The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

172 Chapter 5

See Sidebar 5.5 for a further discussion of

this issue.

Later, Bem (1995) realized her utopian

ideals were not reachable. She then suggested

an alternative strategy for minimizing sex

differences, that is “turning down the vol-

ume on sex differences.” Her new strategy is

to “turn up the volume on sex differences.”

By this, she means we should have 1,000 cat-

egories for sex instead of only 2. She suggests

starting with a modest 18 categories, derived

from all possible combinations of sex (male,

female), gender role (masculine, feminine,

androgynous), and sexual orientation (het-

erosexual, homosexual, bisexual). By having

Bem’s (1984) gender schema theory

obviously has some political overtones.

Historically, Bem has advocated the mini-

mization of differences between men and

women—basically reducing the differences

to biology alone. She has suggested society

should rid itself of the social construction

of gender associated with biological sex. In

such a culture, there would be no need for

the termsmasculinityandfemininity;the

termandrogynywould also be meaning-

less. Sex would be viewed as having a very

limited influence on us, no more influence

then, say, eye color. In fact, Bem encourages

the raising of gender aschematic children.

SIDEBAR 5.5:How to Raise a Gender Aschematic Child

Bem (1984) suggests how to raise a gender aschematic child using practices she adopted in rais-

ing her son and daughter. These ideas are shown in Table 5.3. Her basic position is that you teach

your child that sex is only a biological category, and the only way you can know whether some-

one is female or male is to see the person naked. Because society associates sex with much more

than biology, the parent must go to some lengths to make sure prevailing stereotypes are not

instilled in the child. This includes altering storybooks so all men are not viewed as having short

hair and all women are not viewed as having long hair; all men are not viewed as heroes and

all women are not rescued; all men are not depicted in blue and all women in pink. The parent

would provide the child with a range of toys and not let the child’s gender influence the choice of

toys; both boys and girls would be given blocks, trucks, and dolls. There would be no such thing

as “girl clothes” and “boy clothes”; both could wear shirts, pants, dresses, and barrettes.

Boys in dresses! Boys wearing barrettes! When I first present Bem’s (1984) ideas in class,

these remarks are the most commonly made. Students are all for letting girls wear any clothes

and play with any toys, but someone usually draws the line at seeing a boy in a dress. Because

I find dresses fairly uncomfortable, my personal response is to remove dresses from the cate-

gory of clothing for both women and men. Another common reaction from students is that a

child should choose who he or she wants to be and how he or she wants to behave—that parents

should not force the child to be gender schematic or gender aschematic. Bem would respond that

a child is never “free” to behave as she or he pleases because society will provide clear messages

about how to behave, and those messages will be sexist. Thus if parents do not inoculate their

children against gender schemas, society will impose those schemas. For those of you who are

interested in the results of Bem’s child-rearing practices, she has published an autobiography

describing her egalitarian marriage and her gender aschematic child rearing (Bem, 1998). At the

end of her book, her children comment favorably on the way they were raised. And, yes, Bem’s

grown son still occasionally wears a dress.

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