Dictionary defines is the formation or promotion of a fixed general idea or image of how men and women will behave. Even in the 21st century of our existence we are still deeply influenced by this.

Talking about stereotyping I will leave no stone unturned to my knowledge, bringing in light to you how not just us but even English Literature ever since has been stressing on how Men and Women are expected to portray themselves. Writers from ages have been presenting us their views, sometimes supporting the stereotype and sometimes mocking at them.

Today I’m considering the world as a whole from a Literature point of view as well as from the life experiences which I had in India since Birth. 

In the Age of Women Empowerment Movement in India, I’m writing! Writing what the folks want to question; telling and reconfirming mutual grievances and needs still prevalent in the era. I not only speak for myself but also, for the Women and Men out there who are struggling to fulfill these stereotypes in their daily lives because if they go against it, they become “alien” in the society they live in.

I’ve read somewhere “Society is made of people, people are not made from Society”. I disagree, not because this statement isn’t in favor but because this statement contradicts the living conditions of the world.

Hereby to present some deep details about the subject I would like to take help from various authors and poets from different eras of the ancient world.

John Stuart Mill attacks the argument that women are naturally worse at some things than men, and should, therefore, be discouraged or forbidden from doing them. He says that we simply don't know what women are capable of, because we have never let them try – one cannot make an authoritative statement without evidence. We can't stop women from trying things because they might not be able to do them. Men are basically contradicting themselves because they say women cannot do an activity and want to stop them from doing it. But Mill suggests that men are basically admitting that women are capable of doing the activity, but that men do not want them to do so. Women are brought up to act as if they were weak, emotional, docile – a traditional prejudice. If we tried equality, we would see that there were benefits for individual women. They would be free of the unhappiness of being told what to do by men. And there would be benefits for society at large – it would double the mass of mental faculties available for the higher service of humanity. The ideas and potential of half the population would be liberated, producing a great effect on human development.  Mill's essay is clearly utilitarian in nature on three counts: The immediate greater good, the enrichment of society, and individual development. If society really wanted to discover what is truly natural in gender relations, Mill argued, it should establish a free market for all of the services women perform, ensuring a fair economic return for their contributions to the general welfare. Only then would their practical choices be likely to reflect their genuine interests and abilities. Mill felt that the emancipation and education of women would have positive benefits for men also. The stimulus of female competition and companionship of equally educated persons would result in the greater intellectual development of all.

I will now like to pick up one of the most controversial writers of her time, Ismat Chughtai. In her short story Lihaf, she portrayed a topic which was and even still considered a taboo “Homosexuality”. Class and gender issues were also stressed upon in this story. I’m mentioning it because through this story I was able to establish how a woman’s sexual desires are given a back door just because she isn’t as rich as the NAWAB. She belongs from a lower status so anything is justified, even after the Nawab was interested in young fair-faced boys and not her. The hypocrisy of society is so vividly presented by the writer that it makes the reader furious at the circumstances and also at the injustice done and re-done to women as the story progresses.

Mohan Rakesh’s Halfway House is one of the stories that moved me to the core. Savitri, the protagonist gets caught up with a family where she acts as the head of the family, the bread earner. Though being the new woman of when Rakesh was writing, the critics have always been against her. If a woman isn’t supported by her family and if the so-called husband is nowhere trying to be a help, her right to get separated is justified but just because of her children she subsides her desires for a while, she might have committed various mistakes as a character but her being a human she has all rights to practice her individuality. If being in a family forces you to leave your individuality, you should not start one.

Even in Shakespeare’s As you Like It, the protagonist Rosalind had to cross-dress as Ganymede to hide from her father and also to gain the freedom to move around, give advice, and associate as an equal among other men. In Courtships as well women had to be suppressed by the male figures of her life, firstly her father than her husband. Given that Rosalind is clearly the most intelligent, active, and interesting character in the play and that these qualities would not be likely to manifest themselves so fully if she were not passing herself off as a man, the play raises some interesting questions about just what we mean by any insistence on gender differences as more than mere conventions. But the issue is much more complicated than that. For Rosalind's assumed name, Ganymede is a very deliberate reference to the young male lover Zeus carried up to Olympus, and it points us to what might be a very strong element in the courtship game between Orlando and Rosalind and in the feelings, Phoebe has for Rosalind, namely homoerotic desire.

