Breaking a gender norm
is something most people see as peculiar or odd and they don't really think
about how they or someone else would react or feel in that situation. That
being said our assignment this week was to have a member of our group break a
gender norm and then have the other group members see how people reacted. To
accomplish this task we first had to come up with a way to break a gender norm,
our ideas ranged from a man carrying a purse to a guy ordering fruity drinks at
the bar. The reason we came up with these ideas is because men are supposed to
be masculine and do manly things and when they don't people tend to react
negatively or see the man as week. Our first two ideas although good were not
very feasible in this particular setting. For the guy carrying a purse idea it
would be tough to get a reaction due to the fact people would have to first
notice then visibly react. In the case of our second idea of a guy ordering
fruity drinks at a bar we would have had to go to the bar and we really did not
have time during class to do this. In the end we decided to have one of the
female group members walk up to a guy and start hitting on him and in the
process use a cheesy pick up line.
We decided to break a
gender norm in this way because here at Michigan Tech it is definitely
something out of the ordinary due to the fact that there are many more men than
women at the school. Also we felt that there was a very strong association with
gender in this case because throughout our culture we always see that it is a
man that initiates contact with a woman if he is interested in her and not the
other way around. This can be seen in movies, TV, and books and is strongly
ingrained into our culture.
Our plan to violate this
gender norm was to go to a public place on campus like the library or café and have
one group member violate the norm. While our norm violator was accomplishing
their task the rest of the group would sit not far away pretending to be a
study group for our sociology class and listen in on the conversation. The
first place we tried to do this was the reading room in the library. Our first attempt
did not go as planned because the ‘victim’ of our experiment was really focused
on his homework. This could have been part of his reaction to the situation
because he did seem pretty uncomfortable and not really wanting to be in that
situation. For our violator the situation also felt awkward and uncomfortable
because it is not something she would normally do. After the failed experience
in the library we tried the same thing at one of the tables in Fisher. This
time the experiment worked fairly well because the guy responded and seemed
confused at first that a girl was hitting on him and then he looked pretty
uncomfortable with the whole situation as he kept messing around on his laptop.
Our violator in this experiment said she felt pretty awkward just going up to
guys and hitting on them because it is not something she would normally do and
using the pickup line probably made it slightly more awkward.
In the end this matters because it challenges not only
gender role normalcy but also how we have been socialized to behave. Since we
were young we have come to learn through our culture and socialization that a
man is expected to go out and find a woman and pursue her not the other way
around. This is something that doesn't necessarily have to be the norm because
it is based almost solely on how we have been socialized to behave and
therefore, like most things, we can learn to view the norm differently. Our
violation of this norm challenged this somewhat and showed that it is obviously
possible to change how we have been socialized to view these types of
interactions. Additionally this shows we can change the normalcy of certain
gender roles if an effort is made to make them normal. Ultimately gender roles
are socially constructed and can be changed as people change how they socialize
and how others view those actions.
