Response to Gendered Bodies - Brooke Dinsmore

This is the third time I’ve read Martin’s Gendered Bodies for a class but it remains just as engaging. My favorite part of this piece is that it so effectively shows how gender is a process; both something we do and something that is done to us. I’ve always suspected that one of the reasons people resist the idea of gender being societally constructed is that while it is easy to see obvious parts of gender socialization, easy to see for instance why society might have an influence on girls liking pink, lots of gender socialization takes place on a much more subtle level. It is harder for people to see how gender socialization results in actual physical differences between men and women. Martin’s article is important because it can challenge claims that gender differences are “natural”.  Martin shows us how the bodies of girls and boys are treated differently in subtle ways every day that over a childhood result in physical gendered differences in adulthood.

For me the most interesting question to ask about Martin’s reading is what are the larger, long term implications for the way the boys and girls are being gendered? One of the most disturbing sections to ask this question about is the section on controlling voice. As we see in the reading, little girls are told over and over again to be quiet and to use their “indoor voices”. The most disturbing instance of this to me is the scene recounted by Martin where Amy uses a loud voice to tell Keith to stop trying to knock over her tower – protecting herself and her space – and the first thing the teacher does when noticing is not to tell Keith to stop but to tell Amy to speak quieter. Using a loud voice is a form of power. Whether it is the power to control a room when taking a role of authority or the power to protect yourself by calling for help when being attacked, being able to speak up and more importantly, being used to speaking up is important. When the teacher tells Amy to say it quieter, she doesn’t use a quieter tone of voice, she uses less assertive language as well. When girls are told their entire lives to be quieter, power is being taken away from them.

Martin writes near the conclusion of her article about the construction of gendered differences between men and women that “these differences create a context for social relations in which differences confirm inequalities of power (505).” So when we ask what the long term implications of the way boys are and girls are being gendered, we should also be answering the question how do the differences in the ways men and women’s bodies are gendered maintain inequalities of power? When Amy is told to be quiet even when attempting to protect herself and her space, we can see the beginning of a pattern of socialization that results in women being unable to find their voices when they are being raped. When Martin writes about how little girl’s appearances are under more scrutiny than little boy’s appearances, I couldn’t help but think of Michelle Bachman and the fact that her French tip manicure was more scrutinized by the press after a presidential debate than anything that came out of her mouth. We should take from Martin’s reading the knowledge that gendered differences are created and when we ask why they matter, the answer is ultimately about power.