It's not about the sex. Or sex: Lessons on gender typing and assault
599485
I found myself thinking about this six-word paragraph I read in Anthem: "I am. I think. I will." The words were so powerful, but they kept turning into questions in my mind. I am. Who am I? I think. What do I think? I will. I will what? Maybe I will, but maybe I won't. Maybe I will, but maybe I don't. Maybe I don't will anything. Maybe it all happens regardless of my will.

In case you didn't get the drift from the above quote alone, Maybe I Will is powerful. It's intense and devastating, in part, because of the tragedy that befalls the protagonist and for the most part, because of the way it is written itself.

We do not know much about Sandy in the beginning. We do not know his(/her) gender, for instance. Sandy's parents intended to name the main character Sandy, short for Sandford or Sandra. What was it finally short for? We do not know. At the same time, we know that Sandy is a powerhouse of amazing on stage. That Sandy is a sophomore who takes high school seriously... seriously enough to think hard over his/her assignments anyway. We also know that Sandy really hits it off with a co-actor in the Peter Pan play; Shanika Washington. That Sandy loves the Bard, quotes Shakespeare in a way that is infectious and watches Hamlet for fun. That Sandy seems to have loving and caring parents and good enough friends. That Sandy is incredibly, inspiringly and realistically resilient. So. Do we know Sandy after all?

Despite not knowing Sandy's sex or sexual orientation... constructs that seem to be enough to characterise most Young Adult protagonists these days... don't we know Sandy? Irrespective of the exclusion of Sandy's gender from the story which would've probably influenced our thoughts of Sandy as either "sensitive" or "angsty" depending on whether Sandy was male or female... or as gay or straight... we know Sandy. In fact, we know more of Sandy, now that the labels have been tucked away from our line of vision.

Then, at the central point of the story comes the act of violence that you anticipate and yet barely see coming... the consequences on Sandy's esteem, health and social life shock you. Sandy is sexually assaulted... there is no other word for it... or is there? Because just like the other carefully label-excluded aspects of the story, the incident, despite being crude and aggressive and violating, is clearly not about sex.

The assault makes Sandy feel violated and vulnerable and friendless... reduced to a shell. Redefining Sandy; as he/she questions things that were once taken for granted.

Maybe I Will blew.me.away. It figuratively shattered me into tiny pieces as I felt like I was witness to a shock, slow breakdown and at the same time, incredible efforts to regain sense of self in the wake of a nightmare. It made me question our natural tendency to gender type due to the total absence of gender typing in the book. It made me reevaluate my feelings towards sexual assault... making me realise that it wasn't about how far the perpetrator got or how physically bruised the person was at all because it's not about sex. It never was.

In case you're wondering, I started off picturing Sandy as a girl (it must have something to do with the abundance of female protagonists in Young Adult fiction) and then, when I realised the sex was never mentioned, tried imagining Sandy as a boy... and gradually, after switching back and forth a few times, I ended up reading Sandy as... Sandy. That made for a very liberating and different experience! Maybe I Will has been compared to Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and while it is definitely recommended for those who read and loved Speak, I think this novel stands on its own in terms of the barriers it breaks and the way it picks apart the assault; zeroing in on the core of what it really was.
4067888
Great book! A useful and even important meditation on what it means to be male in today's world.

Tim Patten starts with a traditional model of male vs. female childhood development:
--When socializing, boys roughhouse, compete, work out pecking order, and aspire to leadership in a communal learning setting. In this manner, "boys gain insights about dependability, self-respect, courage, and the need to avoid recklessness in time of danger or when surrounded by myriad threats." (p. 27)
--Girls, on the other hand, befriend others, share things, and play games that teach them social skills. They use language and social skills to approve or ostracize. They rely on appearance and clothing to make a social impact rather than masculine skills of bravery and risk-taking.
--Feminists say that this kind of gender division is a "social construct," and they regard boys' competitiveness, roughhousing, and stoicism as the precursors of "toxic masculinity." They have been pushing to drive such male characteristics off the playground and out of the schools, resulting in boys being marginalized and girls getting ahead in school.

