Teh One Who Knocks
08-31-2016, 11:03 AM
By Emily Zanotti - Heat Street
http://i.imgur.com/Wph135il.jpg
The sociology department of the University of Pennsylvania is tackling only the most important issues of our time.
It has a paper in the most recent issue of Social Psychology Quarterly examining the various ways zoos are cesspools of dangerous gender stereotypes that parents (intentionally or inadvertently) reinforce with their kids. You’ll have to pay to read the full article (or have a subscription to Social Psychology Quarterly), but you can get the gist of the paper from its abstract.
The study says that adults seem to want to characterize zoo animals according to “binary” gender terminology, forcing the camels and penguins and elephants of this world to conform to either “male” or “female,” even though those particular zoo animals haven’t truly examined whether they would like to identify as their birth gender. Although zoology does allow for checking the actual sex of an animal, adults should, apparently, refrain from referring to zoo animals as a “girl” or a “boy,” unless they’ve asked the said animals.
Another problem: Parents tend to use zoo exhibits to model traditional family roles. The study says “adults mobilize zoo exhibits as props for modeling their own normative gender displays.”
Talking about “mother” and “father” animals, then, forces children to believe in traditional, gender constructs, which could harm their psyches as they grow older. Children will question whether their parents will love them even if they don’t fit a typical gender definition—all because that giraffe was characterized as male or female.
All of this makes the search for one’s place on the gender spectrum a difficult journey, apparently. No doubt, the UPenn sociology department would recommend that signs in zoos be changed to reflect a more fluid approach to wild animal sexuality.
http://i.imgur.com/Wph135il.jpg
The sociology department of the University of Pennsylvania is tackling only the most important issues of our time.
It has a paper in the most recent issue of Social Psychology Quarterly examining the various ways zoos are cesspools of dangerous gender stereotypes that parents (intentionally or inadvertently) reinforce with their kids. You’ll have to pay to read the full article (or have a subscription to Social Psychology Quarterly), but you can get the gist of the paper from its abstract.
The study says that adults seem to want to characterize zoo animals according to “binary” gender terminology, forcing the camels and penguins and elephants of this world to conform to either “male” or “female,” even though those particular zoo animals haven’t truly examined whether they would like to identify as their birth gender. Although zoology does allow for checking the actual sex of an animal, adults should, apparently, refrain from referring to zoo animals as a “girl” or a “boy,” unless they’ve asked the said animals.
Another problem: Parents tend to use zoo exhibits to model traditional family roles. The study says “adults mobilize zoo exhibits as props for modeling their own normative gender displays.”
Talking about “mother” and “father” animals, then, forces children to believe in traditional, gender constructs, which could harm their psyches as they grow older. Children will question whether their parents will love them even if they don’t fit a typical gender definition—all because that giraffe was characterized as male or female.
All of this makes the search for one’s place on the gender spectrum a difficult journey, apparently. No doubt, the UPenn sociology department would recommend that signs in zoos be changed to reflect a more fluid approach to wild animal sexuality.