The first time and memory of being categorized as a male was when my sister and I were out doing chores for our neighbors. We felt like being good civilians and helping our neighbors out, our neighbors had told us that we had to water the flowers and cut the grass. Being a young kid I wanted the easy job like anyone else would trying to get the easy way out of it, so I offered to water the flowers. Our neighbors said “that is a girls job, boys do hard work you can mow the lawn”, I thought that was very unfair and had no idea what he meant by anything. When I went home and talked to my parents they said don’t worry about it sometimes men are women are stereotyped to do certain things or tasks. For example my dad used the NHL. It is only stereotyped that only guys can play in the NHL and that most of professional sports are all men.
Being a young kid I didn’t really understand why that was, or why I had to mow the lawn still. Until I did some research on these stereotypes and came across my findings that most guys do the heavy lifting and all the jobs that involved tools. While I seen that most women do the cooking and cleaning. That is stereotyped in tv, movies, sports, social media as I continued to watch for these stereotypes. That has been how society has been created nobody knows how it was created or how men did the lifting and women did the cleaning. But the one day doing chores with my neighbors I knew I was being portrayed as a man and that’s the first time I learned about my gender and all the stereotypes behind it. As I got older I started to develop more manly feautures compared to the physical ones women encounter. Forever I will be stereotyped my gender as a male. I was born with a male name, with male feautures and with stereotypes that will recognize me as a male. After all the hours of research I finally came to a conclusion of boys do certain things like play with LEGO, and girls do certain things like play with dolls, nobody knew why this was but that’s how genders were stereotyped.
This was a very interesting story because it seems like most people have a similar story as to how gender stereotypes were enforced as children. Even things like when a teacher would come into your classroom and ask for the help of “three or four strong boys”. Certain toys and jobs are given to boys and girls based on their gender rather than their likes of certain toys or their ability to do a job. The only small criticism that I have for this story is that it does not really leave anything up for interpretation. I think it is interesting that you actually did research as to why you were stereotyped at that age rather than just fall into that stereotype like I know I did. Very in depth story!
This was a very interesting story because it seems like most people have a similar story as to how gender stereotypes were enforced as children. Even things like when a teacher would come into your classroom and ask for the help of “three or four strong boys”. Certain toys and jobs are given to boys and girls based on their gender rather than their likes of certain toys or their ability to do a job. The only small criticism that I have for this story is that it does not really leave anything up for interpretation. I think it is interesting that you actually did research as to why you were stereotyped at that age rather than just fall into that stereotype like I know I did. Very in depth story!