Female Gender Role Trauma: A Genuine Experience – or a Misunderstood Fallacy

Reece Frazier
1 February 2010
RD1

Female Gender Role Trauma: A Genuine Experience – or a Misunderstood Fallacy

Every individual is born with an infinite number of traits, physical and psychological, which significantly impacts one’s development. These traits generate, subjectively, positive and negative experiences for a person. Amongst these vast number of traits is an individual’s gender. Gender, however, is often a misunderstood concept and its ambiguity has lead to an over dramatization of gender’s role in society – primarily that of the distinction between men and women. This exacerbation of gender and it’s alleged negative affects on the human psyche, especially those experienced by women, are slippery slope and biased. Modern day psychologists have asserted that because of this black-and-white distinction between genders, woman have (especially) experienced trauma in their development. [THESIS] Although there are many gender-based complexities throughout human development, gender-specific experiences are a simply matter of the human condition and not traumatic. [THESIS]


Homo sapiens, or “humans”, are born into two major biological categories, based on physical organs, male and female. These two categories are generally referred to as an individual’s “sex”. The World Health Organization (“WHO”) specifically separates and defines the term “gender” as a social construction of roles, behaviors, attributes, etc., based on their given society’s views, mainstreaming two distinct categories – men and women. Essentially, the former term (“sex”) consists of physiological characteristics, and the latter term (“gender”) explicates an individual’s gender-based traits. All of these traits generate subjective positive and negative experiences, which generally affect a person for their entire life span.


Psychologist Mary Pipher, Ph.D., in her 1995 bestselling book Reviving Ophelia, has suggested that adolescent girls are exhibiting more and more self-destructive behaviors, because of traumatic gender-based experiences. In a short story, Dr. Pipher tells the story of a girl named Polly who, upon puberty, became socially withdrawn and depressed. She goes on to suggest that, “In early adolescence, [ . . . ] [t]hey lose their resiliency and optimism and become less curious and inclined to take risks. They lose their assertive and energetic and ‘tomboyish’ personalities and become more deferential, self-critical and depressed. They report great unhappiness with their own bodies.” Further along, Dr. Pipher suggests that there is (in essence) a pandemic being experienced by adolescent girls, because of female gender-based experiences.


Although endearing, Dr. Pipher’s perspective is subjective and practice-limited. While writing this book Dr. Pipher has stated that she has seen an influx in depressed female victims of gender-based trauma, however this one-sided account does not acknowledge the millions of women who are not “victims” and do not report loss of self, simply because they are female. Simply, this sudden flood of victims could be indicative of greater access to behavioral care. An allegation of this nature, explaining that a surplus of individuals experiencing these types of developmental issues is becoming a pandemic, is dangerous and unwarranted.


In an interview with a relative, born in 1940, gender-based trauma was a term completely foreign to the interviewee. Her reaction was along the lines of, I am what I am and things are the way they are. “Suggesting that I experienced trauma in development, because I am a woman, is outright silly. Society has an agenda, and so do I. If we’re not on the same page then so be it, but I don’t think isolation nor self-destructive behavior is an appropriate response.”


Although this individual was very strong with her words, and it should be acknowledged that (especially through personal experience) not all women have a similar outlook on life, a viewpoint such as this nullifies a female-specific gender based trauma perspective. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines the term trauma as, “a deeply distressing experience; physical injury; [and] emotional shock following a stressful event.” This definition hardly justifies usage when discussing females (as a population) and their developmental experiences.


To label the physiological and psychological changes of adolescence as traumatic is precarious, implicating unnecessary consequences. As everyone can relate (or so it is generally), adolescence is a time of great change for. In adolescence one experiences changes to different parts of their bodies, sexual and non-sexual, their voices, and even to their feelings. An influx in hormones, generally conceived to produce growth, induces boys and girls to engage in sexual relations, and many other things. Suggesting and substantiating that these “normal” experiences are traumatic is unfounded. Revising the way society has raised children ultimately leads to an over sensitization of simple developmental issues that have carried on for thousands of years.


Christopher Maxon has suggested that, “The media also plays a big role, as they are always showing men who are masculine and how women are skinny.” As Christopher states, it should be duly noted that gender construction is widespread and experienced by both men and women. However, a point not addressed by Christopher is that even before the “media” existed, gender construction was the way of the world. In ancient Native American tribes, adolescent boys underwent a “coming of age” ritual in which “a boy became a man.” If a boy did not complete, or live up to his assigned task, he was not a man. Implications of failure were vast and numerous.

However regrettable most societies function through generalizations and hold expectations of these generalized concepts. Women are thought of as pretty and expected to hold a feminine stature, and men are expected to be masculine and the “bread winners” of the household. Although these generalizations are expected of an individual, the severity of consequences, if these expectations are not followed through, hardly justify compartmentalizing gender development and labeling it as traumatic. Humans face many gender-based complexities throughout lifelong development, and gender-specific experiences are a simply matter of the human condition, not a traumatic perilous experience. Society has made much progress toward the neutralization of gender construction, but a practice, in place for thousands of years, is not so easily reversed.

Works Cited

Maxson, Christopher. “C&S Gender Role Trauma.” 29 January 2010. Laulima Discussion. 31 January 2010. [https://laulima.hawaii.edu/portal/site/KAP.33517.201030/page/c2a89a6c-a93e-47dd-b419-873ef93bb50f]

Pipher, Mary. “Saplings in the Storm.” Dialogues: An Argument Rhetoric and Reader. 6th edition. Eds. Gary Goshgarian and Kathleen Krueger. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2009. 425-432.

“Trauma” Compact Oxford English Dictionary. n.d. Oxford Dictionaries. 31 January 2010. [http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/trauma?view=uk]

Vellalos, Gloria. Personal interview. 28 January 2010.

“What do we mean by ‘sex’ and ‘gender’?” WHO. n.d. World Health Organization. 31 January 2010. [http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/index.html]