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.