GENDER STEREOTYPES

Gender stereotypes, I must say, is not something peculiar in our society. I would describe gender stereotypes as norm but I guess it is a negative norm that should definitely be eradicated from our culture. Some individuals might perceive a few gender stereotypes are correctly matched to a specific gender but to some extent gender stereotypes are also used by irresponsible to degrade the contrary gender. Gender stereotypes, I believe, is also a form of sexist ideology that is used to imply superiority of one’s own gender. In Malaysia, gender stereotypes are completely common.

People have always been saying that men are lazier than women because of their masculine nature somehow makes their hard work run contrary from their nature. However, this generalization is completely irrational as I strongly believe there are an awful lot of men out there who are even more hardworking than women. Well, I personally believe, I myself am more diligent than some girls in my class when it comes to assignments, projects or presentations. This stereotype somehow degrades men and purely disgust misandry.

Besides, there is also a saying that says that men are always better than women in Mathematics-related subjects but I sometimes believe in the other way round. When I was in MRSM back then, the head of mentor of Add maths was a girl whom I thought was probably the most intelligent girl I have ever met in my entire life. She frequently scored 90 and above in add maths and I thought that was somehow very outstanding and insane. Although most of the top scorers in add maths were amongst boys but she amazingly managed to climb the rank to be the best in that particular subject.

In most of the society in Malaysia, Men are always viewed as leaders and women as the subordinates. In my opinion, I firmly believe that this argument is invalid because as we can see now many women in this world have widely become ministers and great leaders in many countries and sometimes they even surpass men such as Hillary Clinton, Shahrizat Abd Jalil and Zeti Aziz. Their achievements in becoming charismatic leaders in their own fields should definitely be an indication to all women in this world that they are capable of becoming of what men become and doing whatever chores men are capable of doing. Women should realise that they are never weak as depicted in medieval times back then where women were regarded as the oppressed group and being put in the lowest rank in societal hierarchy.

 

Last but not least, the belief that I have always been developing an animosity towards which is the belief those women should not study or go to college because they will eventually end up cooking in the kitchen. This is somehow a complete misogynistic belief that denotes that women are the ones who should be devoting themselves to be concerned about the welfare of their marriage and children instead of doing things for themselves. This sexist ideology also deems that women deserve no education to improve themselves to be of the same level as men and they are always regarded as the inferior gender in the society.  Idiom that states ‘Women belong in the kitchen’ that is often used in Malay books or reading materials can actually describe how barbaric Malay culture was back then.

  

DIFFERENTIAL RESPECT

Respect is indeed a subjective thing to be intellectually interpreted by our moral judgements and cognitive ability. But if I were to describe respect, I would say it is never fair.  Differential respect occurs at many stages of the society.  Most individuals would describe it with the term ‘double standard’ which indicates different level of respect people often give when they encounter different people.

 

Frankly speaking, differential respect is also not an odd thing in Malaysia and other countries. I had this male driving instructor whom I believe had shown no respect towards male students . When he had to teach male students, he obviously did not show any enthusiasm or interest to teach them and he often yelled in our ears when we made mistakes like not giving a signal or when the engine suddenly happened to stop but ironically when he had to teach female students, he went from a being a super fierce to a kind and gentle old man you probably could ever think of. That shows that he respected his female students more than his male students because I believe it was in his nature to favour girls more than boys.

 

In high school, I have encountered numerous situations that I believe somehow portray differential respect. For example, female teachers usually favour their male students more than their female students. Through my observation when being a high schooler, female teachers are most likely to be more approachable to popular male students compared to their female students because technically male students are always described to be more naughty, rebellious and affectionate than female students.

OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE SCALE

 

These two natures of stereotypes are best described via the examples in a school or a college environment. Teachers, tutors or lecturers who are perceived to use the objective scale often set standard marking schemes or standard evaluation so that his/her objectives will be accomplished. This way of evaluating might seem a little strict but in a way it is more reliable because it is perceived as a method or scale that is free from bias. Students will first be informed regarding how they will be evaluated and thus they will be satisfied upon receiving the results in the end.

But for subjective scale, on the other hand, students are not given the basic guidelines or the components they will be evaluated and thus when dissatisfaction occurs, they will blame the lecturer or the teacher. Besides, this scale is also open to self-serving bias thus making this type of scale as a bit inaccurate and unethical.

 

I used to have a teacher when I was in high school and she assigned me and my classmates into a few groups for a presentation regarding periodic table of elements in Chemistry. She, I believe, had used a subjective scale to grade us which she did not set any scheme or standard to evaluate our marks. In the end, it turned out that a male student whom she favoured the most got the highest mark for that presentation even though that particular student was obviously naive during the presentation and it was dreadful. That somehow raised dissatisfaction among me and my other classmates about the inequality that rose from the teacher’s subjective scale to evaluate students.

(Shazrul Hafiz)

SOCIAL LEARNING VIEW 

In the last social psychology class, we presented a role play about stereotype, prejudice and discrimination I became a social psychology’s teacher with full of prejudice in action but denied with words. From the class, I am interested most in Social Learning View which explains by Miss Hanis because of the acronym AMIM. It seems easily to memorize. A stands for Attention, M represents Memory, I is Imitation and M is for Motivation.