Tim Patten responds that neither style of development (male or female) is good or bad; it's just different. Just to take one example out of many: Both women and men can be brave. For men, bravery and heroism is the willingness to risk danger to rescue a total stranger in crisis. It arises from what they learned as boys: sports, play fighting, and roughhousing. They learned to think and act courageously, to evaluate risks and rewards associated with various outcomes, and to act as needed to survive. Women, meanwhile, have their own models of bravery, such as speaking out about injustice, going above and beyond the call of duty to help others in a professional capacity such as doctors and nurses, and risking their lives for children out of maternal instinct. They are great at being supportive and networking to help others, and they don't mind reaching out for help themselves. The MeToo movement has demonstrated the bravery of women speaking up on social media to help others.

But men are still largely the source of the kind of bravery and physical prowess that drives them to jump into a river to save a drowning person or run into a house fire to pull someone to safety. These sorts of heroics show their "empathy and a deep-rooted concern for others." (p. 36) Men will willingly devote their entire lives to a quest to improve and benefit civilization.

Patten follows up with a number of similar examples, in many cases providing useful advice for men on how to take care of themselves in the modern world. Patten's book is not anti-women. He acknowledges the strengths women bring to the table on their own. He also praises those women who choose to embrace masculine virtues: It's one more proof that these qualities are the gold standard. Ultimately the book is about equality and the right to embrace one's strengths without being demonized for them.

The book is self-published, and thus suffers from the typical problems of that genre; it could use the help of a good editor, and it could provide more citations to support the author's assertions. But to repeat what I said at the start: It's still a useful and even important meditation on the nature of masculinity and how important masculine qualities remain in the modern world.
1441692
The author does a creditable job to illustrate the differences between gendertrolling and general trolling. However, most of the people chosen as voices in the book will be unfamiliar to the average person, and the reason for their inclusion (rather than someone else) is often not clear. Gendertrolling is a misnomer as well, women are trolled for being women (i.e. on the basis of sex) rather than gender. This subject deserves a definitive book, I do not believe that this is that book.
648560
Wow! Great read; thought-provoking reflection questions. While pocket-sized in format, the book is content-rich super-sized.  Appreciate the challenge for honorable men and women to work together to reduce gender bias, stereotyping and close the gender gap.
3717423
This straightforward guide to family and friends of transgender people meets an important social need.  As Jamison Green observed in the foreword, the book discusses the challenges faced by transgender people - particularly those who are transitioning from their birth gender role to that of the other sex, that is, those who have often been called "transsexuals" - without lapsing into emotion-driven argument, reliance on personal narrative or anecdote, or ideology.  It is a slim, manageable book that touches on a range of issues.  The author, Nicholas Teich, acknowledges that individuals may prefer different labels or have different ways of analyzing their identities without allowing the multiplicity of opinions to distract from his clear, direct explanations.  Family members of transgender people who have basic questions or misgivings about the prospect of someone shifting gender roles should certainly read this book to empower themselves with a good general sense of how many transgender people understand their identities within a broader social context, as well as the sorts of resources that are available to help.
1278681
This book does an excellent job of explaining social psychology, comprehensively covering subjects including self esteem, self presentation, stereotypes, prejudice, sexism, racism &  how to reduce the aforementioned, the link between attitudes and behavior, conformity, compliance, obedience (it explains the Milgram Shock Research test and the Jewish Holocaust), group dynamics & group processes, attraction and close relationships, helping others, the origins of aggression, its situational influences & media effects, and how it can be applied in jury selection & deliberation, confession evidence, lie detector tests, eye witness testimony, in performance appraisals, leadership, motivation, economic decision making, & in health, as it explains how stress can affect it and how to effectively cope with it.

