This reminds me of something that was brought up earlier in the textbook: men are less likely to or more stigmatized for stepping outside of male gender roles than women are for stepping outside of theirs. I remember that the earlier explanation was that since men have more power in society, it is less acceptable to reject the higher-status role. However, here it seems like another reason may be that men define their entire role in opposition to the female gender role. Instead of building their role from the ground up based on a role model, they first learn it as the opposite of femininity. Therefore, it would make sense why men stepping outside of their role into femininity is considered less acceptable.

This reminds me of a similar trend with left-handedness. When it was considered shameful to be left-handed, far fewer people openly identified as left-handed and many people learned to use their non-dominant hand instead. As it became less stigmatized and more acceptable, more people identified as left-handed, but this doesn't mean that it spread through social contagion. People simply tend to hide things that aren't acceptable in society.

Sometimes when people talk about the difference between sex and gender, sex is made to be a very simple, concrete thing. Oftentimes, people will say it starts and ends with what chromosomes you have. I think it's interesting that sex (not even gender) can be broken down into five whole distinct layers. I had never heard of this being done. I think this goes to show that both sex and gender are not as binary as we think and that they are often not so easily defined.

I never thought about this parallel before. It seems like men and richer people are seen as having more authority and control while women and poorer people are seen as more nurturing but also dependent on others. It makes me think about how associating these things can be used to justify existing gender gaps, like the pay gap or differences in career paths for men and women. It's also interesting how in all of these binaries competence and warmth are viewed as opposites, like they can't coexist.

This seems to imply to me that one of the most important ways to change people's minds about sexism and to decrease sexism is to educate people about how few gender differences really exist. Besides just presenting people with information on how there aren't really that many gender differences, I think it would be effective to focus on the ways in which our society implicitly tells us that there are. I think growing up people are taught that boys and girls are different very early on and this probably plays a big role in people developing sexist attitudes later on.

I think this is really interesting. I never thought about the fact that even when women work outside the home, it still may be seen in a different light than when men do it. I feel like this emphasizes the fact that gender roles are constructed and can be redefined in different cultures or different situations to enforce the existing hierarchy. Even though the women are working outside the home, there can still be some way of seeing it as fulfilling existing gender roles.

I also think it's interesting how work is tied back to caring for the family, which is often expected more of women than men.

I've seen this a few times with people who do not want to identify as feminists. A lot of times their reasoning is that it is no longer necessary. They might say they believe men and women should be equal, but that they already are (at least in the United States), so they do not want to identify as a feminist. I think one reason this might occur is that people might not want to admit to themselves that any injustice is still occurring as this may be distressing. Also, like the text says, I've heard people use progress as proof that feminism should be "done" and men and women are now equal, ignoring the ways that we still aren't. Some of achievements of feminism in the past might be more obvious as they are directly and clearly written into the law (like earning the right to vote), but there are still so many ways that gender inequality persists today.

Someone's sex or gender likely doesn't matter for most topics of conversation, especially in customer service situations. But because it is so expected, it becomes awkward (for some people) to even engage with someone without knowing what gender to use for their pronouns. It doesn't make any difference what gender the clerk who was helping them is, but there is already an obstacle because of gender. This obstacle is completely unnecessary, but it's already harder to engage with the clerk or find a way to refer to them because of the emphasis our society puts on the gender binary. If everyone were more used to using neutral singular pronouns and not knowing everyone's gender, the situation would've been a lot easier. It seems like our society is creating unnecessary obstacles by assuming we should always know someone's gender and it should fall into one of two categories.

I think the fact that most people assume mistaking the baby's gender is an insult goes to show the author's later point that sex is assumed to have two mutually exclusive categories and that there will be outward signs even for babies. If people were more comfortable with the idea of not knowing someone's gender (even a baby) or having any additional options, they wouldn't have been so quick to assume a boy or girl in the first place. It also might not necessarily be offensive not to know or to mistake someone's gender if we didn't expect there to be obvious signs (like bows for girls or gendered colors).