Friday, November 27, 2015

What I've decided for my paper is emotional literacy, specifically in boys, and how it might connect to the gender binary. Does assigning gender roles from birth affect how boys grow up versus girls? Since I only have sisters I can’t draw from personal experience but I think if I had a brother he would have been raised differently than we were. We know how the gender binary affects transgender people. If assigned to be a boy at birth they would grow up feeling very confused when everyone treated them as so but on the inside they feel it isn’t right. Also it isn’t just boy and girl, there is agender and gender fluid as well. Perhaps one of the questions I would raise in my paper would be, would dismantling the gender binary be better for causes like feminism and gender equality? Would removing the binary not only help the trans community but everyone in the world as well? Are labels such as male and female unnecessary in the grand scope of things? I want these questions to possibly connect back to emotional literacy and if there were no gender to differ us, would ideas like ‘men shouldn’t cry’ vanish from the world. 

I lied, I do have something from personal experience. I was talking to my sister about this who pointed out she was raised like a boy. It was always the joke that she was the son my father never had. And so she happily adopted all the son like qualities; fishing, catch, mowing the lawn. These were things I did too but they weren’t expected of me in the same way. It’s still like this today. By the end of our conversation we reached the point I actually want to talk about. She felt it was totally normal and accepted by everyone to be a ‘tom boy’ as a child. She could easily go from wearing a dress to burping in public (or whatever) and society accepted her. A boy is much less likely to learn how to sew with mom than go fishing with dad, she pointed out. 


I often tease my mother and tell her if a ever have a son I fully plan on buying pink onesies to dress him in. "Why would I do that to him?" she asks, "Just because it’s your favorite color…”. Well, it might be his favorite too! We’ve never asked him and at this point he isn’t aware of social constructs of color. This whole idea appalls my mother, and I can’t understand why. For the first 8 years of my life everything in my room was light pink. Should we be changing how we fundamentally raise our children based on the gender we assign them at birth. With something like color it sounds frivolous...but masculinity is becoming quite fragile. 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukebailey/masculinity-is-strong-and-powerful#.smPVnDxdB 

https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/40428_Chapter2.pdf

A fun link and a serious link 

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Did anyone else think Emily Gordon was too hard on herself? I didn't like seeing her put herself down because of the person she used to be. 

I think we can all be too hard on ourselves. That's why I really agree with what she says at the end of her article,

 "That’s the third theory of female competitiveness that I’d like to propose: We aren’t competing with other women, ultimately, but with ourselves — with how we think of ourselves. For many of us, we look at other women and see, instead, a version of ourselves that is better, prettier, smarter, something more. We don’t see the other woman at all."

I often say the only thing standing in our way is ourselves. The girl in this story pushed her friends away because of how she looked in comparison to her. I find that to be a very odd thing to do, though it's not unfamiliar. 

But you have to wonder, why? What made us think this way? It wasn't surprising to read that her friend compared their legs on the bus, but can you even imagine two boys doing that? Not saying they don't have self-esteem problems, because I'm sure they do, but I don't know how much they see it in other people. Not to the point where it makes them competitive/aggressive with others. 

After I realized a lot of the disdain I might have for girls stemmed from misogyny I thought back. I've had several falling outs with friends in my life and I can't say any of them have ended because of this idea one was better than the other or anything like that. With Lauren it was because she was being downright mean to me and I didn't want to deal with it anymore. Lydia was because she abused my friendship with her and caused a lot of drama. It wasn't them or anyone else, but what about the friends I still have?

I've known and been best friends with Rachel since the summer before 1st grade. We had kindergarten together but I don't remember her and she hated me. We grew up together, I knew her before she wore glasses and she knew me when I'd wear nothing but dresses. I was always a little taller than her but in seventh grade she shot up and I never grew another inch. Her already long limbs thinned out while I remained pretty much the same. 

I have memories of her chasing me around the dining room table wanting to steal my thick, dark hair. I remember her crying after school when people told her she looked anorexic. I remember not wanting to give her compliments because she asked for them. I remember her being gawked at while I was ignored. 

She is really the only person in my life I feel particularly competitive with. I really don't know how much of it has to do with male attention. Or even this natural instinct to be protective that Gordon talks about. I don't think it has to do with genetics or science or evolution, I think it has to do with how women have been treated in any kind of writing for thousands of years. There is hardly any literature, especially really old stuff, that depict females in a non competitive roles. They are created to further the development of a male character, become a love interest, play the crone, be the mistress. It's hard to find stories where there is more than one female lead and stories that have females that aren't there to just talk about the male characters. We even still see it today, and it's clearly reflected in our patriarchal society. 

So when Rachel and I were growing up we were handed this media over and over again. Girls are taught that they don't need to have healthy relationships with other girls, as long as they have men that want them. It's society that has instilled in us this notion that we are less than we are. 

I really don't feel this way about Rachel, but I think it has affected the vision I had of myself growing up. But I'm really happy that I was the type of 11 year old who when their mom asked "Ooo, who are you all dressed up for?" My answer was, "I'm dressed up for myself." Though I'm not so happy about living in a world where a mother thinking their 11 year old is looking special for someone else is commonplace.