Gage Counts: Gender roles

Tom Franklin's Hunting Years challenged my understanding of what genders are. Prior to reading this, I understood gender roles to be certain ways that people should act which are determined by their sexual biology: boys do boy things like learn how to fix cars and girls do girl things like learn how to fix hair. Hunting Years made me realize that gender roles are much more nuanced than that.

As a child, Tom played with G.I. Joes, which I would normally assume would be a boy thing. If he played with action figures, he would be fulfilling his gender role. They way Tom talked about playing with the action figures, instead calling them "dolls," and also the pause and implied strain in his fathers' voice when he was asked if he wished Tom didn't play with the dolls leads me to believe that the gender role that Tom was supposed to fulfill was more than just doing boy things.

I remember a conversation that I had with my grandmother when I was kid. We were talking about my grandfather, and how he never knew his father too well. My grandmother's explanation was that while his father was out in the fields doing yard work, or in the garage doing mechanic work, my grandfather was in the house playing with toys. I could tell by her tone that she was wanting to spit the words out, but restrained herself. That shows me that my grandfather wasn't seen as a pussy who didn't have the status as a man, but there was a definite difference between him and his father in terms of gender.

I think what this might mean is that a failure to fulfill a specified gender role doesn't entirely remove your status as a member of that gender, but rather makes you a lesser in that gender. A reasonable response to my thought would be that this is a distinction without a difference, and I don't necessarily think that's without truth.