Several Passages in Theodore Dreisers Sister Carrie - 550 Words

Several Passages and Scenes in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (Essay Sample) Content: AuthorTutorCourseDate"Sister Carrie" by Theodore DreiserThere are several passages and scenes in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie that describes the theater. In Chapter 8, under the scene where Carrie leaves Minnie a note showing that she has left to live in a different location but that Hansons become unemotional about it, a clear definition of the theatre is evident. In the note, Carrie indicated, "Good-bye, Minnie. I'm not going home. I'm going to stay in Chicago a little while and look for work. Don't worry. I'll be all right" (Dreiser 59). As it is, Carrie is looking for a job, having in mind that she wanted to be an actress all along. In this scene, the theatre is described as a feature that an individual longs for hence a factor that releases a person from the world. Incidentally, Dreiser depicts that the theater is a representation of what Carrie always wanted in her life. The scene also describes the theater as the highest form of entertainment explaining why Carrie long for it. Furthermore, Dreiser also shows that Carrie will work in the theater in future hence it is regarded as a unique stepping stone that she will have in her path to be an actress.In the identified passage above, the staged theatrical entertainment acts as a symbol for the big-city life by outlining the major function of the theatre. For instance, th...

Analysis Of. Eliot s Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock

In T.S. Eliot’s Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Prufrock invites the reader on a journey with him through his story of love, or love that never was. He speaks to the reader as his love lost and asks her to stick with him on his journey through time, to learn why their love never transpired. He begins by showing her his decisions as a young adult, optimistic and confident in time, to prepare for her. Time goes by, he is now middle aged and insecure of his appearance, now in fear of her rejection and unsure if he has missed his window. Nearing the end of the poem he has grown older still, having wasted all time, knowing now that his love story will never be, he is ready to show his lost love, why. Young Adult Prufrock begins as lite hearted and carefree. He invites his love on a walk at dusk through the sleazy streets of their town. Begging her not to question him just yet of where they are going, â€Å"Oh do not ask ‘what is it’ let us go and make our visit.†(Eliot) Prufrock is confident in time, comfortable in procrastinating. â€Å"There will be time, there will be time, to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create; and time for all the works and days of hands that lift and drop a question on your plate: time for you and time for me,† (Eliot) Looking further into the text here, it leaves the impression that he is stringing the love along, expecting her to wait until he is ready, assuming that she will always be there when he decidesShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock1386 Words   |  6 Pagesâ€Å"The Love Song of T.S Eliot† In â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† the reader can clearly understand that T.S Eliot is straightforward as one can get within a poem. In the beginning of the poem, one can infer that Prufrock is being used as a facade to convey Eliot’s inner self who is an introvert that doesn’t quite fit in with the modern day society. â€Å"Prufrock† sees his personal life as a burden that he cannot mend while he tries to conform into the middle class society that everyone views asRead MoreAnalysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Essay602 Words   |  3 PagesAnalysis of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock J. Alfred Prufrock constantly lived in fear, in fear of life and death. T. S. Eliot divided his classic poem into three equally important sections. Each division provided the reader with insight into the mental structure of J. Alfred Prufrock. In actuality, Prufrock maintained a good heart and a worthy instinct, but he never seemed to truly exist. A false shadow hung over his existence. Prufrock never allowed himself to actually live. He hadRead MoreCritical Analysis : The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock895 Words   |  4 PagesEssay Two- Critical Analysis Writing a critical analysis is diving into the text. Readers must break down all parts of the text and pin pointing the author s purpose for the writing. A very challenging poem to analysis is T.S. Eliot’s â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock†. It has been declared that â€Å"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock† started that Anglo-American modernist movement with poetry. The poem was the first poem with American poetry to flow free verse. At the time, it was deemedRead MoreThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Essay1524 Words   |  7 Pageshistorical context of a particular poem Poem: T. S. Eliot, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock The context of any given text whether poetry, novels or a movie is always integral to its understanding. Social and historical context of not only the given text, but the writer’s context and reader’s context play an important role in the interpretation and understanding of the major ideas, issues, values and beliefs within the text. T.S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot was one of the twentieth century’s major poetsRead MoreAnalysis Of The Appearance Theme By T. S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, And Arthur Miller2539 Words   |  11 PagesLockhart 20 November 2014 An Analysis of the Appearance Theme in Three Works by T. S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller â€Å"Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it s far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do -- it can make us identify with situations and people far away. If it does that, it s a miracle,† remarked ChinuaRead MoreThe Deeper Side of Prufrock from The Love Son of J. Alfred Prufrock1801 Words   |  8 PagesThe Deeper Side of Prufrock from The Love Son of J. Alfred Prufrock Thomas Sterns Eliot wrote the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock over a period of six years and published it circa 1917 at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. As his first published poem, Prufrock revealed Eliots original and highly developed style. Its startling jumps from rhetorical language to clichà ©, its indirect literary references, and its simultaneous humor and pessimism were quite new in English literature. (WorldRead MoreT.S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prurock Analysis1162 Words   |  5 PagesT.S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prurock Analysis In T. S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the author is establishing the danger the narrator is having dealing with getting older. Prufrock is the narrator in this poem, and believes that age is a burden and is totally troubled by it. He feels the prime of his life is over and he cant love women the way he used to. His worry with the passing of time characterizes his fear of aging. The poem deals with these fears. In thisRead More Analysis of T.S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock1424 Words   |  6 PagesAnalysis of T.S. Eliots The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock demonstrates the effects of social and economic pressure in the life of a Victorian man. T.S. Eliot shows us, in an ironic monologue, how the reality of age and social position paralyzes his character with fear. The poem opens with six lines from Dante?s ?Infernio?. This particular stanza explains that the speaker is in hell and the message can only be told to someone else in hell. TheRead MoreShort Analyses of Some of the Best American Literature872 Words   |  4 Pagesï » ¿American Literature in Context Introduction The following analysis of these works of literature will focus on to what extents these works are representative of the time in which they were write. This refers to the social as well as the artistic or aesthetic context in which they were written. The paper will attempt to show how these works reflect the age and concerns in which they were written. 1. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper. This story which was first published in 1892Read More Comparing Symbols and Symbolism in Blue Hotel, Black Cat, Night, Alfred Prufrock, Red Wheelbarrow1620 Words   |  7 PagesColor Symbolism in Blue Hotel,  Black Cat, Night,  Alfred Prufrock,  Red Wheelbarrow      Ã‚  Ã‚   Symbolism of colors is evident in much of literature. The Blue Hotel by Stephen Crane, The Black Cat of Edgar Allan Poe, Night by William Blake, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot, and The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams encompass examples of color symbolism from both the prose and the poetry of literature. When drawing from various modes of psychology, interpretations

