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Sophia Schultz
Mary Martin
English 110
21 November 2014
Silhouettes to Fill
Weve all heard our moms say, Oh honey, youve got to be a good little girl and you
cant ever get in trouble. And we hear our dads tell our brothers Youve got to toughen
up, stand up for yourself, and protect your sister. As a child, I always wondered why
boys had to be the tough ones. Why couldnt I stand up for myself? Why couldnt I
even be independent? And I wondered why boys were always the ones in fights. On the
playgrounds, the boys would be playing soccer or football, and the girls would be talking
on the benches and swings, and when a few brave girls dared to go out on the field,
they were met with, Get out of here! Girls cant play soccer! All you do is cry! As a third
grader, I always thought it was funny whenever the boys would get hit by the ball, and
they would have to go sit by the teacher with an ice pack on their leg, and crying like his
family just died.
As a young girl, I was pressured to be nicer and make better decisions than my boy
cousins and friends. If I would have misbehaved, I would have been reprimanded with
something like, Sophia, is that how a little girl is supposed to act? You should know
better! But, when my male cousin did the same thing, I would hear the adults say, Oh,

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hes such a boy! Always curious and causing trouble. I waited for his scolding or
timeout, but I was left disappointed and angry. Also, I remember when I would sit on the
sidewalk, with the same cousin, and I would see a ladybug wander up to where Im
sitting and I would let it pass, push it into the grass, or the least bit, kill it quick and
mercifully. When the ladybug met my cousin, they were put through rounds of being
trapped, sprayed, torn apart, and tortured. I tried to tell him that the bug had a family to
go home to with kids that would live without a mother or father. Simply, he responded
with, I dont care, its a bug. I wondered why boys were always the ones to torture the
ladybugs, dominate the soccer field, and talk with their fists.
Looking back now, I know its because we were taught to act differently. We
were forced into roles of gender stereotypes and taught completely different moral
codes. While women are expected to be caretakers and homemakers, men are the
power and wealth. Women are expected to grow up as good little girls and into
mindful, submissive, and pleasing wives and mothers. Men, on the other hand, are
supposed to grow up as curious, adventurous tough little boys and into aggressive,
emotionless and violent men.

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The picture above shows a young boy who has just been in a fight and is
bloodied up. Below it says Man up. The boy most likely was being bullied or teased
and was given this advice by his father or an older male. When young boys hear this,
they think they only have two choices. Man up or get beat up. In Being a Man, by Paul
Theroux, he admits to have taken insult from such phrases as, Be a man! or Man up!
He argues that these words condition men to, Be stupid, be unfeeling, obedient,
soldierly and stop thinking. (Theroux 1) These characteristics have been passed down
from generation to generation. The guidelines form the silhouette of a real man. Boys
want to grow up to fit into this silhouette and think they must change to fit into the
silhouette, but it cant change to fit them. If they dont man up they will disappoint who
ever gave them this advice and they will continue to be tormented. If we taught boys
that it is okay to talk about things or walk away without their pride being shattered, that
they would still be respected, they would become less violent and aggressive adults.
In Bros Before Hos: The Guy Code, Michael Kimmel, a sociologist, gives the
Real Guys Top Ten List, this list acts as the Ten Commandments for boys and men on

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how to act and think. The list is the following: 1. Boys Dont Cry 2. Its Better to be
Mad than Sad 3. Dont Get Mad,- Get Even 4. Take It Like a Man 5. He Who has
the Most Toys When He Dies, Wins 6. Just Do It 7. Size Matters 8. I Dont Stop for
Directions 9. Nice Guys Finish Last 10. Its All Good (Kimmel 699) This list is
embedded into boys heads at incredibly young ages, and it reflects when they grow into
teens and adults. I know Ive witnessed these rules put into action. In the halls at school,
I couldnt count how many times Ive seen a girl crying to her friends, while her boyfriend
who notoriously cheats, is standing behind her laughing with his friends completely
unbothered by the situation. Not only does it not bother him that she is crying, but he
knows he can continue to cheat and he will still get the girls he wants, because he sees
himself as superior to women and doesnt account for their feelings, because he
objectifies them. This situation is a prime example of a Class A jerk demonstrating rules
#1, 3, 4, 9, and 10. Addressing rule #8, I Dont Stop to Ask for Directions, I dont know
how many times my family has wound up lost because my dad refuses to stop and ask
for directions and insisted he knew where he was going. My mother, my sister and I sat
there telling him to stop or at least get the GPS out, to no avail. This always seemed to
me like an insignificant scene that played out every now and then, but when I ask
myself why my Dad is the one who turns down directions and my Mom has the
destination plugged into the GPS before weve left the driveway, it goes back farther
than my Dad being stubborn and my mother being a worry wart. It goes back to what
they were taught. He was taught that a man doesnt need help, along with the other
rules of men. Im in no way bashing on my Dad or his father, but stating that they were
born immersed in the moral stereotypes and what they can lead to.

