Gender Liberation

When people have a baby will give different response depend on what is baby’s gender. The baby gets either a girl’s name or a boy’s name, either a pink blanket or a blue one. The parents tend to talk more with a baby girl and to roughhouse more with a baby boy. When a small girl flirts with her father, he may flirt back. When a small boy wants to play with a ball, Dad plays catch. These responses contribute to the child’s growing sense of being made or female. Even by the age of three or four, most children have a strong gender identity and have begun to learn behavior appropriate to their gender.

Today the social conditioning that shaped the “typical man” and “typical woman” of yesterday year is changing. Little girls are now encouraged to be more physically active, even to joint Little League teams. More mothers are working, and they provide different role models from the homemakers of several decades ago; children can now see that women have careers. Children also see that fathers are expected to pitch in and help with the housework; that fathers don’t always have to fit the tough “macho” stereotype of the American male, but can be loving and tender.

These changes in the way men and women are conditioned to behave affect not only their approach to work and family but also their approach to sexual experience. Some women now feel more free to be sexually assertive, and some men feel more free to express their emotional needs in a sexual relationship. Among both men and women, sexual behavior is no longer an unmentionable topic.