Workaholics Employment and American Work Life - 1313 Words

Workaholics Every action executed by human beings involves positive and negative aspects and work is not an exception. Ever since work turned out to be a source of money people started to care more about the remuneration rather than the work they will like to perform. The obsession to work, created by the ambition of humans has changed people from hard workers into workaholics. Work hard and get ahead†, that’s what Americans learn growing but for millions it’s getting harder to tell the difference between working hard and being a workaholic. Work also involves employers. In America employers sometimes takes advantage of their labors; whether they are illegal or have a low-level of education they are being exploited, getting little†¦show more content†¦He met some of the employees of this big food industry whod been injured. We are human beings, more than one person told me, but they treat us like animals (Schlosser 669). Employers take advantage of their labors because whether they are illegal or have a low educational level; they are willing to work long shifts and getting paid a low salary because they need the money to survive. Skilled workers are getting replaced by low-wage labors; consequently the number of injured workers has increased enormously. Many of the workers whove been injured are not even aware of the compensation they could receive so they have to deal with the injury, having to provide for the family, paying medical bills and trying to find a source of income to survive. Kenny worked for a slaughterhouse for many years, he felt strongly loyal to the company which regardless his educational level and reduced skills still given him a job. Although Kenny was a victim of abuse he dedicated his whole life and effort to the company.†They used me to the point I had no parts left to give (Schlosser 672) said Kenny after he have retired for a really serious injury. As Kenny, hundreds of workers across America have turned into slaves of work and have lost their freedom of time but on top of that they clearly hate what their job as many other people in society do. Not many people feels truly happy with the work they perform every day; certainlyShow MoreRelatedWorkaholism: A Social Problem of The Present4847 Words   |  20 PagesUK; this issue is relevant for the U.S.as well. There have always been people who work more than others and could not imagine their life without work. However, with the commercialization of society, their number has increased dramatically. In the period of rapid development of new technologies and intense competition in almost all professional fields, there are more and more people who dedicate to work and career making a lot of time. First of all, these are motivated young people of 20-35Read MoreUnderstanding And Managing The Generational Gap1203 Words   |  5 Pages105 26 November, 2016 Understanding and Managing the Generational Gap The workforce is seeing up to five generations working together for the first time in history. People are choosing to work longer and delay retirement. Ultimately, the workforce could experience up to six generations working together. It’s the role of business leaders to embrace diversity and guide their teams to cohesion. Generational gaps can pose challenges in the workplaceRead MoreEthical Issue of Long Work Hours1741 Words   |  7 Pages Ethical Issue of Long Work Hours Xinyu Zhou Grad 6 Taught by Dr. Mark Smith Introduction Today, long work hours have become a significant issue. For employees’ health and the normal operation of the society system, ethical issue of long work hours should be cared more. Countless evidence shows that long work hours increase the workers’ risks for injury and disease. For instance, a research by American government estimates that long work hours increase the possibilitiesRead MoreThe Age Discrimination And Employment Act Of 967 ( Adea ) Essay1929 Words   |  8 PagesEmployees over the age of 40 are protected under law from discrimination under the Age Discrimination and Employment Act of 967 (ADEA). However, that does not change the beliefs of some organizations that employees over the age of 40 are not as beneficial or productive as those younger than the age of 40. Communication skills are important to any organization and employees are expected to be professional and be able to express their ideas and opinions in that manner. Good communication skills areRead MoreThe Generational Gap Of A Generation Diverse Workforce Essay2208 Words   |  9 Pages1965 and 1980); and Millennials (born after 1980) (Zemke, Raines, Filipczak, 2000). According to the most recent 2010 census data along with recent federal labor force reports, 1 out of 3 working Americans are from the Millennial generation. The Millennial generation accounts for 54 million American which recently surpassed the Generation Xers at 53 million. The baby boomers are on a decline but are still roughly at 75 million with Traditionalist around 45 million. With the Baby Boomers havingRead MoreCostco Essay2450 Words   |  10 Pagesdo. Costco treats its employees well in the belief that a happier work environment will result in a more profitable company. 3.1 Recruitment Nondiscrimination: It always has been and continues to be Costcos policy that employees should be able to enjoy a work environment free from all forms of unlawful employment discrimination. High expectation: Exciting opportunities/Personal and career growth/Friendly and supportive work environment/Stability/A workplace focused on ethics and obeying theRead MoreTitle:. Trendwatching Waiting Longer To Get Married: An1820 Words   |  8 Pagessanction of religion (Murphy, n.d.). Many people don’t see marriage as a necessary for a good life anymore. According to historical U.S. Census Bureau data, 36 percent of Generation Xers, 48 percent of baby boomers and 65 percent of traditionalists were married when they were the age that millennials are now (Fleming, 2016). You will find that waiting longer to get married is affected by many aspects in life such as education, careers, and society. What’s Trending? The Elevator Speech About WaitingRead MoreThe Current Generational Issues Of The Workplace2002 Words   |  9 Pagesstronger workforce where the old and new generation would work together to overcome the difficulties, businesses have been struggling in the hiring of millennials. The work environment has changed radically over the years and that has led to several differences between the generations. More than 53% of hiring managers are experiencing difficulties in employing and retaining millennials , and that percentage keeps on increasing as employment turnover keeps growing. The main reason why millennialsRead More Governmental Family Policy Essay4109 Words   |  17 Pagesstruggling to balance work and family. The Second Wave of feminism has pushed her into the workforce, promising its ideals of equality in wages and in the home. However, many women find themselves in a world that devalues their work in home and in the workplace. Our society has not yet caught up to the Third Wave of feminism, which attempts to break down the traditional gender roles our constructions of work and family are based on. Many are hoping that government intervention through work policies thatRead MoreDysfunctional Families: How Children Are Affected Essay2433 Words   |  10 PagesAbstract When a family decides to have a child, everything changes. That child becomes a number one priority. In order for a child to lead a healthy, functional life, a family needs to be strong and functional. When a family becomes dysfunctional, the most effected is the children. The children forget their children and act out which makes them difficult to live with. If a dysfunctional family, let alone the children, knew that therapy and help was available to them, more families would become

Gender Roles and Stereotypes free essay sample