It cites numerous studies throughout the text, gives a summary of subjects presented  and a self test labeled "Putting Common Sense to the Test" at the end of each chapter,  provides many charts and tables to assist in illustration, has a 6 page glossary of terms & 81 pages of cited references at the end of book

I agree with the 5 star review by Ms. Amie Rudolph (September 22, 2013), as it is a wonderful source of social & psychological material and the 4 star review by Gian Fiero (October 11, 2011) that "...(the authors have) combined their expertise and efforts to create a contemporary and highly meticulous introduction to social psychology which provides a breadth and depth of knowledge that offers lucid insights into how we, as individuals, think, feel, and behave in a social context."

Here are a couple of worthy quotes from the book.
On trying to avoid stereotypes (p. 145)  "Rather than try to suppress thoughts about a stereotyped group, one of the best strategies for avoiding the influence of stereotypes is to try instead to activate thoughts about the individual who happens to be a member of that group.  When we have specific, personal information about an individual, stereotypes and other preconceptions can lose relevance and have less impact on how we respond to that person."

On resiliency or hardiness (p. 523):  "...hardy people have three characteristics:  (1)commitment, a sense of purpose with regard to one's work, family, and other domains, (2)challenge, an openness to new experiences and a desire to embrace change, (3)control, the belief that one has the power to influence future outcomes."
1527299
Baron-Cohen has a simple thesis: women are better empathizers and men are better systematizers. Is it true? Maybe. He takes the voluminous literature on sex differences and attempts to cram them into this dichotomy, with some success.
 One wonders, however, if this is warranted. Can all of the differences really be attributed to different brain types? What does a brain type really even mean? This aside, his synthesis is powerful, especially the view that autism results from having an extreme male brain. Cohen also dispels notions, too popular in sociological circles, that these differences can be attributed to societal gender-roles, parenting, or culture-in toto.
 He reviews studies showing that infants as early as one day old show sex differences in behavior. For example, males will stare longer at a mobile than a human face, whereas for females it is just the opposite. Another study showed that the amount of testosterone in the amniotic fluid of mothers predicted their childs early language skill and the amount of time they made eye-contact with other children. These are only a few of the studies cited to back Cohen's argument. Individually, each is open to criticism; together, using the principle of aggregation, the evidence compiled is insurmountable.
 Cohen is extremely fair and undogmatic, which is the sign of a good scientist. The E/S brain hypothesis is provacative, interesting and should provoke further research and thought. If you really want to know the nitty gritty of sex differences though, I would recommend a few of the books that Cohen uses for his synthesis, such as 'Male-Female' by David Geary, 'Sex Differences in Cognition' by Doreen Kimura, and 'The Two Sexes' by Elanor Maccoby. These books provide more detailed information on sex differences and their evolution. After you read these books, read Cohen's book and ask yourself: does the E/S theory make sense of all the detailed differences that are known in the literature, or is it a little bit procrustean in its attempt to slam everything into an either/or dichotomy? The truth is yours to judge.
2196836
i enjoyed Gender Game. Interesting subject and easy read. I have also read the second book in the series and have just started the third
4518326
Sherry Turkle is a sociologist and a clinical psychologist. Her pioneering work has been  done in the realm of computer mediated human interaction. One of her most commented  on books is Life on the Screen: Identity in the  Age of the Internet. This book is a serious  look at the concept of  identity and how identity is shaped on the Internet and through  computer  mediation.
Her major topic is how humans contain self on the Internet.  She also spends a great deal  of time discussing relationships on the  Internet. With splintered selves involved,  relationships become more  complex. Her research on the way women and men view  online sexuality is  fascinating. Anyone interested in how the young people of the very near  future will discover their sexual selves would do well to read this book.  While Turkle is  fairly straightforward in her findings, they may terrify  some readers. This is a completely  new sexuality, a completely foreign way  of doing things. Her view is, of course, fairly  clinical, but, in the end,  I think she shows an amazing affinity with the people she has  worked with.  Turkle is not worried about the splintering of self. On the contrary, she  thinks that some of these tactics: being able to play with and discover  parts of yourself  that you normally don't interact with is vital to  development and mental health.
Another area that Turkle tackles is  Artificial Intelligence. She considers AI to be the next  frontier. These  AI will be interacted with as a matter of course in the coming years,  according to the author. Again, this area enthralls some readers and  frightens others.  Turkle is excited about what AI can do in terms of  promoting dialog. Turkle sees the  Internet challenging notions of what it  means to be alive, notions of true identity, and the  idea of  community.
Turkle is at her best when she explores the concept of how  people view themselves  online. How they splinter off bits of their  personality into different entities and play with  and shape those  identities. I can heartily suggest this book for anyone that works with  K-12 students, for it is these students that are growing up on the screen.  These are the  students that are discovering community outside their  immediate circle at younger and  younger ages. These are the students that  are discovering the meaning of identity online.
4 Stars out of 5.
673631
My favorite part about the book is that both the protagonist and the antagonist are never (not once) referred to via gender-inducing terms.  They are both referred to as their job, but never by name; never are they referred to as "he" or "she."  I read it more than once and got something different out of it both times.  It was an interesting exercise in learning about yourself and your own preconceptions/prejudices/stereotypes when reading.
4185994
This book is a model of how to engage theoretical concepts aboiut biopower, state surveillance of bodies, the intersections of gender and race, and racial formations without losing sight of real people, their actions, and (at time limited) choices.
4529714
While this book focuses on boys, there is a lot of advice here for parents of girls as well, especially in how they relate to boys.

