If we look at lesbians and transsexuals we realize that gender roles are socially learned and not any kind of inherent phenomenon of human development. If we trace the development of gender roles in history, we see that these socially defined boundaries or roles for men and women are reinforced in society by predominantly male institutions. For example, gender roles have conventionally been reinforced through religious, educational, business (i.e., income), and media institutions. If we turn to the bible, an ancient text scribed by men, we see there are sharp distinctions drawn between make and female roles. These roles are defined in the church and in the home. In Eph. 5:23 we read: “For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church” (Gender 1). More nauseatingly perhaps, to feminists at least, we read in 1 Peter 3:7: “Your husbands likewise, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker vessel, since she is a woman” (Gender 1). Where the church is concerned we also see these sharply defined roles giving superiority and lending dominance to the male role, “Men are to be the leaders and the teachers in the local church” (Gender 2). The roles defined for women in the bible are just as restricting to self-fulfillment for any woman who has the capacity to achieve more than as mother and homemaker. In 1 Tim 2:15 we read: “But woman shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint” (Gender 3). Again in Titus 2:4 & 5 we see women’s roles defined within two realms, that of mother and homemaker, “That they may encourage the younger women…to love their children…to be workers at home” (Gender 3).
Of course, thousands of years of virtual indentured servitude and submission to men have been the result of this kind of social institution of the
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