Gender Stereotypes

When I started reading the blog post I was pretty skeptical that something as trivial as humorous bathroom signs could be a real foil on gender relationships in society, but after reading through all the arguments I have to admit that she has a point.  If aliens ever came down   to take a gander at our bathrooms they would assume that half our population has sprouted strange triangular growths and had to be segregated to a different washing area.  Her point that men were considered the norm or the template and women are just a offshoot has interesting biblical, historical, and cultural ramifications.  The Christian notion of women being created from man is reflected in the drawings for the men and women on the bathroom stalls.  From man begets women… wearing dresses.  This brings up the point of why we need separate bathrooms at all.  The first reaction to that statement (from me anyhow) was shock.  Of course we need separate bathrooms!  Men and Women cant use the same washroom!  That’s wrong… for some reason.  Our culture is so wrapped up in the stigma of sex and sexuality that we have had blinders on from birth which if analyzed, don’t have any real logical reason for being there at all.  The idea that men are predatory is most often put forward as an explanation, that women are somehow more vulnerable.  If that argument were true we would have segregated pools, gyms, and beaches (which was somewhat true 50 years ago.).  Perhaps it just takes more time to break our ingrained beliefs, like the bathroom sign from the 1800s that portrayed men as we would now see as feminine.  Maybe in another 50 years bathrooms will go the same way as the pre 1920s voting system.  Its funny that we read this article now because I was thinking about gender definitions at work yesterday.  I had to make a instructional video on how to rent uhuals for training purposes at the storage place I work at.  I used my friends (a couple) as actors.  We quickly found that subconsciously we were delegating the more “masculine” tasks to the male actor.  He signed the contracts while the woman smiled demurely.  He grabbed the equipment while she grabbed the furniture blankets.  Finally he ended up driving the uhual out of the lot.  I only noticed this while I was editing yesterday and I just found it strange that although nobody planned it to be this way, we didn’t even have a script, we naturally filmed the entire interaction in a classic gender stereotype.  Still, the fact that I even thought about the discrepancies means we have taken great leaps in the last 50 years.  It seems like we are exponentially breaking down cultural stereotypes as our world becomes ever more interconnected and everyone’s views and beliefs get a chance to see the sun.  Recently a majority of Americans approved of supporting gay marriage, something inconceivable just 10 years ago.  While our stereotypes might be ingrained at birth it is up to us to reinvent them.