The use of the word gender highlights the insight that these differences are not innate or predetermined, and are not the same as the biological differences between men and women. Sex roles: refer to biological functions that are limited to one particular sex. For example, pregnancy is a female sex role because only women can bear children. Gender roles: are roles classified by sex, in which the classification is social and not biological. Child-rearing may be classified as a female role, but it is a female gender role rather than a female sex role, as child-rearing can be done by men or women. Productive activities: refer to the productions of goods and services for consumption or trade; for example, farming or fishing. When people are asked what they do, the response is usually related to productive work, especially work which generates income. Both women and men can be involved in productive activities but, for the most part, their functions and responsibilities will differ according to gender divisions of labor. Women‘s productive work is often less visible and less valued than that of the men‘s. Reproductive work: refers to the care and maintenance of the household and its members—including bearing and caring for children, preparing food, collecting water and fuel, shopping, housekeeping and family healthcare. Although reproductive work is crucial to human survival, it is seldom considered ? real work‘. In poor communities, reproductive work is usually labor intensive and time consuming. It is almost always the responsibility of women and girls. Gender stereotypes: occur when men and women are regarded as different according to rigid thinking about the social and cultural expectations of their gender—rather than a more reliable consideration of their individual capacities and potentials. Practical gender needs: refer to resources or facilities that people need to perform their present roles more easily, effectively or efficiently. Such needs can usually be identified by the people themselves—for example, the obtaining of water or fuel. Measures to address these needs may preserve or reinforce traditional gender relations. Strategic gender needs: are designed to challenge women‘s subordinate positions in society, and to transform their existing roles and relations. Examples of strategic needs include reproductive rights, a greater political voice, and action on violence against women. In reflecting on the analysis of gender information, an important distinction needs to be made between ? practical‘ and ? strategic‘ gender needs. To address a practical gender need is to improve a person‘s situation by widening her or his access to resources. For example, a woman‘s situation will be made easier if she doesn‘t have to walk long distances to fetch water or do not travel longer to take her children to the health center. However, such improvements will not directly affect their roles and relationships, or their control. They are purely practical. Those changes that really empower people are called ? strategic‘ ones. If a woman learns more about her rights with regard to divorce or inheritance, for example, this is addressing her strategic needs. Her relationships and her positions will thus be improved. In general, practical gender needs are likely to be related to survival through the provision of food, shelter, clothing, or health care. Small scale women‘s projects fit into this category in as much as they directly impact on family‘s welfare, without relieving the women of her domestic chores or drastically changing her life. Sometimes, in fact, addressing practical needs reinforces established roles. Addressing strategic gender needs, on the other hand, can empower women by challenging and changing their domestication, subordination and marginalization. Gender issues arise when there is inequality, inequity or differential treatment of an individual or group purely on the basis of the social expectations and attributes of their sex. This is done normally as a result of old attitudes persisting in situations where they are no longer valid. Gender issues are characterized by gender discrimination, whereby one sex is disadvantaged while the other is favored, or gender oppression, whereby one gender dominates the other unjustly or even cruelly through the use of power and domination. Such practices create gender gaps, through customary practices, religious biases, social consumptions, myths or taboos resulting in one gender discriminated against to such an extent that it is prevented from getting its fair share of resources or services. Gender mainstreaming entails identifying and addressing gender issues in all development projects and programs irrespective of the sector or type of project, and at all stages of development from planning and implementation to monitoring and evaluation. Gender Integration is a process of taking gender relations into account in all areas of activity in an organization, a community or at national level, and consciously acknowledging unequal power relations between women and men in society. It also leads to consciously working towards the promotion of gender equality and the advancement of women. Women in Development (WID) is a development approach that focuses on the specific needs of women and seeks to address them separately. Gender and Development (GAD) is an approach that takes into account the different needs of women and men and aims to create gender equity and equality between them. Both WID and GAD seek to improve the disadvantaged position of women. Genderequityconnotesensuringthatdevelopmentpoliciesand programs leave women no worse off, either economically or in terms of their social responsibility. Equity is measured through the human cost of various activities, such as a fair share of benefits and responsibilities, equity aims to give women equal treatment under the law, equal access to education, and equal remuneration for work. PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO GENDER AND SEXUALITY Specific Models Here we will provide two examples of research building specific theoretical models to deal with specific questions. Stereotypes and power. Susan Fiske (1993) has proposed a model of the ways in which power and stereotypes influence each other. Two processes are involved: (a) Stereotyping exerts control or power over people, pressuring them to conform; therefore, stereotyping maintains the status quo. (b) Powerful people tend to stereotype less powerful people far more than the reverse. Given that gender is an important status or power variable, you can read men for powerful people and women for less powerful people. The theory is even broader than that, though, and extends to other categories such as ethnic groups. Lets consider the first process, in which gender stereotyping exerts control of males and females. Stereotypes can be prescriptive that is, they say how people of a certain group should behave. Adolescent boys should excel at athletics. Girls should not be aggressive. If one fails to meet the demands of such stereotypes, the penalties can be severe, such as social rejection by the peer group. Stereotypes, therefore, exert control over people. Turning to the second process, the powerful group (men) tends to stereotype the less powerful group (women) more than the reverse. Less powerful people generally are motivated to pay attention to the idiosyncrasies of powerful people because those powerful people control outcomes for the less powerful. Servants know a great many details about their employers and their preferences, for example, but the reverse is unlikely. Powerful people pay less attention to others and consequently rely on simple stereotypes. Powerful people pay less attention to the less powerful in part because the less powerful have little control over them. Men who sexually aggress against women. Some theorists argue that too much rape research has focused on women who have been raped, when the real emphasis should be on the aggressors. Only by gaining a scientific understanding of them will we be able to reduce the occurrence of rape. Neil Malamuth and colleagues (1991) developed a model of the factors that predispose a man to engage in sexual coercion with women and then tested it against data obtained from a large, national sample of male college students. According to their model and the data supported it four factors predispose a man to engage in sexual coercion: (a) Hostile home environment Violence between parents or battering