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From birth, boys are distanced from their mothers. This causes boys to grow up
without the exposure to a mothers nurturance that a mother might give to her daughter.
With less exposure to this, boys do not learn how to imitate it. Mothers show more
affection towards their daughters rather than their sons, causing the boy to feel
abandoned and lost. The boy cant relate to his mother anymore and the mother doesnt
see herself in her son, like she does in her daughter. The boy is hurt and is emotionally
trapped. Boys learn to relieve this stress and feeling of hopelessness through violent
playground games and avoiding anything related to females. They learn this violent
behavior and it becomes permanent. Also, boys are anatomically more prone to having
a lower resistance to neglect, for example, less nurturance and affection, than girls
because males have a smaller corpus callosum. This makes boys more susceptible to
long term psychological abuse and damage to the corpus callosum. Abuse or neglect
greatly shrinks the size of the corpus callosum, whereas the same area of girls of the
same age, was not affected at all. The decrease in size of the corpus callosum makes
boys and men more impulsive, less empathetic with more fears and a weaker self.
These characteristics are the ingredients to make bad morals. So, while most women
and some men would like to say men are morally inferior to women, you cant simply
say that all men are jerks, and thats all. Men act the way they do because from birth
they were subtly taught that men shouldnt relate to women at all, that men arent
supposed to show feelings and that men dont need love and affection to be a real
man.
So, now, the question is what are the outcomes of gender based moral codes?
Well, if we look at the escalating levels of violence against women, there is an

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interesting correlation between the declining morals of man and the violence against
women. It is estimated that of all women killed in 2012, almost half were killed by
intimate partners or family members. (UN Women) Why is violence against women
becoming more common? I think it is because of the moral expectations placed on men.
They feel pressured to act without morals. Men arent supposed to act with feelings and
they cant let women think they are in control or have any power. If men dont carry out
these beliefs, then they are considered less of a man and face the same violence.
Around one hundred and twenty million girls, worldwide (slightly more than one in ten)
have experienced forced intercourse or other forced sexual acts at some point in their
lives. (UN Women) If men were taught differently and were raised to embrace their
natural kindness and not be branded as a man but as a human, they wouldnt feel the
importance to uphold the morals given to males. Women and men would have an equal
moral guidelines that all humans could live by.
In order for this to happen, society needs to change its view of how men should
treat women, and how women should respond to men. In The Moral Sense, Wilson talks
about a member of a tribe in Kenya, who strongly felt the need to show that men are
superior to women and he said he was entitled to come and go as he pleases and he
said he could buy, sell, and beat his wife at any time. The women of the same
community said their husbands were never affectionate and never helped in raising
kids. (Wilson 172)This is an example of how bad a community can get when there are
no rules against his behavior towards women.

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An era where the attitude towards women significantly changed for the better,
and shows its possible to have a society where men treat women with kindness and
violence is not overlooked was the Victorian era. Wilson states that during this time,
both alcohol abuse and crime rates declined in England and America during a period.
This era required a society-wide definition of proper behavior to replace the pre modern
definitions enforced by kinship groupings and the feudal definition enforced by the
aristocracy. (Wilson 173) An entire society was able to encourage and raise men to act
with Victorian morality and treat women with respect and equality, because the men
were given different moral standards than they are given now. When treating a woman
with respect is the social norm, then most people will abide by it, but if its not, then most
wont.
Another issue we face is the ignorance of todays women. Most women don't
know how much violence is out there, and we accept the mistreatment of our sex.
Women know that some men consider us less than them and we dont think twice about
it. There is music, TV, art, and other sources that provide men with encouragement and
support violence in general, and especially violence against women. Men observe this
and think that is what they are supposed to do, and women observe this and either
completely ignore it, or they adapt to it. One of the women from the tribe from Kenya I
stated above, professed to accept this as a natural state of affairs, This being the
daily beatings forced sexual acts. The women of these tribes have become accustomed
and numb to the violence towards them that they have accepted that that is the way the
world works, and although they do wish to be treated better, they dont believe that they
are capable of changing the way the men of their tribe think. The fact that these women

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dont believe they can leave and think resistance is futile, is traced back to the
submissiveness that was engraved in them by their misogynistic society and the
physical, verbal, and psychological damage done to them by men and other women.
They become the submissive roles that these songs and shows cast them as, thinking
this is the only way the can truly live up to being a woman and the only way they can
win a mans love. Women also use this view of themselves to try to gain power or make
money. In From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos, Joan Morgan claims that women are
conforming to the stereotypical expectations of a woman and men the same for their
gender, though women are choosing to do this themselves, while men hint at regret of
following the rules given to them. In Every-day Struggle by Notorious B.I.G, the lyrics I
dont wanna live no more / Sometimes I see death knockin at my front door reflect
Biggies sense of regret for living a dangerous life style that he is expected to live as a
male rapper (Morgan 446). Most men dont want to live like this, but feel if they act
differently they will be alone and ridiculed, so they trade their life for acceptance.

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Works Cited

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Theroux, Paul. "Being a Man." Sunrise with Seamonsters: Travels & Discoveries, 19641984. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. Print.

Kimmel, Michael S. ""Bros Before Hos": The Guy Code." Guyland: The Perilous World
Where Boys Become Men. New York: Harper, 2008. Print.

Wilson, James Q. The Moral Sense. New York: Free ;, 1993. Print.

DeMause, Lloyd. "Why Males Are More Violent." The Origins of War in Child Abuse.
Institute for Psychohistory, 2010. Print.

Morgan, Joan. "From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos." When Chickenheads Come Home to
Roost: My Life as a Hip-hop Feminist. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Print.