Racism and Sexism in Gender Relations - Essay Example

Racism means that there exist profound differences between the people of different groups relating to their capacities and abilities, and depending entirely on their race. This unjustified thinking pattern deeply influences gender relations and mutilates the social roles of both men and women. Both sexes find it increasingly difficult to communicate with each other in a society fraught with racist behaviors. This difficulty in communication leads to poor relationships between men and women both at workplaces and in private lives, thus leading to marred gender relations. Sexism also heavily impacts gender relations owing to the groundless belief that one sex is superior to another in every possible way. Such a negative societal behavior leads to an unbalanced society because the roles played by both sexes are equally important and praise-worthy in regards to maintaining a societal structure. The nature of gender relations in a particular society can be easily understood by scrutinizing the level of sexism vibrant in that society because the more sexism there is in a society, the more degenerated gender relations would be. Gender relations can be also influenced by heterosexuality in many parts of the world, and especially where hatred and violence against gay men and lesbian women are at their peak. Minimal representation and social rejection of homosexual people cause a range of effects in society. Through heterosexism, people feel encouraged to bully or abuse a man or woman who goes against the socially assigned stereotypes to him or her.

This negative behavior ruins gender relations and society, eventually. Classism refers to the attitudes, behaviors, or societal policies that are set up to favor the upper or elite class of society at the expense of the lower class. This negative oppressive behavior also impacts gender relations in that it initiates hate crimes and revengeful attitudes in the lower class against the upper class and men and women belonging to opposite classes start using each other for taking revenge on the unjustified policies they have been exposed to depending on their class.

Summing up, this much becomes clear from the above discussion that acquiring knowledge about the patterns of racism, sexism, heterosexism, colonization, and classism should be considered an important component of the study of gender relations. Unjustified prejudice, violence, and hatred readily sprout from the evil of negative systems of oppression due to which men and women of different races or classes are rendered incapable of understanding each other and handling their professional or private relationships.