Over the course of recent years, society has been seen to improve in issues such as the treatment of women, racism, homosexuality, and many other issues that are very different now than how they were 50 years ago. Many people would say that our world today is a wonderful place, and need not be changed. But are they right? In this article I hope to indicate to you, the public, the issues that our world is facing today, and how the majority of the time, people know nothing about it.

 

One issue that should be addressed is gender roles. Gender roles are described as both cultural and personal. They determine how males and females should think, dress, and interact with the context of society. Some examples of gender roles in everyday life are the different girls/boys sections in toy stores. In the boys’ section, there may be several different sets of toys such as cars or guns. However, in the girls’ section, you may find lots and lots of pink items, such as Barbies or fairies. Now, you may say that surely if a girl wants to have typically “boy” toys to play with, then she can choose on her own to play with them? Well, this may be true, but a lot of the time children are conditioned to believe that they are required to play with certain toys or act a certain way during their youth. In order to get the full picture of how gender-oriented toys and other products may have affected people’s youth, I spoke to a teenage female individual who wishes to remain anonymous.

“I personally tended to draw more towards drawing and reading from a fairly young age, so I was not very much affected by gender-oriented products. However, I do recall wondering why there was a Gameboy, but no Gamegirl.” When asking about the pressure for young children to conform to certain standards of gender roles, she had this to say: “There’s not so much a pressure as there is a statement. You’re not pressured into it, you just do. People tend to ignore people not sticking to their roles, to avoid awkwardness.” This view illuminates that although gender roles may be prominent in everyday life, it may not be as widely acknowledged, due to the ever-growing acceptance of different identities and personalities within children today.

 

Moving on from this social topic comes the ever-pressing and worrying issue of rape and rape culture. We often hear tragic stories of rape victims whose rapists have not been condemned for their actions, but what is society actually doing about these problems? The majority of the time women are given warnings against wearing short skirts at night, and advice to not “lead men on” or if they are wearing revealing clothing, they are told that they are “asking for it”. However, is this really the right way to be dealing with this topic? Surely, it would make more sense to discourage men to not rape in the first place? This issue is very important to address, and although sexual assault has fallen by 49% in recent years, there have been many recent cases of male YouTubers (such as Sam Pepper, Alex Day, Jason “ VeeOneEye” Sampson, and many more) taking advantages of young girls in intimate situations. I spoke to Megan, 17, on her opinion on rape culture and the recent sexual assaults from YouTubers. “I think that there is a very large issue in our society regarding rape culture as there is a lot of victim shaming; asking questions such as clothing choices and suggesting the victim put themselves in that situation. Primarily after the whole YouTube situation with Sam Pepper, many people stood by the offenders just because they were in power - 2% of rape times are false accusations (not including people that don't report rape crimes) and people act as if people make up these crimes to seek attention. These thoughts must change. We need an environment where men and women feel safe to report these crimes, and society also needs to recognize that men are victims too.”

If you wish to learn more about sexual assault or other rape issues, visit the RAINN website.

 

I hope this article has been successful in informing you of just a couple of the issues that society is facing today, and encouraged you to research these topics more and spread the word to other individuals.

 

 

Amy Davey, St Philomena's High School for Girls