Author Rosalind Wiseman, who has a natural way of explaining the behavior of boys and men, offers many examples in this book in dealing with boys.  She starts out with how boys are treated in our society, as action-figures with strength but with little obvious emotion.  It's what Wingmen calls the "Act Like a Man Box" or ALMB. Sadly, that is not how boys really are; boys stifle their emotions because their action-figure heroes never have shown emotion, either.

One area that Wiseman explains well is the social pressure that boys' parents put on their sons.  Their sons are expected to be the smart, good-looking, popular jock that everyone looks up to.  Most boys don't fall into that category; it's reserved for the 10%.  Friendships between boys that started perhaps in Kindergarten often die out by the time the boy is in middle school because of the often artificially-elevated social status. She divides this boys into eight groups:  The influential Mastermind, the talkative Associate, the bullying Bouncer, the comedic Entertainer, the hovering Fly, the free-dealing Champion, the worrying Conscience, the tolerant Punching Bag.  This is the hierarchy in Boy World.

While girls have always been portrayed as sex objects, boys have been portrayed as the predators, and Wisemen shows how both stereotypes have harmed the emotional development of girls and boys.  Girls and boys suffer from many of the same afflictions.  Boys have a negative body image of themselves as well.  Parents can not put the blame on either gender when it comes to meting out punishment.  Instead, the parent should hold back raw emotion and let the child explain why something went wrong. She offers many highlighted "landmines," things not to say when explaining to the son why things are the way they are.

While Wingmen may at times sound repetitive, she is only offering multiple examples of similar cases.  Her chapters on "Social Networking" and :Video Killed the Radio Star" are right on with boy behavior.  Wingmen stresses giving the child responsibility for his actions, both good and bad, and also enforcing any punishment in a humble manner.  There is no need to humiliate or degrade the child.  It's more important to set down boundaries and to carry out any punitive actions when boundaries are exceeded.  Any child will feel raw anger; let him express that naturally.

This book is a must-read for parents of boys and girls, because ultimately parents of boys will have to deal with girls.  I also highly recommend this for teachers and for anyone else working with teens of both sexes.  There is so much insightful stuff in this that I'm surprised I didn't come up with some of the observations myself.
126194
I have long been fascinated by the topic of this book: how sexist language shapes our consciousness, our reality.

Published in 1980, this is not a light read, rather academic in style. Much of it was engaging, some of it was repetitive.

We learn of the many ways in which women have been silenced throughout history (the taking on of husbands' surnames, that women have been forbidden from discussing marital affairs with other women, that expressing an opinion isn't feminine, the letting slip 'out of print' of numerous works by female writers, etc).

