Soc. 3251W Race, Class, and Gender

The readings for February 6 address many issues encompassing gender. They address the fact that females and males are sorted into their "categories" from birth on and no one notices this process taking place unless one gender strays from their category or relative normalcy of that gender (male or female). On of the readings refers to this process as "doing gender." Also, gender is a way in which people organize their lives. From the day they are born they are told how to dress, speak, act, and who to confide in and who to look up to. Thus, these prioritized expectations drive adults to "do gender," in other words to do what their gender would do. For example, males are taught to act tough around other males, and usually only show there "soft" sides around women for fear of being called a sissy.
In my opinion, these readings were very poinent about the issues that children face about their gender, especially young boys. Not being a boy I cannot exactly relate, but I have a brother who I believe went through the same process of pushing his mother away and striving to reach the excellence of his father. In addition, these readings did not present much evidence in support of their claims, but they did not need to because everyone wittnesses these gender divisions being made everyday. For example, when a baby is really young we desperately want to know if it is a girl or a boy, therefore the parents and take away that question by dressing their little girl in pink.

Question 1: Do you think that if a male was raised like a female for the first few years of his or her life, would he behave more like a female and identify himself personally as that female gender?

Question 2: Why can't we as a society change our need, or dependency on the other gender for their particular attributes now that women work and dont need men to support them, and men can cook and clean and do household things?