or sexually abusing the child increase the chances that the boy will engage in sexual coercion. (b) Delinquency Being involved in delinquency leads a boy to associate with delinquent peers who, for example, encourage hostile attitudes and rationalizations for committing crimes and reward a tough, aggressive image. c) Sexual promiscuity Often in the context of the delinquent group, the young man comes to believe that sexual conquests bring him status within the peer group, and coercion may seem to be a reasonable way to achieve his goals. (d) A hostile masculine personality This personality constellation involves deep hostility toward women together with negatively defined, exaggerated masculinitymasculinity characterized as rejecting anything feminine, such as nurturance, and emphasizing power, control, and macho characteristics. Gender Schema Theory Bems (1981) gender schema theory reflects the cognitive revolution in psychology over the last several decades and applies this approach to understanding the development of gender stereotyping. In cognitive psychology, schema generally refers to a cognitive structure, developed from prior learning, that is used when filtering and interpreting new information. For Bem, a gender schema is a persons general knowledge framework about gender, with which information is processed and organized based on gender-linked associations. Children gradually form a gender schema as they learn their cultures network of associations with gender. Moreover, the gender schema becomes linked to self-concept so that children, as part of their motivation to become good girls or boys, engage in the gender-appropriate behavior specified by the gender schema. Many studies support gender schema theory. In testing the theory, Bem categorized participants into gender-schematic persons (masculine males and feminine females, as determined by Bems test of androgyny [1974]) and gender-aschematic people (androgynous males and androgynous females). She argued that gender-schematic people are more likely to engage in gender-schematic processing of information, whereas gender-aschematic people engage in it less. In a free-recall test of a list of words, gender-schematic people were more likely to cluster the words by gender (e. g. , gorilla, bull, trousers), than gender-aschematic people were. Reaction-time data indicated that gender-schematic people, when responding me or not me, processed schema-consistent attributes faster than they processed schema-inconsistent attributes. Martin and Halverson (1983) found that, if five- and six-year-old children were shown pictures of children engaging in stereotype-consistent or stereotype-inconsistent activities, a week later the children made errors in recall of the stereotype-inconsistent pictures, recalling them as stereotype-consistent. That is, if they had seen a picture of two girls boxing, they remembered that they had seen two boys boxing. Gender schema theory is compelling for a number of reasons, one being that it explains why gender stereotypes are so resistant to change our gender schema simply filters out stereotype-inconsistent information. The main limitation of the theory is that it is exclusively cognitive. Emotion is reemerging as a prominent construct within psychology in general, and in the 21st century we look toward theories of gender that integrate cognition (thought) and affect (emotion). For example, the expanding literature on self-concepts and self-strategiesis just waiting to be incorporated into research on gender. Gender schema theory provides a cognitive explanation for why gender stereotypes are so difficult to change. However, another plausible, and very exciting explanation might suggest that some people are motivated to maintain their gender stereotypes. For instance, there may be times when people accentuate or draw attention to their own gender-stereotyped traits, if doing so makes them feel good about themselves. People may feel more positively about themselves and their own gender when they degrade the other gender. On the other hand, some people do indeed work on reducing their stereotyped attitudes about gender, but what motivates them to work so hard at this? Maybe there are situations in which gender stereotypes become so personally limiting and/or defeating that people want to reject them? How do they do this? Integrating self-concept research into research about gender presents the opportunity to determine motivational factors underlying why gender is such a salient interpersonal characteristic for both women and men, and why its importance is so immutable. Evolutionary psychology The key element to evolutionary psychology is the idea that natural selection operates on expressed behaviours. In this way it can impact on underlying psychological mechanisms, favoring those that promote successful reproduction and militating against those associated with non-reproduction. Of course, because we cannot inherit acquired characteristics, any such process must have a grounding at a genetic level. The psychological mechanisms and their expression (for example, altruism) need to have a level of predisposition in the genes. Proponents of evolutionary psychology argue that their theory helps to make sense of empirical findings from xperimental social psychology. For example, some research suggests that people are more likely to help (be altruistic towards) strangers who look, act and think like themselves. Such strangers, they claim, are more likely to have a genetic resemblance. In other words, propinquitous altruism indirectly favours the genetic profile of the helper through supporting the person helped. Men across a range of cultures have been shown to favour youthful-looking wo men. They also find women more attractive if their waists are about a third narrower than their hips. If such preferences are the result of a partially inherited mechanism, as evolutionary psychologists would suggest, then men would seem to be ‘wired up’ to choose reproductive partners whose youthful fertility offers the best chance of genetic profiles being reproduced. It is worth noting that a problem with this kind of theorization is that a plausible story can be told to explain almost any ‘facts’. Were the result otherwise – for example, if men showed a preference for rather more mature women who have already given birth – it could be argued that their choices were for experienced, ‘better’ mothers. The theory, moreover, is completely untestable. Similar problems apply to research into women’s notions of male attractiveness. Buss (1994) has argued from an evolutionary psychology perspective that this is mediated by selection for protection and support (that is, men who seem mature and dominant). However, more recent research using image ‘morphing’ suggests that women prefer men’s faces that are not over-masculine (in the sense of strong jaws and heavy brows). However, he did also confirm a male preference for more ‘feminine’ women’s faces. Again, Perrett’s finding about men’s faces can be explained in evolutionary psychology language. ‘High testosterone’ faces just might signal violent, unstable partners, and to avoid them might bring a man with better parenting potential. GENDER ROLES AND STEREOTYPES Gender roles are cultural expectations about the behaviors appropriate to each gender. Gender role and Stereotype Transmission Society is generous in providing information about gender. Few institutions or socializing agents can be ignored when we try to determine just how children learn about gender roles and its associated stereotypes. Recognizing the multiplicity of these influences is important; parceling out the relative contribution of the various agents is more challenging, given the co-occurrence of these influences in everyday life. In fact, from a multilevel systems approach, we accept the reality of both macrolevel and microlevel processes that mutually support a system of cultural norms. Here we limit our focus, however, considering three of the more proximal sources of socialization: family, schools and peer groups, and media. Each has been shown to be fertile ground for the promotion of gender roles and stereotypes. Family The family is a concept more easily used than precisely defined. Although researchers tend to restrict their consideration of family influences to the mother and father (and far more often to the mother), family dynamics are typically much broader in their operation, including not only siblings but often extended networks of grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and even biologically unrelated caretakers. Often the messages coming from these various sources are inconsistent, and thus the researcher is faced with yet another challenge when trying to assess the impact of socialization sources on the acquisition of gender stereotypes. Recognizing these difficulties, we must nonetheless rely on the available literature, which does show clear evidence of parental influence on gender role and stereotype acquisition. Parents can use both direct and indirect means to teach gender stereotypes to their children: they can be explicit in saying that girls and boys have different traits, or they can implicitly convey the same message in their choice of presents or activities. Even the parents’ choice of colors and room decorations in a child’s early years can encourage the development of sex-differentiated concepts. Numerous studies show that parents themselves have stereotypic beliefs about boys and girls, for example, with regard to their possession of motor skills. Further research has shown that parents who more strongly endorse gender stereotypes convey their beliefs with specific expectations about their children’s performance in relevant domains (e. g. , English versus math). More significantly, these expectations are realized in the actual performance of their children and in their children’s self-perceptions of competence. Parents, of course, vary in the degree and type of stereotypic information they convey. Mothers who are employed, for example, are less likely to have stereotyped beliefs than are mothers who work only in the home, but even this relationship appears to be moderated by other factors, including socioeconomic status and father’s involvement in childrearing. Schools and Peer Groups Parents are often the major influence on a child’s socialization in the preschool years. As children get older, however, peer influence comes to play a larger role, as do teachers and other agents in the school system. Indeed, it is a recognition of this influence that has led many parents to opt for home-schooling, eliminating the potential influence of both of these socializing sources. ) Within the schools, particularly in the early school years, segregation of boys and girls is common, even on tasks for which gender is irrelevant, and research suggests that when this segregation is more obvio us, children are more likely to stereotype on the basis of gender. Specific gender-related knowledge is also learned from teachers, from classmates, and from the instructional materials used. Children themselves show a strong preference for gender segregation in most cultures, the preference for interacting with one’s own sex has been observed as early as ages 2–3 years and increases steadily as children get older. By middle childhood, only 15 percent of children report having other-sex friends. It seems likely that this gender homogeneity reinforces the notion of separate categories and increases the likelihood that distinctive stereotypic traits will be associated with each category. Significantly, this is also the age by which preschoolers exhibit clear evidence of gender-based prejudice. Media The media have long been recognized as important sources of gender-related information. Early studies focused primarily on the potential influence of television and films; more recently, investigators have broadened their analyses to include music, video games, and the Internet. The vast majority of these studies show extensive stereotyping of both gender and ethnicity, with only slight evidence of changes over time. Examples are abundant. In advertisements, for example, men are more often portrayed as the voice of authority and shown in professional roles, while women are still frequently seen engaged in home-centered behaviors such as laundry and cooking. Television programs directed at children are substantially more stereotypic than is adult programming. Video games often portray women as sex objects. And in the many children’s films, gender stereotypes are also in high profile. The vast majority of female characters are shown only in the home or in traditional female jobs, such as nurses or waitresses, whereas men are typically depicted in high-prestige and exciting occupations. Although evidence for the presence of gender stereotyping in the media is ubiquitous, it is more difficult to show the causal link between exposure and endorsement of gender stereotypes. Simply viewing television, for example, does not assure that attention is being paid and the representations incorporated. It is also possible that children who spend more time watching television or surfing the Internet are initially more prone to accept gender stereotypes. One-time experimental studies are often questioned for their generalizability, and longer-term correlational studies can not definitively establish causation. Nonetheless, evidence seems to be increasingly supportive of the position that frequent television viewing is associated with stronger beliefs in gender stereotypes. In analyzing the impact of any of these socialization agents, we realize that the messages are multifaceted and the impact uneven. Further, it is important to recognize the role of both the individual and the specific context. Development of Stereotypes Children as young as 3 years old start to show signs of gender stereotyping. This development is not uniform or simple, and 6- year-old children showed a pattern of selective stereotyping in which they made gender stereotypical judgments about children whose toy interests were similar to their own but failed to make stereotypical judgments for children whose interests were different from their own. This behavior probably reflected a more complete development of knowledge about self and others like self, which extended to gender. Children do even more gender stereotyping as they get older, and 8- to 10-year-olds made stereotypical judgments for both genders. This pattern of stereotype development appears in three stages. Children in the first stage have learned characteristics and behaviors associated directly with each gender, such as the toy preferences of each. In this stage, they have ot learned the many indirect associations with gender, associations that are essential for stereotypes to form. In the second stage, children have begun to develop the indirect associations for behaviors associated with their own gender, but not yet for the other gender. In the third stage, children have learned these indirect associations for the other gender as well as their own, giving them the capability of making stereotypical judgments of both women and men. A specific cognitive process a llows children (and adults) to maintain stereotypes once they have formed. This process is called illusory correlation: â€Å"the erroneous perception of covariation between two events when no correlation exists, or the perception of a correlation as stronger than it actually is† . i. e. people perceive that relationships exist between gender and various behaviors when no relationship exists, or when the relationship is not as strong as their perception indicates. Studies have demonstrated that illusory correlation operates in 2nd- and 4th-grade children in a way that is consistent with developing gender stereotypes. Furthermore, these studies indicated that children’s tendency to gender stereotype creates distortions in their memory for gender-related information. The perception of correlations can be an important factor in maintaining stereotypes for both children and adults; when people believe that activities are related to one or the other gender, then they feel comfortable in thinking in terms of these categorizations. This perceptual bias acts to maintain stereotypes. However, one study (Susskind, 2003) indicated that children do not ignore counterstereotypical information, and the presentation of such information may be a way to diminish gender stereotyping. Thus, when children see fathers cooking and mothers performing home repairs, these observations may act to decrease stereotyping by breaking down illusory correlations. Gender stereotyping follows age-related trends similar to the development of other gender knowledge. That is, younger children show less gender stereotyping than older children , men are subject to harsher stereotyping than women, and girls stereotype less strongly than boys. Studying gender stereotyping in individuals ranging from kindergarten children to college students