The consequent muting and invisibility of women has allowed men to be viewed as the primary sex (with women as 'other' or 'deviant'). Reality for both women and men then is seen from the male perspective which, in turn, has shaped language.

Now that language describes male reality and not female reality, it can hold the patriarchy in place because it seems like the norm, and even women defend it. Females who object are seen as whining and unreasonable, whereas those females are simply suggesting that men be reasonable and give back what they have taken.

Men (and often women) insist that the terms 'mankind,' 'man,' and 'he' encompass women, that they refer to 'people.' But if we compare these two sentences, we see the lie:
--Man goes to war with his enemies
--Man breastfeeds his children

Up until recently sexual language (as well as all other language) was based on the male point of view. For example:
--Penetration. This is what the man does. The same act, from the heterosexual female perspective, could be described as 'enclosure.' That this seems absurd highlights the issue.
--Rape: The word means 'seize.' Rapacious (meaning 'greedy') comes from the same Latin root. This word conveys nothing of the painful, terrifying experience for a woman.

When the expressions 'sexist' and 'sexual harassment' entered the English language, this was ground-breaking. Women at last had some words they could use to describe their experience in their own terms.

This book didn't make me as angry as I'd expected (maybe because women are more liberated since 1980), but I'm still pissed off.

Natasha Holme
Author of 'Lesbian Crushes and Bulimia: A Diary on How I Acquired my Eating Disorder'
4377373
Tannen's book is well done and worth the read.  No question.  But...  it's also imbued with a subtle (sometimes not-so-subtle) bias that female modes of communication and other propensities are inherently superior to males'.  The examples of female communications/activities are almost uniformly praised and those of males are frequently disparaged, either subtly or explicitly.

If you read the book, and I recommend you do, you should keep an eye out for the bias.  Actually, doing that is a good exercise in learning to spot this form of sexism.  Sexism is bad, no matter whom it is directed toward.

Overall, still, highly recommended.
3097206
I have mixed emotions about this book. In one sense it's antithetical to the thrust of my own research, which suggests that boys have actually been damaged in recent years (see in particular "The War Against Boys," by Hoff-Sommers) as a result of a societal abandonment and rejection of such traditional "masculine" traits as aggression and--for want of a better phrase--"reckless initiative" (which is what it sometimes takes to get things done in daunting situations, a la Flight 93). This is particularly true in America's schools; there is considerable evidence that, by steering boys away from behaviors and attitudes that may well be hard-wired, the pop-psychology movement has created enormous levels of stress and detachment (and, ironically, greater aggression) in perfectly healthy kids whose only "crime" was being in touch with their masculine cores.

Where I'll give Kindlon credit is that at least he's thinking about the topic, trying to mediate between the traditional stereotypes and some of the more "enlightened" views of what it means to be masculine, feminine, etc. This is an area where people will need to do a lot of reading and draw their own conclusions, as I'm not sure there's a "right" and "wrong"--at least, not one that we can know for sure at this juncture.
4560733
This book provides a context and a vocabulary to think and talk - sometimes finding the right words is the hardest part - about the sexism pervasive today. I recommend it to anyone who has thought that something wasn't right, perhaps the problem has tugged at the corners of your mind, but you couldn't quite point to one event or one quote and say, "That is problematic, and for these exact reasons." Douglas lays out the current sexist climate by tracing the recent (~1990-2010) evolution of how women are portrayed by popular television programs, including the news.

The upshot is that the ever present `double standard' is more deeply entrenched, but more subtle and more insidious than in recent history. Because so many women have succeeded in their respective areas, they are easy to single out as evidence of our having `gotten past' sexism. But Douglas thoroughly demonstrates that most of these women - the super-successful role models - are each widely considered to have some fatal flaw in their `femininity' that is generally held to be undermining of their success, which has the effect of taking them down a notch and thereby making it okay for them to have such great success in the primary arena for which they are known. Examples include Janet Reno, who is clearly too masculine and unwomanly (and who was asked repeatedly about her sexual orientation by Congress, because a woman who doesn't make up her face is obviously a lesbian and therefore inappropriate for a leadership position), and Hillary Clinton, dowdy and (of course) cheated upon. Never mind that these women are brilliant and qualified for complex responsibilities in ways that very few people - men or women - could be. The treatment of Anita Hill is discussed. It will make you sick all over again.

