A huge part of understanding gender communication is deciphering between gender and biological sex. Being educated on gender identity and expression makes room for less ignorance in society.
Sam Killermann, publicly discusses gender identity on a live TedxTalk in Chicago, entitled, Discussing the Complexities of Gender. The speaker, Killermann, is a comedian on the show, “It’s pronounced metrosexual,” therefore, it’s logical that he would incorporate comedy in his Ted Talk, focused on gender identity, gender expression, and biological sex. Killermann’s main point, “gender is a social construction masquerading as a biological imperative,” is outlined fully in his talk. Killerman’s main point is also the title of his Ted Talk, “Gender is a Social Construction Masquerading as a Biological Imperative.” The thesis in his talk is assembled like that of a basic essay, consisting of three major points that are further discussed in detail. As the reader can presume, the thesis statement, “The easiest way to understand gender is to break it down into three distinct pieces. One, gender identity, which is who you in your head know yourself to be, more on this in a bit, two, gender expression, the ways you present gender through your actions, dress, and demeanor, and three, biological sex. The physical characteristics you were born with,” is very broad. Killermann says the easiest way to understand gender is to dissect it into three distinct pieces: 1, Gender identity, which is how you, in your head, define your gender, more on this in a minute. 2, Gender expression, which is the ways that you present gender, through your actions, dress, and demeanor. And 3, And biological sex, which is the physical sex characteristics that make up your body. I promise, this will all get clearer. Killermann applies an analogy between any Shakespearean play and society’s restrictions on gender. For instance, he utilizes and explains the Shakespearean quote, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women nearly players.” Essentially what Killermann is trying to communicate is that, at birth, we’re cast in a play, given a role, a script, and told to play that part till your dead. The director’s in our plays, otherwise known as society, follow us around every day of our lives and dictate whether we are conforming to the gender norms society has established. -Sam
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For my Q&A with a professional, I decided to interview a friend from back home, Ellen McDonald. She has been a bank teller at Busey Bank for about 12 years and has seen a lot of different communication styles from both men and women in the workplace. Here's a transcript of the interview:
Me: Thank you for letting me interview you Ellen! My questions will be focused on gender communications in the workplace and what you have witnessed during your time there. Ellen: You're welcome, I'm glad to help! Q: To start, where do you work and what's your position? A: I work at Busey Bank and I have been a teller there for 12 years. Q: Do you see differences in communication among men and women in your workplace? A: Yes, but all of the men I work with are my superiors. Q: Do you think your male superiors are more assertive when giving directions? A; I don't think so, but only because of the personality of my woman manager. Q: When it comes to work tasks, would you rather ask your male or female superior questions? A; I'd rather ask the men than the women because the men would give direct answers or expect myself to find the answer. If I asked my female superior, she'd tell me to find the answer, but then take it upon herself to find it. She adds more drama to it. Q: With that, how many women are your superior or equal vs. the men? A: I have no men on the same work level as I am, there are 12 women on my level. I have 3 women superiors and there's 5 men that are superior to all of the women I work with and under. Q: From research I read, men tend to be blunt, insensitive to others emotions, and are confident in their opinion. Do you see these communication barriers with the men you work under? A: All men aren't like that, I think it's more of a personality think. I think in general men are more matter-of-fact with things and they don't always take into account the emotional factor in situations in the workplace. But not all men are like what you said. Q: And from what I read, women tend to be overly emotional, meander, and aren't authoritative. Do you see these communication barriers with women you work with? A; I think it depends on the women's personality just like the personality of men. Q: To wrap it up, how do you feel about communicating with different genders at work? Do you feel more able to talk with men or women you work with? A; I think I could be more easily intimidated by a man than a woman at work. Mainly because what I say to a man could cost me my job. But, then again, I'm not sure because I don't have a woman in the same superior position as a man. Thank you Ellen for your answers!! From Ellen's answers about gender communication in the workplace, I think that communicating between genders could be based on personality of the man or women and not specifically their gender. Let me know your thoughts on communicating with different genders in your workplace! -JC Understanding and recognizing when there is a difference in communicating is not an easy task to do. So why do individuals have such a tough time, well it's simple. Men and women both assume that communicating is the same with both genders, and they completely ignore the anatomical difference among themselves. Men and women both speak completely different languages that essentially creates misunderstandings and impedes with the communication process. To put things into much simpler terms, men and women are apart of two distinct subcultures all meshed into one big culture. Each culture identifying with different communication styles, habits, and cultural identities. Although both men and women communicate differently, we've all came together to communicate in harmony, or at least we try :) Check out the short clip below that portray's gender communication with SpongeBob and Patrick! Good evening everyone!
