I'm sure other people can relate to this entry. It is about the story of the father and son who got hit by a train and the surgeon who could not operate on the son. (pg. 61). The story made me think a lot. I was trying to make sense of the story and the relationship between the surgeon and the boy. I kept on thinking, how could the boy be the surgeons child when the father just died? After thinking and not reading ahead, I was still confused and thought that the surgeon might be an in-law or step parent. I could have been right but the idea of the surgeon being his mom never crossed my mind. I read that and felt like an idiot, I mean who doesn't remember about moms?
This story and what I had to think about really woke me up and I started to think of how certain names and languages can have this effect to make you think that it is only one gender. In this exercise, I did not think the surgeon to be female, even though I am a female myself. Maybe it is because of labels or stereotypes in today's society? Yet by reading this story, I definitely gained more awareness to how stereotypes can effect you unconsciously even if you never consciously stereotype.
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6 comments:
I did the same thing when I read the story. I thought the surgeon was the boys step father. It never occurred to me that the surgeon was a woman. I am also a female and I felt like a fool not thinking the surgeon could be his mother.
I think our stereotyping comes from learned behavior as we grew up; at least that is what I get from the text. Griffin (2008, p. 61) states, “…symbolic interaction is not just a means for intelligent expression; it’s also the way we learn to interpret the world”. I think we need to remember that Hofstadter refers to our reasoning with this question as default assumption.
References
Griffin, E. (2008). A First Look At Communication Theory. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
This story and your blog really resonated with me as well. In one of my other classes we did an activity about stereotyping and labeling in job titles. I did not even realize how many labels are male driven. To name a few: Mail-man, garbage-man, and weather-man. There were many more that I cannot think of off the top of my head, but it makes you think doesn't it? I will be honest I made the same assumption about the surgeon as you did. I tend to do that unconciously, and this story really brought that to my attention. I was socialized to categorize and label things a certain way, in order to organize them in my mind. I do not blame myself or others for this socialization, it is only natural. All we can do is be aware of it now, and help to make others aware. The more knowledge we have the more critically we can think and reverse that socialization process.
I felt the same way as you did. When I read the story, I didn`t understand why the surgeon had that kind of feelings. If he was a professional surgeon, he would do whatever he needed to do without emotion. I thought that his emotion was controlled him and he was not a good doctor while I read the story. If the surgeon was a woman, the situration would be changed. The lady would operate the boy without any emotion. Our society teaches us that men are stronger than women, but in the real life, women are stronger than men in many ways.
I also didn't think that there was anyway that the surgeon could have been the boy's mother. I think that you make a very interesting point in stating how much your experiences can affect your judgement. If you have ever seen the movie "American Beauty," there is a scene where Kevin Spacey's next door neighbor answers the knock on his front door and finds two men standing in front of him. He automatically assumes that they are just salesmen (because they say that they are "partners") trying to sell him something while they just wanted to welcome him to the neighborhood. Spacey's next door neighbor is shocked when he finds out that the two men are gay. Just as we are wrong with our judgement of the surgeon in the story, his judgement is just as bad.
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