Gender and Sexuality

I really enjoyed the presentation on different versions of gender today. Although we had been talking about the differences between sexuality and gender i liked how the presentation focused on the ambiguities that we had not touched upon in our previous discussion. Having gay parents makes sexuality an open topic in my family. When my mom first told me she was gay it was literally mind blowing for a kid of nine. But after living with the reality of having a gay parent it really helped me understand and learn to embrace differences of people around the world. Even with my experience with people of different sexual orientation I did not know that much about transgendered people. I was very interested to hear from both Toria and Andi about what it is like living with and as a transgendered person.

Oppression in Culture

In class on tuesday we talked about oppression and how to define it in our society today. One of the particularly interesting things we talked about was how privilege was connected to oppression. Often we do not acknowledge our own privileges and so oppression of those around us can be hard to recognize. This can make the oppressed feel even more so and the privileged can participate in oppression without even realize it. This makes you think, by not acknowledging our privileges we can actually be contributing to the oppression of those around us. In order to break this cycle of oppression we must acknowledge what separates the privileged from the oppressed. Once the oppression is acknowledged then we can move to trying to end it.

Gender and Culture in the Media

This presentation on gender and culture really made me think. The group pointed out that even in a society where minorities are just as prevalent as the "normal" white people, the most influential type of media, television, has yet to acknowledge it. With the ending of "Ugly Betty" (a show I love love love!) there is no other show on TV where the main character is Latina. Yes they may play a supporting role but really what other show is there where the the Latin culture is celebrated. Take a minute and think, its really hard to think of one. And why is that? It is even more distressing if you add the gender issue. Latina, African American and even Canadian women rarely make an appearance on our American TV shows and when they do its only in supporting roles as the best friend. If I were an outsider watching American TV I would think that everyone in America was white and rich (as we are most often thought of in other countries). I would never believe that there is any diversity in a country that we as Americans see as the most diverse. So TV can you please add some color to this line up?

Traditional Gender Roles

I found the presentation in class on traditional and changing gender roles very interesting. They made a survey about what students our age thought were traditionally male and female roles in the relationship and what they want them to be in their relationships. Before I took the survey I liked to tell myself that I was not the type of person who wanted a relationship with strict traditional roles. However, after taking the survey I realized that I favored a much more mixed roles type relationship. Yes I wanted there to be equality in the household but I still had the notion that some of the jobs were man work and some were woman work. I think this is the dichotomy that many people are dealing with in our society. While many couples agree that the work should be shared, society still tells us that traditionally certain jobs are assigned to a specific gender.

Sex Ed

In today's presentation we focused on sex education and programs that are implemented throughout the country that deal with sex ed in schools. For me it was interesting to hear about the sex ed or lack there of that some of my classmates received in comparison with my own. For me we received most of sex education in high school and then we did not really focus on abstinence. It was mentioned that abstinence was the best way to prevent pregnancy but we focused more on the over all health surround sex and our bodies in general. It was kind of unspoken that most people would not remain abstinent until marriage and that general education about our bodies and how they go together was best. I thought it was interesting to hear about some different atmospheres where abstinence was seen as the only option and sex was out of the question.
Another aspect we talked about was even knowing that when we are going to have sex we need to use protection how do you ask your partner about using a condom or the pill. In the throes of passion how does a girl stop and ask the guy if he has a condom or how does the guy ask the girl if she is on the pill. And is it okay for girls to have condoms as well or should it be the guys responsibility. This made me think while the sex ed I received seemed very comprehensive, how do you broach this subject? I believe in order to truly get teenagers to use protection the aspect of asking about it needs to be shown in the education videos they show us. After all what guy walks around all day with a condom on so they are ready to go at anytime?

Rape as a Tool of War

In our presentation on Thursday, much of our conversation turned to the topic of the use of systematic rape as a tool of war. This was a topic that my small group had been focussing on in our previous discussion and I believe it is one that must be talked about. In conflicts where ethnicity is involved, rape is used as a way to destroy what makes a community a certain ethnicity. In the Balkans, Serbs raped Bosnians to cleanse the land of Bosnians and make sure that their Serbian blood line permeated the region to assert their superiority. But what happens after the Serbians leave. Many women are left with children they would rather forget about than raise and others with husbands who would disown them if they even mentioned being raped. And worse in a society as patriarchal as that of the Balkans, the women have absolutely no one to talk to. Despite the fact that many of the women in their community might have been raped as well, they cannot find comfort in each other for fear of what would happen to them if they found out. One woman went so far as to say that all of her daughters were good girls and only served the soldiers tea, there was no way that her daughters would have been so bad to have been raped by the soldiers. She acts as if they ever had a choice, which goes against the whole definition of being raped. In a society such as this how do people even begin to heal and others even begin to help. For many of this women it will be a torment that they will harbor their whole lives with the feeling of blame for allowing this to happen. For many women it would be better to committ suicide than be raped. This makes you question what kind of world do we live in that a women would choose death over the possibility of life and what kind of societies allow women to believe that their rape is in any way their fault?

Human Trafficking

In class on Tuesday we had a presentation on human trafficking around the world. This got me thinking that human trafficking is an unspoken problem around the world including in the United States. It is a huge problem that everyone knows exists but very few people do anything to combat it. Much of the conversation we had in class was focused on solutions to help prevent human trafficking. While many of the solutions for awareness of the situation were excellent points, I believe that in order to combat human trafficking we must combat many of the reasons why humans are trafficked. Although some people in the human trafficking industry are kidnapped and essentially forced into sexual slavery, the majority of people in the industry are sold by family members, sell themselves or are tricked into a kind of indentured servitude. In many underdeveloped countries children are seen as commodities. When a family needs money, they are then sold and often times become part of the trafficking industry. Therefore the best way to combat the industry is to deprive it of its commodities. The best way to do this is to promote financial security in the underdeveloped countries so selling children is no longer the only option. Until we can do this the ideas to promote awareness will do little to end the trafficking of humans.