Gender Roles Of Gender: The Spoiled Identity And Mental Health

Gender: The Spoiled Identity and Mental Health

Does society expect different genders to play different roles and to act in specific predetermined ways that can lead the individual to develop, what Erving Goffman called, a “spoiled identity”? (1963). Throughout this essay we will see how gender roles can create stereotypes and how this could impact identity . Goffman identified three main types of stigma but we will focus on his second classification here: “Next there are blemishes of individual character... for example mental disorder” (1963, pp. 14). Though pre-set cultural norms have always existed and the gender roles change over time, varying from culture to culture, this essay will focus on how mental health issues can affect gender identity,

From the statistics above, we have seen that men are more likely to die by suicide but why is this? “Men suffering from depression are more likely to go unrecognized and untreated than women suffering from depression, in part because men may avoid seeking help (viewing it as a weakness)” (hsccs.org, 2015). Gender roles are learned from a childhood and individuals can feel pressure to bring their personal identities in line with these roles. Boys must learn how to be men, meaning they must learn to meet their masculine expectations through socialisation (wgac.colostate.edu, 2015). This pressure to be emotionally restricted can stop men from seeking

“Lay people tend to spontaneously view ‘mental illness’ as being about psychotic or unintelligible behaviour with violent behaviour seen as reflecting mental illness or disorder.” (Rogers and Pilgrim, 2005, pp. 25). As men’s behaviour is frequently associated with violent and antisocial acts, this can lead men with mental health problems to be labelled as “criminally deviant”. Due to this label, “men are more likely to be dealt with at the ‘harsh’ end of psychiatry” (Rogers and Pilgrim, 2005, pp. 74-78). In order to avoid being ascribed with this label, men may avoid speaking out.

On a website dedicated to ending the discrimination of mental illness, a man named as Darren (no last name given), speaks of how he has lost many of his friends after word had spread of his ‘illness’. He suggests that people find mental illness to be a threat and that people quickly lost patience with him (D, 2013). Reactions like that can impact identities in negative ways. The stereotyping of men can lead to a spoiled identity, leaving them feeling inadequate, different from others, alone and