Moving to Geoffrey Chaucer, in his The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, various instances makes us come back to the Gender Stereotypes: Dame Alison's older husbands are cantankerous, miserly, suspicious, yet easily duped and enslaved by their own desire for sex; Jankin adds to the mix with clerical misogyny which reinforces the male suspicion of all women as the inheritors of Eve and thus the cause of men's downfall. Martially, he is also a bully who expects to be obeyed at every turn. The Wife is bossy, garrulous, compelled to gossip, deceitful, and sexually voracious. Repeatedly we are forced to believe that women are cheaters, men have high sexual needs and women make that a path to gain favors and gifts. We are left on our own to decide what the Wife of Bath preaches is her prologue and tale is right or wrong but as far as what I feel is stereotypes strengthens by literary stamps and Wife of Bath rather being Satirical acts as a critique for a working and independent woman.

The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster is another play that highlights how from ages women become victims of patriarchy and sometimes even incest sexual desires. The fortune of the Duchess forced her brothers to capture and torture her to an extent where she gives in. Ferdinand’s sexual desires towards his sister, the Duchess also brings to light the dark hypocritical family values of the society. The forced separation of her from her husband Antonio and children and later on honor killing of them is one of the key instances which made me include this here.

My next shift is towards Bond novels and Films 007, everyone must be familiar with it. The glory, the name, the magnificent extraordinary strength, and intelligence the character James Bond carries. Around the era when the series began, women and men had two designated social spheres. Men had the public sphere while women had the domestic sphere. Aside from the physical roles of men and women, different genders were prescribed different mental characteristics. Men were said to be more professional, strong, and calculative while women were viewed to have qualities like uncontrollable emotions and heightened maternal instincts. These notions combined with the preconceived gender roles in society mean that women were enculturated to be more submissive and physically attractive which would make them appealing to men. Likewise, men who fit their normative masculine roles were attractive to women. The James Bond series in many respects upheld these gender roles to attract the typical hetero-normative male audience. Over years, though things have improved still they were picturesque in their portrayal of masculinity. The stereotypical aspects rather than being challenged became a means of entertainment and a chain of beliefs that are “unhealthy” in the present era. Many Bond films portray women as brainless, helpless, and inept at their fieldwork. However, I do see these qualities decrease significantly over the years as this series matured with the sexual liberation of women and with other civil rights movements. In the opening sequence of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Teresa Di Vincenzo is saved by James Bond as she attempts to escape from men who were pursuing her. Her character stands out from other preceding Bond girls because she eventually displays courage and competence when she saves Bond during a chase in the Swiss Alps. In a sense, her character has helpless moments. And the fact that her father suggests that she needs a man, “to dominate her” keeps up with the chauvinistic aesthetic of most previous Bond films. This makes her strength less of an affront to the typical male-female relationship of that era which again brings me back where I started “Stereotypes”.

Pope writes in his Rape of the Lock, "If to her share some female errors fall,/ Look on her face, and you’ll forget ‘em all" (2.17-8). The beautiful woman Belinda is seen as more virtuous than others simply because of her physical features. Showing social grace and charm is more important for women than anything intellectual they could say. Despite our readiness to dismiss this life as useless and worthless, it is possible to see that these women took their roles and duties very seriously. It is also quite obvious that these types of behavior were expected of women and that a woman who did not conform would be an unwelcome outcast. A stereotype forced on women even today where they have to have a beautiful face, a thin-waist. They need to act feminine and do so-called domestic chores. No matter how far the society progresses still these stereotypes carry on from one age to another with a little amendment certainly but they never erase their roots in our society. I, as a writer, is forced to ask why such narrow mindsets? Why can't we give inner beauty and intelligence prime importance? The people who open their arms to accept women as human still somewhere have this sick mentality. Why can’t they eradicate this stupid notion where physical appearance is a top priority?

Anyhow moving to my next writer, Aphra Behn. In The Rover, the protagonist Hellena showcase her resentment of being forced to be a NUN, making her way through the patriarchy of her brother and father. She as a character still submits to the womanizer Willmore making the readers believe women are submissive and foolish.

Mary Wollstonecraft in “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” stated that instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, they should be treated as human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men. While she does call for equality between the sexes in particular areas of life, such as morality, she does not explicitly state that men and women are equal because she believes they both have their own paths to follow.

Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind extends beyond her single character. For instance, the author Margaret Mitchell has constructed an over-simplified world in which men and women fall into one of two general categories based upon their gender. Women are quietly intelligent and strong. Men, in contrast, are weak, less intelligent, and even foolish. "The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturbs him." (Mitchell 1936: 58) Women are also masters of manipulation: "The man owned the property, and the woman managed it. The man took the credit for the management, and the woman praised his cleverness." (Mitchell 1936: 58) The clever Southern women resent these men "above all for undertaking a futile and destructive war they had no chance to win." (Faust 1999: 11). Gone with the Wind though gives us hope that there can be an independent woman but also criticizes Rhett’s sexual destruction of Scarlett wherein she submits to Rhett’s jealously of her still being in love with Ashley. There the domination over Scarlett is strongly visible and hence the stereotype of men being stronger in bed fulfills.

In his preface to the play Miss Julie, Strindberg describes his heroine, Miss Julie, as a woman with a "weak and degenerate brain." In the play, Jean comments on Julie's crazy behavior. Miss Julie, one of the first major exercises in naturalism and the naturalist character, becomes a case study of a woman who is supposed, as Jean says, "sick." This sickness condemns her to ruin in one of the more misogynistic classic works of modern theater. Hysteria was historically considered a female disease, and in the late nineteenth century was defined as an illness brought on when a woman failed or refused to accept her sexual desires and did not become a sexual object, as the psychologists put it. Strindberg probably meant for us to read Julie as a hysteric, for she is simultaneously disgusted and drawn to men, both nonsexual and seductive. Strindberg, in his fear of early European feminism, attributes Julie's problems to a mother who believes in the equality of the sexes and, indeed, hates men. He also blames an initially absent, ineffectual father. Julie inherits her mother's hatred of men, attempting to train her fiancé with a riding whip and fantasizing about the annihilation of the male sex. Besides this sadism (pleasure in another's pain), the play is interested in Julie's masochism (pleasure in one's own pain), masochism explicitly identified as feminine. When Julie proposes suicide, Jean declares that he could never follow through with a plan to kill himself, and says that the difference between the sexes is that men are not masochistic, as women are. I referred to this play as it projects how Women end up being the victims of Patriarchy and also the society which makes them hide their sexual needs and desires because this term “sex” is itself considered as a taboo.

I’ll like to end this section with Adrienne Rich’s poem Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law where the speaker repudiates her mother-in-law for not only making her life miserable but also for not making her own life meaningful. The beginning of the poem shows that the speaker’s mother-in-law is an agent of limiting her life and prospects. The mother-in-law is in the prime of her life, but because she chose superficial beauty over developing her intellectual skills, her mind is now “heavy with useless experience, rumor, and fantasy”. The younger woman is critical of the older woman’s lack of modern feminist consciousness, but she realizes later in the poem that it is counterproductive for a woman to be against another. In the next section, the young woman realizes that she too is losing her personal identity. And her inner voice, the “anger”, incites her to rebellion. The Speaker uses a kind of verbal camera to capture the two in snapshots, which depict their conflict. Towards the end of the poem, “you” and “I” become “we”, and it is then obvious that all along the speaker has been criticizing even herself, for all her failures and self-limitations. The portrait of the physical woman confined at home is not flattering: she is sullen, even vehement in her actions. The woman’s strength resides in her mind and thoughts, where she rebukes the conventions and hears the orchestration of voices that signify a real need to further her intellectual growth. She is anxious about not making personal progress despite her potentials. This becomes a time where the men come in the picture to play their role as supporters and motivators to bring in development and help in the miserable condition of women in society.

From the early age boys are expected to be “real men’’: ‘dominating’, ‘aggressive’, ‘uncaring’, ‘strong’, providers for the family. They are asked to carry the burden of economic stress. They are trained to be hideous and secretive of their dilemmas, fears, and anxieties. Hence, making it difficult for them to open up to even their partners. If they are abused or see violence towards women or girls in their childhood, a survey states they are likely to do the same as adults. Therefore, it is said to change the pattern of growing men. They should be taught to be open about what they feel regardless of what gender they belong to.

The only way to get everything on track is Gender sensitization which refers to the modification of behavior by raising awareness of gender equality concerns. This can be achieved by conducting various sensitization campaigns, workshops, programs, etc. It is interlinked with gender empowerment.  Gender sensitization theories claim that modification of the behavior of teachers and parents (etc.) towards children can have a causal effect on gender equality. Gender sensitizing "is about changing behavior and instilling empathy into the views that we hold about our own and the other genders." It helps people in examining their personal attitudes and beliefs and questioning the 'realities' they thought they know.

Today’s condition of our country is visible to one and all. We support equality, not patriarchy or matriarchy.

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Sanna