How norms change our way of thinking, especially our viewpoints on gender?

Whenever we act or think, we hold a certain perspective and imagination on what is the world is actually like, what is good or what is bad, what is acceptable or what is unacceptable, what is morally right or what is ethically not, what can do or what cannot do. The culture changes us to be the person we should act, there are a significant of stereotyping that stereotype on gender. These all is a process from getting us into a person within a society by those knowledge and discourses, normalize us into a certain kind of culture, and internalize us on with those beliefs, norms, and values. We, human, as a subject, culturally constituted by the society, subjected to external social control.

“The personal is political”, which argued by Carol Hanisch(2006), has stated that the person has been constructed in social and in political, a person’s gender order can either be affected by the society or strengthened by the society. In our society, women are being constructed by subjectivity, as a subject to fit in consumerism and the ideally object in this society, the mainstream of thinking on what is a so-called “true” woman has been hegemonic by the media into our ideology, or you may say, some kind of tolerance of subordination. However, media tend to treat women as a sexual object, by which as a toy inside a male-dominated environment, mind building us on physical appearance of women is far more important than inside beauty, sending us a message that beauty is a key of success to make women feel truly confident and grab male’s attentions, purchase your own beauty to get yourself into a “real” women in people’s eyes. We are living in this kind of society, therefore, we ought to follow their norms and rules, in order to become a part of of them, not to feel alienated.

Understanding that culture is keep changing from time and places based on the society, it is difficult for a specific culture to remain consistent, different time period would form a different perspectives on how we view women and how to act as a “women”. Different gender practice could affect us on what kind of person we will eventually be, and different gender norms could also constraints how a person should be. Though these may change within the times, without them, a society cannot be formed from depriving of the cultural meanings of the gender, which is formed by human but not naturally by itself.

Hanisch, Carol (January 2006). “The Personal Is Political: The Women’s Liberation Movement classic with a new explanatory introduction”. Retrieved 2014–09–07.