SECTION 6 LESSON 2

GENDER IDENTITY

AND GENDER CONFLICTS

IN THE MODERN WORLD

Under Construction

BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION OF GENDERS AND GENDER CONFLICTWoman as child bearer stayed home, was smaller in body shape and less muscular, could easily be physically subdued by the man. Man, hunting and fighting, was larger, more muscular, more aggressive, roamed far from home, learned increasingly wider range of skills. Woman was left behind, left out, remained a helper, dependent for survival on the man. Man’s exploratory nature led to expanded culture and technology. Culture and technology finally reached a stage of emancipation from manual labor, having an especially profound effect of home making which freed woman to enter traditionally male vocations. Genetics allowed for some equi-potentiality, especially where the brain was concerned, and women began entering vocations that depended mainly on mental capacity. Refinements in technology led to woman’s entry into almost all male vocations and activities.With this change in culture, power balance began to shift from the male to equality and a sudden massive redefining of masculinity and femininity and their interpersonal roles vis-à-vis each other.

Politician

Hun

ter

Warrior

Builder

Farmer

Weapon

Tool

Maker

Maker

Herder

Manufacturer

Trader

Priest

Medicine Man

Chief

Writer

Athlete

Teacher

Policeman

Banker

Actress

Manufacturer

Man Woman

Power Balance

Tool

Maker

Priest

M

edicine Man

Hun

ter

Warrior

Weapon

Maker

Chief

BuIlder

Farmer

Herder

Trader

Politician

WrIter

Athlete

Teacher

Policeman

Banker

Actor

Man Woman

Power Balance

Enter-

Home

Maker

Cloths

Maker

tainer

Mother

Cook

ManWoman

20,000 BC 2,000 AD1,900 AD

Biological Evolution has ended and Social-Technological Evolution begun

Entertainer

Gender Stereotypes And Identity Criteria For Fulfillment

The children develop a public persona acceptable to the parents while harboring the smothered embers of the private self to themselves and perhaps only revealing it to very close friends or lovers. The children protest that they are not like their parents but like their private self. Those who know them well say, “Wow, he/she does not know themselves at all!” Sometimes, maybe, in a foreign place or under the influence of alcohol or drugs that hidden, private self finds a way to slip out. Otherwise the public persona poses as the same sex parent.

Dating as a rite of passage requires making a transition from parents to peers and involves adventuring outside the home and experimenting with mate selection. This is a high stress period for adolescents and young adults.

Mom and Dad

Baby is strongly attached to parents as its whole world

Child very gradually grows independent of parents

Parents remain the world for the child but very gradually recede into the background

Adolescence

begins with

adventuring into the w

orld. Inner child rem

ains attached to and influenced by im

plicit parents.

Implicit

Parent

Implicit

Parent

Late Adolescence: Begins to make transition from parents to same sex peers for support and guidance and opposite sex peers for affection, nurturance and dependency needs. With experience and comfort, sexual needs enter and make attachments extremely intense.

Push-Pull of the transition from

parents to peers of opposite gender involves varying

degrees of difficulty

Implicit parents, imbedded in the mind, exert a powerful influence on mate choices and courtship and sexual behavior. Unresolved conflicts with parents become flagrantly active in the early to middle, experimental, mating period.

The Lonely Little BoyDisguised and Buried Deep Inside the Tough, Macho Exterior.

• Boys growing into men learn to hide their sensitive, vulnerable feelings and especially their loneliness and desperate need to be loved and cared for. This tough exterior becomes a prison for the true inner feelings and needs. They do not understand why they try to aggressively seize someone and demand their unfailing love and devotion, or why their have a chronic sense of despair and fatalistic, stoical, endurance of unfulfilling drudgery.

I’m not a sissy little boy! I’m a big tough man. Nothing can hurt

me physically of emotionally.I need

someone to love me,

nurture me, take

care of me, hug me,

and protect me.

Please somebody, I’m so, so

lonely!

The Lonely Little Girl Is Buried and Hiding Behind a Femme Fatal Image

I’m not vulnerable to you or needy for you. Well, maybe I am in need, but I’m not interested in you. So, don’t get your hopes up. I’m not available. I have plenty of men that are interested in me. Especially as far as you are concerned! I may need you and want you, but I’m sure not going to let you know that!!

I need someone to love me, nurture me, take care of me, hug me, and protect me. Please somebody, I’m so, so lonely!

Girls growing up learning to readily, but indirectly and subtly, provoke men’s interest in them, get men to pursue them, without tipping their hand that they themselves are interested in the man. They show their feelings and needs which enlists men’s support, protection, and rescue efforts. But they do not reveal their interest in and need for the particular man. Their strict control over their heart, their pretense of keeping their options open, leaves them with their inner need to be loved and cared for imprisoned. Their coquetry, feigned distress, exploitation, and attempts at control leaves them perpetually feeling alone and unsafe and feeling an aching despair and stoical, pretended independence. The little child in them is forever seeking reassurance and validation.