Quote from: lilacwoman on August 30, 2012, 03:04:18 AM
Is it peer pressure or media that is reinforcing these gender roles and racism?
I'm probably going to sound like a broken record, but I'm going to chime in yet again with my belief that this is primarily social pressure and indoctrination.
I would encourage people to pay very close attention to the messages they see all around them being sent to young boys and girls. Little girls are showered with compliments about how pretty they are. Boys are encouraged to play sports and be competitive and to prove themselves and get compliments based largely on performance. We create a culture in which men are challenged and put in character-building exercises and then valued by that character. Women are taught that they are valuable for pretty much one thing--that they are physically attractive and perhaps a little bit based on how much they work to please and support a man. Correspondingly, men are taught what to look for in women and vice versa by these same queues. A woman is a trophy to a man. He will be judged as successful or not to a large extent by how attractive the woman on his arm is. Even if he likes a woman for other characteristics than beauty, he will be thinking about what others will think of him if he's seen with her.
These cultural diseases are harmful to the well-being and happiness of all genders. Anyone who doesn't particularly fit into those hard and fast categories is going to suffer self-esteem issues, like a not particularly attractive woman or not particularly competitive and career-obsessed man. Women are taught that they have automatic and inherent value whereas men have to constantly prove their value (women and children first in lifeboats, men risking their own lives to save women in wars or other dangerous situations, men taking on the more dangerous professions, etc.). The latter is character-building and the former is character-suppressing. Both are harmful to a lot of people of all genders, again, if you don't measure up to the standard for your gender.
The trophy woman thing works the other way around too. Women are taught to value men based on some arguably shallow issues as well, like whether they're in a high power, high income career. You might thing that women who are in those careers themselves (this is more common lately which is a sign of progress) would be less inclined to obsess over such traits in men. They are successful themselves so there should be less pressure to date someone like that, right? They could pursue a good-looking artist trophy husband, right? Wrong. They seem to have even higher standards for the other trappings of "success" in their men. Meanwhile, the men they would tend to be attracted to are even more likely to be looking for a trophy woman who looks good on his arm and will be happy as a homemaker. Those men will often feel threatened by a successful woman. They're taught to want an attractive woman who will make them look good. They irony is that it's really a kind of ridiculous insecurity. A trophy woman is like a bright red sports car for a guy with a small penis.
Everyone ends up miserable and lonely. It's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken, IMHO.
