Annabel Kathleen Winter Stereotypes Analysis

Stereotypes are present in our daily lives, whether we are aware of them or not. They have many applications, but their “four main components [include]: role behaviors, occupations, traits, and physical appearance. Each component has a masculine and a feminine version” (Martin, 1892). Each of us have faced some form of expectation of us due to our outward appearance. These ideas are very difficult to avoid, especially when there is very little to actually change these expectations in your head. A stereotype is by definition “a structured set of inferential relations that link a social category with attributes of personality. Sex stereotypes, in turn, are the structured sets of inferential relations that link personal attributes to the social
By the time he reached his teen years, Wayne had decided he no longer wanted to fight his body’s natural rhythms as an intersex individual who did not feel fully comfortable identifying as male or female at any point through his life: “He wanted to throw the pills away and wait and see what would happen to his body. How much of his body image was accurate and how much was a construct he had come to believe? He tried to see his body objectively” (Winter, ). This desperation to just be accepted as someone different from the norm was a plea Wayne continued to make throughout this story. The problem with being so stuck in societies view of himself, Wayne is unable to find peace with who he is. The thing about stereotypes though is that they “should not be defined as bad; rather, they are conceived to be a normal (though certainly not desirable) aspect of interpersonal perception” (Ashmore & Tumia, 502). In other words, the sooner Wayne is able to accept that he does not fit the norm, then the sooner he will be able to identify as the unique self that he
A parent’s beliefs can affect a child, especially if the parent sees that child as not fitting in. “Negative paternal involvement such as being cold, indifferent and rejecting can be risky for the development of adolescents’ resilience as is seen in the increment of children’s internalizing problems and adaptive problems such as social anxiety and depression” (Zhang, 1956). As an intersex individual, Wayne needed more support from those around him to enforce his own resilience and self-identity in order to feel as though he belonged. This support came in all kinds of ways, some to reinforce the stereotypes that were expected of him as a male (such was his father’s belief), and some who accepted him for who he was individually, as his mother did. The most open opinion on Wayne’s non-gendered being came from Thomasina, a family friend. “To Thomasina people were rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It was not fair, she felt, to treat people as if they were finished beings. Everyone was always becoming and unbecoming” (Winter, 41). With this view, it was unnecessary for Wayne to choose male or female to identify as, but instead he should do as he feels is right to him. This kind of acceptance was exactly what Wayne needed in order to accept himself beyond what others would think of him who simply chose not to understand his