The other double standards Douglas gets into are not new: the successful business women who are incomplete and deeply (if secretly) unhappy because they haven't fulfilled their biological mandate to reproduce, or the young bitchy hotties who lash out at their peers in repressed fury over having to maintain their hotness. Her analysis shows how the constant portrayal of women as emotional and weak in a fashion that is not echoed by the portrayal of men even when it is clear that men in that situation exhibit the same responses (e.g. it's okay for a dude to punch a wall in anger - that's normal - but a woman who becomes teary-eyed in frustration is weak and overly emotional) undermines all of us. There are many more case studies than I mention here. They all make clear the impossibility of satisfying the mutually exclusive tenets of whichever double standard happens to apply. The tragedy is that no woman escapes the double standard in some form.

Enlightened Sexism took a little while to gather its steam; for the first half, although the case studies were interesting, I was also waiting for Douglas to start to pull it all together and start to make her point. But it became evident that her approach was necessary in order to make explicit the behaviors that she then cites in support of her conclusion. By the last third of the book, I appreciated the approach. By then end of the book, I was glad I'd invested the time. Enlightened Sexism doesn't read like a novel, and although I'm a great reader I had to put it down often. In part, this was to ruminate. I'd seen all of the things described by Douglas, but never quite in the full light of day...

I had the good fortune to grow up in era following the feminist successes of the 60s and 70s, and to experience relatively little in-your-face sexism. In my teens during the 80s, I thought woman's groups were outdated and unnecessary. Now that I can see a little further, I heartily recommend this book. Had I read one like it 20 years ago, my fuzzily-defined discomfort with all the double standards that I straddle may not have taken so long to become clear.
2212424
Behavioral Genes, ISBN: 9781507722947, by James D. Beard, PhD is a how-to book in e-book format.
This apparently is the third book in a series by this author extending information on the relatively new discipline of epigenetics and the means it offers to effect change in ones genetically inherited actions and reactions. He begins by explaining how our daily actions largely are affected by our genetic heritage and how, although 99% are similar in all individuals, 1% are different and can be influenced. He further examines how our emotions, our ability to become self-aware and cultural factors all play an active part in these actions/reactions. An examination of genetic heritability next provides insights to intro/extroversion, neuroticism, attitudes toward gay marriage, drinking, the death penalty, censorship, integrity, compassion and amusingly, even different thought patterns exhibited by Republicans and Democrats where about 60% are due to genetics rather than logical thinking. He also sites work at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at NIH that has demonstrated that thinking a treatment will be effective (the placebo effect) actually can be effective in 32% of cases. Among a host of other factors explored are human emotions (a list of the core human emotions included), origins of personality, the conscious and subconscious mind, both hedonic and intrinsic happiness (list included), stress, hurt feelings and other interpersonal action/results, love, and differences between men and women and their reactions. Then a look at epigenetics is provided, along with a discussion of the genome and epigenome, the importance of introspection to gain self-awareness and a method of self-hypnosis is described in detail. A step by step method also is provided for acquiring permanent weight control (assumedly from his book Obesity Genes). Numerous references are included for the reader who wishes to delve further into the subjects covered.
Discussion/Conclusion: This is one of the better how-to books that seem to be appearing in sizeable numbers today. It is an accumulation of scientific material couched in an easily understandable manner that the average reader will enjoy. Granted, the book is not for everyone because it requires heavy active personal involvement. However, if the reader is willing to diligently follow the quite explicit instructions, he/she will gain an immense understanding that will lead to attainment of their goal.