Children Creating the Fiction of Gender

Messner’s opening statement about his son’s announcement that “men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and children are from heaven” (Messner, 2002, p. 1) was quite surprising to me. Although this particular reading is from 2002 and times may have changed, it is still frightening to think that children believe in this kind of gender inequality. Obviously, kids can be manipulated easily, in this case by a commercial on TV, but for a child to believe that men and women come from different planets is pretty absurd. The article discusses three main points that contribute to this inequality of gender including the performance, structure, and culture of gender (Messner, 2002).

Performance of gender, according to Messner’s “Barbie Girls vs. Sea Monsters” encounter displayed how the girls seemed to perform for each other while the boys were performing not only for each other, but for the girls as well (Messner, 2002, p. 4). In the structure of gender section, Messner referred to the parents never mentioning how similar the two genders were during the soccer games but only noticing their differences. Finally, the culture of gender deals with team colors and names, which come from the social constructs surrounding gender (Messner, 2002).

I found Messner’s article very surprising due to the fact that children believe that men and women are from different planets. If so many people are worried about this issue and feel that the two genders deserve equality, then they should try not to point out the differences. Messner introduces a great example of the parents noticing how different the boys and girls soccer teams were at their games. If gender equality is the goal, then those parents should try to encourage the similarities between the genders in order for the children to realize that they are in fact from the same planet and that they can interact with each other despite their differences.

Messner, M.A. (2002). Center snap: Children creating the fiction of gender.

Kaleb Kuzma