Violating a Gender Norm

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.