showed that the flexible application of gender stereotypes increases with age . Younger children relied more on gender information than on information about individuals when making judgments about people, whereas older individuals took into account information about deviations from gender stereotypes. This pattern of development indicates that the acquisition of full information concerning gender stereotypes is accompanied by greater flexibility in the use stereotypes. The tendency to rely on the stereotype is always present, and both children and adults showed a tendency to attribute gender-stereotypical traits to women, men, and children, including a reluctance to attribute feminine characteristics to males and a tendency to associate femininity with being childlike Although stereotype flexibility increases with age, the knowledge that underlies this development also has negative implications. Between the ages of 6 and 10 years old, children become aware of the stereotyping that others do. In addition, children from stigmatized groups become aware of others’ stereotyping before children from more privileged groups did so. This knowledge builds the basis for stereotype threat, and children with knowledge of the stereotyping process from stigmatized groups were more likely to exhibit the negative performance effects of stereotype threat than were other children. Hence, this negative effect of stereotyping occurs along with increased knowledge. Therefore, the development of gender stereotypes begins early, with 3-year-olds knowing about gender-related differences in behavior. As children acquire information about gender, they become capable of forming and maintaining elaborate stereotypes for men and women, but they also become more willing to make exceptions to the gender rules they have learned. Nevertheless, gender stereotypes provide a system for classifying people that operates throughout people’s lives; these influence their expectations for self and others, as well as the judgments they form about people based on their gender-related characteristics and behaviors. The Process and Implications of Stereotyping The term stereotyping has negative connotations, but some theorists do not emphasize the negative aspects of the process. Some have concentrated on the convenience of this type of categorical cognitive processing, and others have contended that stereotypes have positive as well as negative effects. Yet other theorists have argued that stereotyping produces such a magnitude of distortions and incorrect generalizations that its disadvantages are overwhelming. The negative effects of stereotyping are apparent in stereotype threat. Those who study stereotyping as a cognitive process emphasize people’s need to streamline the way they interact with a complex world; forming simplified categories is a way to do so. The limits on children’s cognitive abilities make this need even more pressing during childhood. Taking this view, gender stereotyping is a normal cognitive process that allows children to form categories based on gender and to understand this important attribute, if in a simplified and distorted way. The simplification and distortion inherent in stereotyping can have negative effects, but the positive benefits to children of forming gender stereotypes outweigh the negative effects of making some mistakes and thinking too narrowly about gender-related behaviors. Therefore, the function of gender stereotyping can be understood in developmental terms as a useful way to approach the complexities of gender. A knowledge of gender stereotyping in children does not necessarily lead to an understanding of the factors that maintain stereotypical behavior in adults. The advantages of gender stereotyping during childhood do not necessitate that adults maintain gender stereotypes. Research has indicated that older children, adolescents, and adults become more flexible in their application of stereotypes; they are willing to make exceptions to the dictates of their gender stereotypes, both for themselves and for others. However, gender stereotypes persist throughout life. Stereotypes provide not only descriptions of how people think about women and men but also prescriptions about what women and men should be, which means that gender stereotyping places limits on what traits and behaviors are allowed. Thus, theorists and researchers have explored the formation, function, and effects of holding gender stereotypes. One issue relevant to stereotyping is its accuracy. The â€Å"kernel of truth† position holds that stereotypes have some valid as well as some inaccurate points. Gender roles, the set of behaviors performed more often by men or women, form the basis for gender stereotypes. That is, the social roles that women and men fulfill allow people to perceive differences between men and women and to extend these differences to areas where none exists. The issue of accuracy has provoked a great deal of controversy but no resolution. A meta-analysis of studies on the accuracy of gender stereotyping confirmed that overestimation and underestimation occur. Perceptions of gender differences may be accurate when measuring average group judgments, but individuals differ a great deal, and some individuals exhibit substantial inaccuracies. Such inaccuracies should create problems, and prejudice and discrimination are among the effects that arise from stereotyping. Prejudice is a negative evaluation of an entire group, which allows prejudiced people to react to members of the group without any personal contact or without knowing anything about people in the group as individuals. Discrimination is behavior that holds people or groups apart from others and results in different treatments for those people. Thus, prejudice is an attitude but discrimination is behavior. People may be prejudiced yet not actively discriminate, but the two often go together. Psychology’s traditional view of prejudice holds that people within a group (the ingroup) form negative feelings about those in another group (the out-group). The identification of the out-group may include stereotyping that sharpens the difference between the two groups and erases the individual differences of those people in the outgroup. The results of prejudice include an increased feeling of worth for people in the ingroup and a devaluation of those in the out-group. Does gender fit into this model? Are men and women in-groups and out-groups to each other? Listening to the conversations of groups of women or men saying terrible things about the other may seem to confirm this view, but research results are not consistent with such a conceptualization. Although women are the targets of various types of discrimination in terms of economic, political, educational, and professional achievement, attitudes about women are not uniformly negative. Indeed, one line of research showed that women as a category receive more favorable evaluations than men. Results from a meta-analysis indicated that women received slightly more favorable ratings than men. Thus, people in general have positive feelings about the characteristics stereotypically associated with women; people believe that these characteristics provide fine examples of human qualities. These findings are not consistent with an overall prejudice against women. Peter Glick, Susan Fiske, and their colleagues (2000) have researched this puzzle in gender stereotyping and formulated interesting answers. The focus of their research is their conceptualization of sexism, that is, prejudice based on sex or gender. Their view separates positive from negative aspects of sexism. They call the negative aspects hostile sexism, and this concept includes negative attitudes toward women. They also consider benevolent sexism, which they conceptualize as positive attitudes that nonetheless serve to belittle women and keep them subservient. Benevolent sexism is reflected in the attitudes that women deserve special treatment, deserve to be set on a pedestal, and should be revered. Despite the positive nature of these beliefs, people who hold such attitudes tend to see women as weaker, more in need of protection, and less competent than men. Ironically, it may be the favorable traits stereotypically associated with women that serve to perpetuate their lower status. When people see women as warm and caring but less competent than men, they may give women positive evaluations but still feel that women need men to protect and take care of them. Thus, women’s subservience