Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Response to "Night to His Day"
I found this reading to be exceptionally intriguing. I have never really considered myself a narrow-minded person, but reading this section pushed me to open my mind further in different ways and to new possibilities that I have never, ever considered previously. The author wrote that gender is completely shaped by society, and what society expects in any given gender is what is to be considered the "norm" by everyone else. And thus I found it very interesting to read that "gendering" isn't all determined through physical differences between male and females, which I would've expected. Maybe this is proof of my narrow-mindedness, but this was a very though-provoking concept for me. Especially the topic of Lois Gould's article on how to raise a child free of gender-typing came up, with the whole process of raising a child without giving into to either the typical male or female gender role activities. I guess before I started reading this book I had never really considered how much society really impacts gender roles, so the concept of raising a child without a gender really threw me for a loop. Overall I was very interested in this section, and I look forward to discussing these unusual topics further in class.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Don't be too hard on yourself! Course ground rule #3: Agree not to blame ourselves or others for the misinformation we have learned in the past, but accept responsibility for not repeating misinformation after we have learned otherwise.
ReplyDeleteToday I do want to talk about the idea of gender as a social construction - it's a fascinating topic, because we "know" it so well.
In general, if there is a topic you want to bring up in class, PLEASE DO! I never get to everything that we could talk about, so it makes plenty of sense for you & other students to do some of the steering - that's how seminars work.