We commonly believe that men are biologically and naturally more aggressive and more active than girls. That’s why boys should always be encouraged so they can be “a great guy”; they are our hopes for the future. Meanwhile, we do not do the same thing to girls because no matter how hard we push them, they will end in the kitchen for they are so passive. As a matter of fact, men and women are actually born with the same abilities, no matter what their gender is. What makes them seem to have different abilities is the social construction itself. “Primate Studies and Se

x Differences”, an essay by Sally Linton, tells about her disagreement of the experience done on primates, the “animals that are most like human beings”, to reveal the truth that some behaviors reflects innate differences between genders. She defends her opinion by giving the fact that “the female primates who did not receive the proper socialization…make very poor mothers.” This alone can already tell the fact that females are not the natural nurturers. Those primates failed to care for their infant because there was no social group to teach them. “It is not natural (instinctive) for [the primate], any more than for a human female, to be nurturing unless she has been taught this behavior by her social group.” Therefore, we can safely say that social group plays a very important role in shaping someone’s behavior.

If you still think that the fact given above is invalid for it was tested on animal, think about your own experiences. You might have a different approach compared to what your sister or brother got. These approaches come from your social group; it might come from your teacher, neighbor, or even your family. In fact, family, as the smallest unit of society, plays the greatest role in shaping the image of the “ideal” men and women. Parents, realized or not, differentiate the methods of upbringing and raising their son to their daughter. Since they know that they will get a baby boy, they start to paint the baby room with blue color and, later, buy ‘masculine’ type of toys such as robots, car toys, gun toys, etc. They believe that pink is a little too feminine for their son and dolls can make him looks like a sissy. On the other hand, their daughter is disallowed to play with gun toys for it is so-not-a-girl-type-of-toy. To prevent their daughter to play with boys’ toys again, they provided her with many ‘domestic’ kinds of toys. Girls g

Some topics in this essay:
Sally Linton, Charming Meanwhile, , Boys Girls”, Current Science, social construction, Sex Differences”, matter gender, plays role shaping, fairy tales, “ideal” women, girls taught, raise children, ideal women, plays role, gun toys, role shaping,