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3. What are some of the traditional ways of forming identities that are practiced on social networking sites?
Traditionally, women based their thoughts and actions on what they thought would please the men they came in contact with. Their emotions were strongly related to those of their male siblings and fathers and, later, their husbands because their main goal was to make sure men, even strange men, were happy. If women didn’t do everything they could to please men, they were failing their basic duties.
Today things are much different. Men and women are independent and responsible for their own happiness. However, it seems women still depend on men for some things that may affect their overall satisfaction. For example, women mention their significant others more on social networking sites than men do. A study done by Margaret J. Brackstone and Harvey W. Zingle suggests that women look to the people closest to them for emotional and social support. The study “was intended to learn on whom women typically rely for various kinds of support, how adequate they perceive this support to be, and what changes they would like to see.” When asked to analyze the support women felt who were not in relationships with men, they gave general statements about how men (paraphrased) “show personal interest and give encouragement. On the other hand; women who were in relationships, mostly married relationships, with men reported that they felt better support from their female acquaintances and friends than they did from their male significant others. Most of those women expressed discontent with their significant others’ support based on lack of understanding and appreciation of their role at home. This makes me think of how things used to be a few decades ago. A woman’s role was to stay at home and take care of the children and the house, doing anything and everything she could in order to keep the house in order and get dinner on the table in time for when her husband came home from his full-time, bread-winning job. More recently, women have also held full-time jobs and possibly their husbands still expect them to take care of the responsibilities that arise with the children and house by themselves.
Times are changing and husband-wife relationships aren’t as conventional as they once were, but it seems that some men still rely heavily on their wives to complete “traditional tasks,” but women’s mindset have changed with the times. They work full time jobs too and don’t have an excessive amount of time on their hands to do the dishes and clean the house; they expect to be treated fairly by their husbands and receive help in doing these things. When women get promoted and are required to stay later at work, their husbands sometimes aren’t as supportive as they would like them to be; they should be proud, right? On the other hand, their friends are thrilled; this one example of why women are discontent with the level of support from their husbands. According to an article entitled “Women, Divorce, and Domestic Violence,” professor Sanford Braver at Arizona State University showed that “at least two-thirds of American divorces are initiated by women” and “[one of the] reasons most often given [is] ‘not feeling loved or appreciated.’”
Although women have come along way with regards to gaining freedom and independence, they lack some confidence in maintaining them. Due to the high value they place on social support and also the nature of women in general, they find themselves getting their emotions involved in relationships a lot more than men do. They show this, for example, on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. In the article, “Gender Differences in “Social Portraits” Reflected in MySpace Profiles” written by Melissa Joy Magnuson, B.A. and Lauren Dundes, Sc.D., the issue of women mentioning their significant others more than men do on these social networking sites is explored. Their findings prove that women who are in relationships have profiles that mention their significant others’ names one or more times, while some men don’t even mention theirs. Magnuson and Dundes link men’s lack of information of their significant others to their independence, which they learned and adapted to as a result of their raising. Boys are taught to keep their emotions separate from one another instead of mixing them (job and love life, for example) like women have learned. For women, each is dependent on the other, which is key to realizing why women get so torn up when things go wrong. If they lose their job or a romance, it affects all other aspects of her life; some women can’t let them exist independently, which has an impact on how they feel about and react to everything that exists and occurs in their lives.
Works Cited
Brackstone, Margaret J. and Harvey W. Zingle. “Women's Perceptions of the Nature and Adequacy of Their Present Support Relationships.” International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling 16.2 (1993): 119-134.
Magnuson, B.A., Melissa Joy and Lauren Dundes, Sc.D. “Gender Differences in “Social Portraits” Reflected in MySpace Profiles.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 11.2 (2008): 239-241.
Wiseman. “Women, Divorce, and Domestic Violence.” 12 Sept. 2003.
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