We cannot deny that parents are the most influential person in children’s life because they learn more from their parents in their journey of growing up. Children are shaped by what the parents wish and want. Besides that, children also have tendency to follow the parents’ behaviour because they use their observation skill. For example, my lil brother asks my dad playing in the park but my dad refuses (just want to see how he wanna persuade him). Then, my dad wears his slipper and goes to house compound. My brother grabs his slipper in hand and chases my dad quickly. He doesn’t know how to wears the slipper by himself. He wears the slipper in front of my dad right after he gets my father. My dad says that he is clever. I smile watching his cuteness action. Starting from that day, when he wants to go outside he will wears his slipper. After a few times teaching him how to wears the slipper he can wear by himself without any help. We also advise that he must wear shoes to protect his legs from microorganism. I can see that it is easy to teach a kid than adult.

 

(Wan Rawanis)

SUBTYPE

Subtype is a type of specific things within a larger, more general group. When we want to discriminate some group, we will discriminate the subtype in a larger group. As for example, we can see in most of the people nowadays, they tend to have prejudice and stereotype towards married couples that do not have any child yet. They do not stereotype and prejudice towards all married couple. They just have the feeling of prejudice and stereotype towards married couple without child. This is what we call subtype. Sometimes, subtype is good and sometimes is not. When we have the feeling of stereotype and prejudice, it is good for us to be specific to which group we have that feeling, rather than to have stereotype and prejudice to their larger group. As for example, when we have the bad thought towards the feminist, we do not say that we prejudice towards women, but instead, we have the prejudice towards feminist only. It is good for us to classify the group rather than to see them as one group. Subtype sometimes can be good and bad us. It becomes bad when we tend to discriminate the particular group without thinking of the consequences that can lead to their larger group.

 

(Afiqah Zainon)

ESSENSES IN PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

 

Speaking of prejudice and discrimination, the related-term that I like the most is ‘essenses’. Essences happen when people are being prejudice and discriminate others by looking at their biological factor or in other words, their ancestors. The best example that could explain essences is when a white person prejudices towards another white friend when he or she knows that the friend’s grandmother is a black. Even though the friend looks like white, but since there is blacks’ blood in her body, that friend are considered just as inferior as other black. 

 

In korea, there is a famous singer name In Sooni. She is a Korean woman borne to a Korean mother and an African-american father. Even though she lives her lives 100% like a Korean (things that she’s different is only her skin tone), she was discriminated by other Korean saying she is dirty due to her tainted blood. Unable to withstand all the discrimination and bullying, she didn’t even entered high school. She faced thousand of roses’ torn to become a prominent singer. In 2007, she became famous with a song ‘a goose dream’ that reflects her hardship to become a singer because of her status as a half korean half african american.

 

*this is In Sooni, singing 'a goose's dream'

Talking about prejudice and discrimination makes me reflect myself. I do admit that as a helpless human being, sometimes I also do practice prejudice and discrimination especially towards people that have bad first impression. When I went to a camp last week, I have a little discrimination towards students in Korean program. First thing that trigger my anger is when a few of them speak informally to me knowing that I am older than them. For me, the world works in hierarchy. After I have poor first impression about them, I started to discriminate all the Korean students labeling them as rude, ignorant and over talkative. Whenever they talk in front, I would make such an ugly face and do anything else. When the camp ended, I knew that my action was so immature and shameful. Today, while I was waiting for my parents to pick me up, I met one of Korean student that was my groupmate during the camp. I apologize to her if she ever feels offended with my action and words. I realized that my discrimination is so ungrounded and irrelevant. Well, that’s my story. How about you? Are you sure you don’t being prejudice or discriminate other people lately? 

 

(Hana Diyana)

MODERN RACISM AND RISK AVERSE

Prejudice towards other group and the feeling to secure our own group cannot be deterioted by anything and we are blinded with that. Feeling belonging to one’s group requires us to feel the obligation to secure the dignity. I am a person that will always commit to my responsibilities and I don’t want other people to look down at my own group whether it involve friendship, family, race and nation. I will protect the people surround me and the group I belonging too but I just realize that this feeling sometime make me forget about the prejudice and discrimination that I have been practice since a long time and still here. I always telling my friend that no matter what happen I will not support Chinese. I will not be friends or best friends with them and I will not let myself being fooling by them. Obviously as a Malay, I will not let other races to blame or take opportunity on my group and give opportunity for them to avail us for their benefits. I am not racist but I just want to protect my own group. 

 

When I learnt Sociology or Psychology I will agree that Prejudice and discrimination is not a good thing to be practiced but then I realized that I am the one that practice it. This is what we call Modern Racism where our action or words justify everything. We don’t have to bring weapons and have war with them but by saying that we don’t like them shows that prejudice is our mind. Perhaps I have strong feeling of prejudice towards Chinese because I never have Chinese’s friends that make me to have negative thinking all the time. Personally speaking, although I show the friendliness when talking with the Chinese, for instance my father’s Chinese friend, I could not put away my prejudice towards them. When I learn about risk averse-people weigh possible losses more than equivalent potential gains, I know I am one of that people.

Now, I could see the clear reasons why I always have prejudice toward Chinese because I am afraid Malay people will lose everything that we have today if Chinese control and have power over all the races in Malaysia. I don’t even think about the benefit that we got as a Malay compare to Chinese.