Gender Issues in Society

Although we seem to live in a more advanced generation and world that you would think does not rely on the concepts of hegemonic masculinity, there are still so many examples in every day life. For example, I was recently in the gym with my roommate, and we went to go lift weights. We had to rather muscular men walk up to us and ask us why we are at the weight bench. We told them that we wanted to lift and they looked at us and said, “lifting weights is a guy thing, not a girl thing. Leave the heavy lifting to the guys and you sit and watch.” We were both rather offended that they had that classical view of guys, and told us we were too “weak” to lift weights. We ended up going to the other side of the weight area to finish our workout. Another example that I experienced was watching a commercial on television that showed a man as the person to do all of the work in the family, bringing home all of the money, while the wife stays home and cleans and cooks. It was a commercial for a television show. I thought shows like that ended a while ago, so I was very taken aback when I saw that. It showed the women as just the housekeeper, and the husband with all of the power because he is the one with a job and making the money.

I recently went back to my high school to visit an old teacher of mine. While walking through the hallways, I overheard a group of guys talking about a party they had been to that past weekend. They started talking about how one of their “bros” had “hooked up” with two girls. They started praising him, calling him a champ and how lucky he was. Yet, they turned to talk about the girls that the guy had gotten with and started calling them “sluts” and that they got around and had been with so many guys. These girls had done the same thing the guy had, yet are labeled in a negative way, rather than praised like the guy. This was one of the most shocking examples of the double standard concerning females and males. I was also watching the news the...