is justified. Men are not exempt from this type of ambivalent sexism; the stereotypic characteristics of men can also be analyzed into hostile and benevolent components that are analogous to those that apply to women, but women’s hostile attitudes toward men do not erase men’s dominance. This type of benevolent prejudice may rationalize racism as well as sexism, casting the dominant group as benevolent protectors rather than oppressors. Research on the contents of stereotypes has shown that combinations of two dimensions—competence and warmth—capture many beliefs about stereotyped groups. The mixed values of low competence–high warmth and high competence–low warmth have been of most interest to researchers, but the two other combinations of high warmth–high competence and low warmth–low competence also occur. Research on this stereotype content model confirmed that people evaluated a number of lower-status groups (women, ethnic minority groups, older people, disabled people) as less competent but warm and thus rated them positively. People from some high-status groups were not so well-liked; they were respected and judged as competent but not warm. Therefore, this view promotes a complex analysis of the components of stereotypes as well as a broad view of the effects of such stereotyping as it applies to gender and other stereotyped categories. Thus, several lines of research highlight the negative aspects of stereotyping and point out that stereotyping has wider implications than ease of cognitive processing. For children, such simplification may be a necessary part of dealing with a complex world, but adolescents and adults are able to deal with individual information, yet tend not to do so. Rather, adults stereotype on a variety of dimensions, including gender. Stereotypes form the basis for prejudice and discrimination, and both men and women are subject to these negative processes. Perceptions of Women and Men The stereotype of women as warm and caring but incompetent and men as competent but not warm is consistent with the Victorian notion of the Cult of True Womanhood and with the Male Gender Role Identity. Are women and men still measured by these standards, or have the changes in women’s and men’s behaviors produced changes in the stereotypes and broadened the boundaries of acceptable behaviors for men and women? The content of gender stereotypes may be analyzed into four separate components that people use to differentiate male from female—traits, behaviors, physical characteristics, and occupations. All these components are relatively independent, but people associate one set of features from each of these with women and another set with men. On the basis of knowledge of one dimension, people extend judgments to the other three. Given a gender label for a target person, people will make inferences concerning the person’s appearance, traits, gender role behaviors, and occupation. Information about one component can affect inferences made about the others, and people will attempt to maintain consistency among the components. Physical features seem to be central; people viewed men and women as differing more in physical features than in psychological characteristics. When people have information about behaviors, they make inferences about traits, and information about occupations can affect judgments about behaviors. However, physical appearance affected judgments about the other components more strongly than information about traits, behaviors, or occupations influenced judgments about appearance. In addition, specific personal information can outweigh gender as a factor in subsequent judgments about a person. For example, men who were described as managing the house or taking care of children were also judged as likely to be emotional and gentle. Such counterstereotypical information about men also increased the likelihood that such men would be judged to be nontypical in other ways, such as likely to be homosexual. Therefore, people use several dimensions to categorize men and women, drawing inferences on one dimension based on information from another. What traits are stereotypically associated with these categories? Studies in the 1960s and 1970s often found evidence for beliefs that matched elements of the Male Gender Role Identity or the Cult of True Womanhood, and recent studies have also found remnants of these beliefs. However, some recent research has reflected changes in attitudes. GENDER DIFFERENCES Spatial Skills If women are stronger in verbal skills, men seem to have some advantage in certain spatial. Some studies investigating the spatial abilities of men and women have found no significant differences, though metastudies show a male advantage in mental rotation and assessing horizontality and verticality, and a female advantage in spatial memory. A proposed hypothesis is that men and women evolved different mental abilities to adapt to their different roles in society. This explanation suggests that men may have evolved greater spatial abilities as a result of certain behaviors, such as navigating during a hunt. Similarly, this hypothesis suggests that women may have evolved to devote more mental resources to remembering locations of food sources in relation to objects and other features in order to gather food. Results from studies conducted in the physical environment are not conclusive about sex differences, with various studies on the same task showing no differences. For example, there are studies that show no difference in wayfinding. One study found men more likely to report having a good sense of direction and are more confident about finding their way in a new environment, but evidence does not support men having better map reading skills. Women have been found to use landmarks more often when giving directions and when describing routes. Additionally, a study concludes that women are better at recalling where objects are located in a physical environment. Women show greater proficiency and reliance on distinctive landmarks for navigation while males rely on an overall mental map. Mental rotation, the ability to see dimensional objects in your mind and to be able to match the original object with a picture of a rotated view of the same object, is the primary spatial skill at which  males are frequently better than  females. Perceptual speed is a visual task where girls have the edge. This task involves matching objects, pictures, and the like. One area in school where this skill is important is in proofreading. Girls are better at finding errors than are boys. Performance in mental rotation and similar spatial tasks is affected by gender expectations. For example, studies show that being told before the test that men typically perform better, or that the task is linked with jobs like aviation engineering typically associated with men versus jobs like fashion design typically associated with women, will negatively affect female performance on spatial rotation and positively influence it when subjects are told the opposite. Experiences such as playing video games also increase a persons mental rotation ability. A study from the University of Toronto showed that differences in ability get reduced after playing video games requiring complex mental rotation. The experiment showed that playing such games creates larger gains in spatial cognition in females than males. The possibility of testosterone and other androgens as a cause of sex differences in psychology has been a subject of study. Adult women who were exposed to unusually high levels of androgens in the womb due to congenital adrenal hyperplasia score significantly higher on tests of spatial ability. Many studies find positive correlations between testosterone levels in normal males and measures of spatial ability. However, the relationship is complex. Aggression Although research on sex differences in aggression show that males are generally more likely to display aggression than females, how much of this is due to social factors and gender expectations is unclear. Aggression is closely linked with cultural definitions of masculine and feminine. In some situations women show equal or more aggression than men; for example, women are more likely to use direct aggression in private, where other people cannot see them, and are more likely to use indirect aggression in public. Eagly and Steffen suggested in their meta-analysis of data on sex and aggression that beliefs about the negative consequences of violating gender expectations affect how both