Since this is an educational blog, we are here to teach you, our readers, something about gender communication. With that in mind, do you feel like your significant other sometimes just doesn't listen to you? This short quiz I found on the internet should give you some insight on if you have strong communication skills with your partner or if you two need to improve your communication. Take this quiz with your partner and then compare your results to see where you stand together, some of you may be surprised at your results! Let us know what your scored in the comment section below! -JC Each partner complete the questions by scoring them between 1 and 5: 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree Strongly disagree Disagree Undecided Agree Strongly agree A We are good at sharing positive and negative feelings with each other ………… B My partner is very good at listening to me ………… C We let each other know our preferences and ideas ...………. D We can easily talk about problems in our relationship …………. E My partner really understands me ………… Add up your scores for the questions above Total ………... Interpreting your score: Range 5-25 21-25 = Your communication is very good 15-20 = Your communication is generally good, but there are some ways it could be improved 11-14 = Your communication is good in some ways, but also needs some improvement 5-10 = Your communication needs improvement Now compare your partners scores and discuss. If you have scored 4 or 5 on the same question these are real strengths which you can be proud of. Discuss the other items and decide how you can turn them into strengths. **Check out the original quiz on this website here: build-relationships.net/Communication-quiz-exploring-gender-differences. It also gives tips on how to improve communication in your relationship if your results were unsatisfactory. Hello everyone!! Have you ever wondered where you started identifying your gender role in society at? Well, according to the speaker in the video below, Anthony Schullo, it begins very early in your life, when you are a child! In this video, Schullo explains that parents begin communicating gender to their children as soon as they're born. He shows pictures of his niece and nephew as an example, stating that gender identification can be symbolized through the colors blue and pink because his nephew was dressed in blue football apparel and his niece in pink clothing. By "fitting" our children into categories at a young age of what boys and girls should be, he states that "we use gender as a way to construct our children's reality". From a communication standpoint, communication is defined as "a symbolic process whereby reality is produce, maintained, repaired, and transformed"; this was stated in Schullo's speech. Just food for thought, if we are constructing our children's realities about how men need to be a certain way and women being the other, how will they be effectively communicating with each other later on in life?? Overall, Schullo states that his main point to this TED Talk is to encourage a break away from gender dichotomy and opening a new way of communicating with our children about gender. Because not everyone man or boy can fit into the masculine category society tells them to and not every woman or girl can fit into the feminine category society tells them to be in, and THAT'S OKAY!! Gender is fluid, as Schullo stated, so gender should be communicated in positive ways for a more diverse, just world. I wanted to put this video on our blog because I think it gives a good example of what a lot of young adults or children struggle with in our world, which is needing to feel the sense of belonging. I believe that gender should be encouraged positively. Let your son dress up as a princess for Halloween and if your daughter wants to be a construction worker, let her!! Let your children explore all of their feelings and quirks because that is who they are. If we teach them young that it's okay to not fit societies mold, they will hopefully feel a sense of belonging and know who they are and where they fit in in this crazy thing we call life. This video also pertains to the topic of our blog GENDER COMMUNICATION because it's about where gender identification all begins, as children. So check out this short video and let us know your thoughts on communicating gender to children! - JC I got together with Enzo Recchia, a graduate student from Youngstown State University. He received his bachelors degree in business and marketing. He is a credible source for this interview because he experiences a lot of gender communication in the workplace. Here are his thoughts and opinions on gender communication! -Anastasia In society, we notice gender differences in both emotional intelligence and leadership styles between men and women. This plays a significant role as far as job occupations and career advancement opportunities. Common occupations are typically segregated by genders, for example, most women get jobs that are domesticated, such as nursing, teaching or secretarial work. On the other hand, men generally avoid jobs that have domestic roles and typically go into careers such as construction, engineering, or law. Cultural norms and societal views generated the idea that men should work hands on jobs and women should work domesticated jobs. Within the last forty years, we've seen tremendous changes as far women working in the workforce that is predominantly occupied by men, and vice versa. Attached below is a short video from YouTube that briefly describes gender roles in the workplace. Enjoy! -Jordyn [Norton Security]. (2014, December 20). How does gender affect the workplace? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XbeJotW16E on October 15, 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkz9L5VJV8s
