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Challenging Gender Roles and Categories

THIS WAS FOR A CLASS. The pervasive idea that males are inherently more dominant and aggressive, while females are naturally more docile and emotional, has been considered a fact for most of Western society's history. This conception of sexual parts being connected to personality is pervasive in our culture today, as it was in the past. People who deviate from this norm are scrutinized and often have trouble being accepted. All of this is contained within Western culture; stepping outside this bubble can lead to the dissolution of all those ideas which within Western culture are seen as facts.

In Western culture, men are viewed to be naturally dominant. This idea that being a woman somehow made me inferior, and that my penchant for non-traditional behavior made me even lesser of a woman than most, was chiseled into my brain at a very young age. The older I get, the more aware I am of how much these gender role ideals were forced into my own ideals through the hegemony of our own mass American culture. These ideals often conflicted with my very own life, and my sense of the people around me. My mom never shaved her legs, and when I was little I often felt shame when I saw her hairy calves sticking out from under her skirts. I also felt conflicted about the people who challenged gender roles within my own life. My parent's have always had many friends in the GLBT community, and although I loved them all and thought of them as wonderful, natural people; I still often took Ned's (my Mom's roommate when I was a toddler) heels and put them in my Mom's closet. This was hilarious for my mother and for Ned, since my mother has never worn heels and he wears them daily.
One way in which I have taken charge of my own ideals is through self-education. Yes, the higher education system too, but I believe it is through self-education that I have challenged my own pre-set ideas the most. Outside of institutional learning I have always been a student of life, and it is through the immersion in foreign places that I think I have grown the most as an individual.

Gloria Jones

ABOUT THIS VIDEO:
The undercurrent of change is challenge. In the 50's, the Beats, the Ban The Bomb movement, and Rock'n'Roll challenged the status quo of America as limiting and oppressive. The early 60's continued this with the advent of young idealist JFK, the folk music boom, and most importantly the ongoing Civll Rights struggle. History's biggest generation was poised on the brink of the future. They were discovering that their fathers said one thing and did another. The struggle between their optimism and the system's hypocrisy is still raging today...

About Gloria Jones: She was an American soul singer who peaked with this steller tune in '64. It never quite made the mainstream, but was big abroad. She eventually, like Jimi and P.P. Arnold and so many others, found better support and fame in England. In the early 70's she met Marc Bolan of T.Rex. They were steadfast partners until his untimely death in 1977. Their son was responsible for the recent restoration of the T.Rex documentary, "Born To Boogie", shot by Ringo Starr.

This song of course finally received its fame in a medley with the Supremes' "Where did Our Love Go" which became a huge hit for English new wave duo Soft Cell in 1982. It's also been remade by Coil, Inspiral Carpets, Marilyn Manson, The Pussycat Dolls, and sampled by Rhianna for "S.O.S. (Rescue Me)".

A great site about 60's women rockers to check out is.