"Gender Role Trauma" Fact or Fiction?

Jeremy Hine

January, 27, 2011

Rough Draft#1

In our early teens both genders experience changes to both our bodies and our personalities as we enter puberty and begin to face the challenges of the adult world. For some, this experience can be a difficult transition, as we leave the care-free days of our youth and begin to face the realities of the world we live in. [Thesis] However, to call this transition “gender role trauma”, as Mary Pipher does in her 1995 book “Reviving Ophelia”, is a erroneous overstatement on what normally occurs during this normal transition. [Thesis]

I think it is safe to say that most men and women tend to lead relatively “normal" lives. When I defined trauma I wrote “Psychological trauma is a negative experience that deviates from our normal human condition and daily life.  When we experience a traumatic event, our normal day to day existence is harmed. This change to our normal psyche can be overwhelming and life altering".  To me, trauma is associated with domestic violence or when a soldier witnesses one of his comrades being killed. These events tend to have a long lasting effect on the people who experience them. To equate the term trauma, to the events of puberty, is where Pipher begins to stray and over-exaggerate. When reading what my classmates wrote about the causation of “gender role trauma”, many of them equated it to body-issues, societal pressures, and gender inequality. Sengchanh Luanglaj writes “during my adolescence years I was expected to cook and clean up after my father and brother. When I was in school I learned about females who did more than what I experienced in my own home”.  Not be-little the importance of this gender in-equality but to equate these issues to trauma is truly erroneous.

When given this assignment I chatted to some of my girlfriends on the issue to get their perspective, because as a male, I felt I may be missing perspective on some of the points Pipher was arguing in her book. My friends, although recalling some troubles adjusting to puberty, do not recall it being  traumatic in any sense of the word. This may be down to two reasons, one being the strong use of the word trauma or also because Pipher, for the most part had a biased sample when it came to the adolescents she was basing her conclusions on. As a psychologist, Pipher seems to base her conclusion on the adolescents she met in her practice. This makes the knowledge she learned from these adolescents somewhat biased because she is only receiving information from teens who needed counseling or therapy. It is safe to say that the majority of teens today do not receive therapy, or psychologist offices would be more common than Starbucks. True, many teens who do seek counseling have experienced some sort of trauma, but to equate this to the entire population is where Pipher may lose some of her validity. 

Pipher talks in strong terms about adolescent’s “trip” away from their parents to a “dangerous place”, but isn’t this a normal part of growing up, where we discover who we are and what we want from life.  As we leave our parent’s world and begin to spend time with our peers, each generation is faced with new issues as our different inter-connected cultures from around the world are constantly moving and mutating. True, many of these changes can be stressful and hard to cope with, to varying degrees for all of us, but it is a normal transition that man-kind has experienced since the day of the cave man. Pipher seems to think that only recently we have seen this phenomenon in adolescence. It is important to note that the measurement of adolescent’s well being and self esteem, is relatively new, considering psychology just over a century old. It is true teens of today experience a deluge different of issues, compared to what Pipher may have experienced, but this doesn’t mean that through-out human existence adolescence have not struggled with the change to adulthood. From the caveman’s “right to manhood” initiations, to body mutilations of young girls in African tribes, to the binding of young girl’s feet in China, it is safe to say that adolescence has never been easy, and in the cases mentioned even traumatic. Even in the time of Pipher’s adolescence, there was great gender inequality and sexual harassment which faced teenagers of the mid 20^th century. However, at this time, recordings of self esteem and visits to psychologists might not have been as prevalent. The issues that face todays adolescent’s from violence on TV, a persuasive sexualized culture, the rise of the internet, and the persistence that skinny is the only beautiful , are truly challenging and may be more difficult to deal with than some of the issues of Pipher’s time. However, these experiences for the most part will not be traumatic and life altering. It is safe to say most adolescents will go on to live normal happy lives, and that their children will be confronted with a whole new set of equally hard issues when they reach puberty. 

Pipher says “There is an African saying, ‘It takes a hold village to raise a child’. Most girls no longer have a village”.  Instead of this defeatist attitude, we need to look at the issues facing our adolescents and instead of dramatizing them look for practical solutions. As adults we have power over the culture we live in. If you are opposed to skinny models in magazines, don't buy the magazine, and eventually the market will speak. If you want better gender equality, in certain areas, petition for your cause with your local congressman.  I was born onto oppressive Christian cult. On the cult my mother experienced great gender in-equality, wearing a hijab-like head covering and being an obvious subordinate to the men. I was not happy with the fundamental beliefs of the cult and their treatment of women and at a young age left, and now life a life polar opposites to the culture I was raised in. Ultimately we all have power over what culture we live in, no matter what our gender. To equate the challenging and sometimes difficult times of puberty to trauma and the death of personality is erroneous, and we need to focus on helping adolescents through this normal transition into adulthood.

                                                         Works Cited

Luanglaj ,Sengchanh. “Causes and solutions.” Online posting. 24 January 2001. Laulima Discussion. 24 January 2011 [https://laulima.hawaii.edu/portal/site/KAP.XLSENG215js.201130/page/dce5cccd-f9ac-4ad1-8c6b-6896281bf756]

Pipher, Mary. “Saplings in the Storm.” Dialogues: An Argument Rhetoric and Reader. 5th edition. Eds. Gary Goshgarian and Kathleen Krueger. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2006. 411-417.