Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Manns The Difference and

Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Manns The The Difference Growing Up feminine in America and Bernard Lefkowitzs Our GuysGender stereotypes ar common in the join States today, even though many manpower and women work been working lumbering to defeat it. The task is made difficult however, when society in cosmopolitan implants the idea of gender roles into the mind of a child. Two authors, Judy Mann of The Difference and Bernard Lefkowitz of Our Guys pillowcase the issue of gender roles and stereotypes, and how they affect our lives today. Our Guys focuses on the way that young boys are brought up by society by telling the true myth of a group of Glen Ridge, New Jersey teenage boys who sexually assaulted a young retarded girl. Neither the boys nor the townspeople saw what they did as wrong, and move everything in their power to get them acquitted. They were however, fighting for the wrong cause. It was the boys parents and society itself that gave the teens the prank that they, as males, should be given free range and power oer those weaker than themselves. From the time these boys in question were born, their parents and their environment (including the composition of their nuclear families, i.e. dimension of males to effeminates) made them kings. They were privileged teens and the fact that they were male made them even more so. All the jocks involved were angels in their mothers eyes, who was in most cases, the only female influence in their lives and not a very good 1 at that (135). The Glen Ridge boys, affectionately known to their peers as our guys, were brought up as stereotypical boys, worsened by the boys will be boys attitude select by their parents, teachers and neighbors (Lefkowitz, 73). This ... ...only accepted stereotypes are not found in human beings at all, and that these stereotypes are harmful to everyone, not just the victims of being typecast. This final stage is correct in all senses. Judy Manns bo ok shows that the only trustworthy difference between men and women are their reproductive organs (24). many professionals support this fact, but not society. Bernard Lefkowitzs retelling of what happened to the young girl in Glen Ridge, New Jersey shows that believing that women are inferior can have terrifying repercussions. Societys perception of people and the practice of labeling based on gender must be eliminated in order for women and men to live equally. These books simply help to make more people sensitive of the problem, which is only part of the solution. Works CitedMann, Judy. The Difference Growing up young-bearing(prenominal) in America. New York Warner, 1994.