The video by Kit Welchlin outlines the differences between men and women within communication and why it is such a complex topic. According to Welchlin, there are seven levels of gender communication in the workplace: 1. Intrapersonal communication: Do you think women and men think differently? Are you more process-oriented or goal oriented? 2. Interpersonal communication: Do men and women establish and maintain trust and resolve conflict differently? Do you engage in different levels of self-disclosure or types of shared activities? 3. Triadic communication: Do you have an office spouse; someone of the opposite sex at work that complements your masculinity or femininity? Is there someone that you think of first to balance male and female interactions? 4. Small group communication: Do women and men approach the socio-emotional aspects of work differently? Do you balance the task and social elements of teamwork differently? 5. Public speaking: Do men and women demonstrate different public speaking styles? Do you display different nonverbal communication behaviors? 6. Mass communication: Are women and men portrayed differently in advertising, in magazines, or on television? 7. Social movement: When it comes to overall society; what are the assumptions and expectations of maleness and femaleness? Are there different norms for femininity and masculinity? Recognizing the levels of gender communication will improve your ability to interact with both men and women properly! -Sam Sources: [Welchin, Kit]. (2014, May 11). Why is gender communication so complex? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkz9L5VJV8s on October 16, 2017. I am sure that, at this point in your life, you have made an opinion on what gender communication is: the contact men and women have between each other or men talking with women, and everything in between. On the surface it may seem as simple as just the interaction between a man and woman, but if we look deeper into the topic, we can see that gender communication is much more complicated that it seems.
According to the Oxford dictionary, gender does not associate with just male and female, it associates more with defining as masculine, feminine, or androgynous. These definitions of gender can be seen through communication in terms of cultural and social differences. What do you think these differences are as genders communicate? Mainly, I would say that message interpretation is what makes communicating between genders tricky. As individuals, we have different values and perceptions of what's meaningful or important, this goes hand and hand with different genders and because of these values, the way I interpret a message (as a woman) may be different from the way a male interprets the same message. According to an article written by Cynthia Burggraf Torppa, feminine genders seem to be more concerned with intimacy and establishing a connection than the masculine gender, who are more likely to be concerned with competition and establishing dominance or power in conversation. However, this does not mean that women are always feminine and men are always masculine, both sexes can have masculine and feminine values, which makes them androgynous. In my opinion, we must understand that stereotypes are not always correct; therefore, there will more than likely be a man who has more feminine traits and a woman who has more masculine traits and that is okay! All in all, gender communication focuses on what each type of gender may find important when communicating and how it impacts the way each person interprets communication. This type of communication is important to study and understand because once a mutual understanding of what each person conceives as "important" is reached, our society should be able to effectively communicate. From this, we will be posting more about the barriers genders face communicating throughout society, how to come to an understanding of gender cultures, and much more. So please SUBSCRIBE to our blog to stay informed!! -JC SOURCES: https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/FLM-FS-4-02-R10 http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/uscg/gender_communication.htm Hello there everyone!! This is our blogs official first post, HOORAY! I first would just like to introduce the team we have for our page. All of us posting content to this page will assume different roles as our site grows, but mainly we will all be content curators. This means that we will all be going through information we find substantial and educational, creating a post pertaining to our topic (we'll get to our topic in our next post), and then posting it to the blog we made here for everyone to see.
As it states in "About the Author" --->(to the right of this post), we are a group of students from Youngstown State University given the opportunity to create a blog and educate our audience on gender communications. This blog is a group project created for our class, Social Media Literacy. Our group consists of myself, Jessica Cann, Samantha Armstrong, Jordyn Butler, Ray Anderson, and Joseph Anastasia. We all hope to be able to give you a better understanding of what gender communications is, how if effects communicating through social media and face-to-face contact, as well as other important points we will find throughout our research. If you have any questions about what we are going to do here, please don't hesitate to send us a question, our contact form is located under "about" tab or you can even comment under this blog below. We are always looking for ways to make our blog better!! Don't forget to subscribe to our blog to stay informed on our latest posts about gender communications! Stay tuned for our next blog post explaining what gender communications is! -JC |
About the AuthorWe are a group of students from Youngstown State University, given the job to research and educate others on gender communications. Any content published on our website is used for educational purposes only. ArchivesCategories |