genders behave regarding aggression. Men are more likely to be the targets of displays of aggression and provocation than females. Studies by Bettencourt and Miller show that when provocation is controlled for, sex differences in aggression are greatly reduced. They argue that this shows that gender-role norms play a large part in the differences in aggressive behavior between men and women. Psychologist Anne Campbell argues that females are more likely to use indirect aggression, and that cultural interpretations have enhanced evolutionarily based sex differences by a process of imposition which stigmatises the expression of aggression by females and causes women to offer exculpatory (rather than justificatory) accounts of their own aggression. The relationship between testosterone and aggression is unclear, and a causal link has not been conclusively shown. Some studies indicate that testosterone levels may be affected by environmental and social influences. The relationship is difficult to study since the only reliable measure of brain testosterone is from a lumbar puncture which is not done for research purposes and many studies have instead used less reliable measures such as blood testosterone. In humans, males engage in crime and especially violent crime more than females. The involvement in crime usually rises in the early teens to mid teens which happen at the same time as testosterone levels rise. Most studies support a link between adult criminality and testosterone although the relationship is modest if examined separately for each sex. However, nearly all studies of juvenile delinquency and testosterone are not significant. Most studies have also found testosterone to be associated with behaviors or personality traits linked with criminality such as antisocial behavior and alcoholism. Personality tests Cross-cultural research has shown gender differences on the Big Five personality traits. For example, women consistently report higher Neuroticism and Agreeableness, and men often report higher Extroversion and Conscientiousness. Gender differences in personality traits are largest in prosperous, healthy, and egalitarian cultures in which women have more opportunities that are equal to those of men. Both men and women tend to grow more extraverted and conscientious and less neurotic and agreeable as cultures grow more prosperous and egalitarian, but the effect is stronger for men. Verbal Skills The average 20-month old little girl has twice the vocabulary of the average 20-month old boy. Because toddler girls begin to talk sooner and more clearly than boys  they have more practice. That earlier speech probably is the source of the stereotype that girls have better verbal skills. However, it is important to remember that boys will catch up later although if nothing is done to help boys improve, they may always seem like they are less verbal than girls. It is very important for boys to be included in conversations with parents and other family members. Girls are likely to have something to say, but boys may need to be encouraged. Some verbal skills such as analogies appear to have a male advantage. One belief is that some female’s ruminative cognitive style leads them to consider every choice in an analogy and be more likely to change their answers. Males were more likely to find the answer and move on. Remember, this will be true for many children but not for all. However, if there are problems in verbal ability, males are much more likely to be diagnosed with stuttering and problems with handwriting. There are some indications that boys have trouble with reading although more recent information indicates that the problem is more obvious when a child is reading orally; on reading tests, boys and girls performed the same as long at the test did not require writing, an area  in which boys had more trouble . Some reading problems in boys may simply need time and reading to your  son every night will help him more than anything else you can do. There is no difference in  Males and  females have similar verbal intelligence in spite of the fact that  males are less likely to read for pleasure than  females are. The problem is that by the time males have caught up to  females in verbal skills, they may have never acquired the habit of reading and continue to believe that their verbal skills are not at the same level as those of females. Masters and Johnson’s four stages of sexual response Excitement. The first biological indicator of sexual excitement in women is vaginal lubrication, which typically appears within 30 seconds of stimulation. This, Masters and Johnson discovered, is exuded from the semi-permeable vaginal walls in response to an increase in blood supply. In men, erection can be even faster – but also much slower. Erection also results (mechanically speaking) from an increase in blood supply. Both sexes show genital engorgement and both also experience patterns of muscle contraction. Women also show erectile responses both in the clitoris and of the nipples. Changes also occur in the two sets of genital lips (the major and minor labia) yielding a blooming effect, and the vaginal barrel begins to oscillate with distensions exceeding constrictions: its inner two thirds can increase in diameter by 300 per cent. In men the scrotum is raised and the spermatic cords shorten. Both sexes (women much more often than men) can show a ‘sex flush’ or rash (which begins on the abdomen). The plateau phase covers some further changes that follow excitement (for example, raised pulse rate) which can be regarded as precursors to any subsequent orgasm. This phase is more marked in women than in men. The most remarkable is the ‘orgasmic platform’ – the swelling of the lower vagina, reducing its diameter and increasing its penile ‘grip’. In parallel the clitoris retracts and is lifted away from the vaginal entrance. In men the testes enlarge and are pulled further into the scrotum. When they are fully elevated the man is on the verge of orgasm. surprising that, at a physiological level, sexual response should tap into pre-programmed patterns, given how crucial it is to evolutionary survival. However, as the recent massive sales of the erection-inducing drug Viagra have shown, even here instinct is by no means the whole story. The enormous interest in the drug shows that many men feel that they have problems in getting a satisfactory erection. Although this can be a consequence of medical disorders and the side-effects of some forms of medical treatment, erection is notoriously sensitive to social and situational factors. Some men, for example, cannot be aroused except in particular ways – for example, by viewing certain erotic stimuli, such as bondage. Equally, for women, although the machinery for sexual response may be in working order, biologically speaking, being turned on (and hence able to respond) has much more to do with non-biological factors. And although it is often assumed that women’s arousal is much more dependent on emotional stimuli than it is for men, the evidence for this is largely anecdotal. Certainly, women as well as men can become fixated (that is, dependent for sexual arousal) on particular stimuli – as evidenced by the material available on the internet. One website, for example, is devoted to a woman who gains sexual satisfaction from having fish hooks inserted into her breasts. The orgasm. If they climax, women experience marked, fast, rhythmic contractions of the lower vagina, gradually reducing in intensity and increasing in interval. The uterus and sometimes the anal sphincter also join in these contractions. In men, the sperm which have moved into the seminal vesicles and ampullae are expelled by contractions into the urethra. Simultaneously, the prostate gland spasms, releasing prostatic fluid. This mixture is held in the urethral bulb. Ejaculation results from contractions of the penis and urethral bulb. Pulse rate and blood pressure peak during orgasm and breathing becomes panting. Some quite extreme muscle spasms and facial grimacing are commonplace. Subjectively, sensations of orgasm tend to slightly precede contractions in women and ejaculation in men. The resolution phase. Within a few seconds of the end of orgasm, the body begins to return to ‘normal’, although some signs (for example, partial penile erection) take longer to subside. Men show a ‘refractory period’ of between a few minutes and hours before rearousal is possible. Many women do not have a ‘refractory period’ and can re-orgasm rapidly.