Terry Williams

I got the opportunity to hear Terry Williams speak twice. Once during class and the other Tuesday night. After reading his book The Cocaine Kids the class at many burning question for. One of them was very gendered oriented. At of the main kids who were dealers only one was female. Of my own knowledge I understood that many of the people involved in the drug business are men. What I don't why. Is it because the drug business is seen as to aggressive for them or does it still play into gender stereotypes. If some one is involved with the drug trade that takes away from the domestic duties.

In the book, Kitty (the female involved in the drug trade) is not seen as a domestic caretaker. While she has a kid, it is left with her mother most of the time. This place into my claim that men don't want women to be involved because it goes against traditional values of how men and women are viewed.

He did not directly talk about gender in the lecture he gave but the studies he does must have lots of good observations on how gender plays into the everyday life. I enjoyed is talking but I can't find any article to link his speech up with.

Maybe if Meghan McCain came I could have been talking about men and women involved in the republican party. I think that would have been really interesting to hear or perspective on Gender plays in to politics epically with the younger generations.

Class on Thursday

Overall I enjoyed Professor Widman lecture on the biological aspect of gender. In my war and religion class we have been discuss some of the difference too. Why I do thing cultural plays into why men and women are different and we we have stereotypes. Biology in my opinion does have a major role in why Men and Women have different roles. Because it is Females who bear the children that but them out of commission to work, it is less so then know. If you look back at early societies, the women could not just get up and leave to go on 3 day hunting expeditions. I would have like to hear him discuss this more than just have to hear him defend his position for an hour and a half.

For the most I enjoyed hearing about the studies and was glad to know that some of them have been across cultures. That helps me to believe that it just not cultural that tells men and women what is pretty or their roles in society.

I look at it this way Cultural and ideology has changed so much since humankind was created. There has always been gender, race, and class divide. It can't just be because of cultural. There has to be more to it.

The Basow article does a nice job of laying out the historical perspectives of gender divide happens throughout different societies.

A puzzle: Consistency of gender roles in war

The thing that caught my eye most in this article was on page 44.
" Other writers see in war not so much an extension of men's sexuality but an attempt to compensate for men's innate inability to bear children."

I don't know how true that is because I have heard that war is also a bonding experience for me. I feel like that might be more the reason they fight.

Men are going through the same emotional as their fellow platoon or squad. I just can't agree with the Feminists on this one. There notations just seem a little to far fetched for me.

I do like that the article calls us peace makers even if it is through man's imagination.

However again it not true. Women sometimes has worst fights then men. They might not be gory but the cruel.
At the same time history does show us cases where women have been able to help bring peace to the country. The first would be in Liberia. They had strategies which helped them to gain power and leverage.
Even in our own country with had the Women's Peace Party. They were active with Vietnam and nuclear war. Not to mention the work they did in Britian with the Greenham Common protest.

Who names conflict

I really enjoyed the conversation on who names conflict. Who decides if someone is in a conflict. Are there any are arching themes of conflict. The dictionary gives a vague meaning of the word, to fight disagree, opposition. People made have different ideas of what it means to disagree. For some there might need to be violent aspect for them to label it as conflict. For other just having a different opinion might be enough to call it a conflict.

If in class we were have trouble deciding weather some was a conflict or not. I think it is clear that there is a bunch of politic between labeling things has conflict or not. But after that it is hard to differentiate what is a conflict and what is not. Or who is in conflict. A lot of time outsider make up the conflict that surrounds men and women. Women or work and have children are they really in a struggle. Why can a women be both an employee and mother and be good at both. T.V always make it seem that there is such a struggle between choice to do one over the other.
One could argue that conflict could be built up around men to. I am drawling blank on an example. I feel like there are something that people just expect us to be in conflict about and others they ignore.

Dr. James Skelly

Over I enjoyed Dr. Skelly's talk. I thought he brought up valid points. However when listening to him I had a hard time applying what he was saying to things we had discussed in class already. I was not apply to make the connection about some of his remarks to gender conflict.

I was able to pull a few concept or topics that he discussed and apply them to topics that might be brought up in class. The first was the idea of consumerism. He was talking about who used to smoke cigarettes and there has been a shift in who buys them. Before there were stereotypes for women if the smoke. They were lose women or they we seen in an unflattering light.

Just thinking about it I feel that in the early twentieth century women were this untapped market place. Correct me if I am wrong I feel like once they expanded the marketing of items to different people, it made us more and more of a consumer nations.

Go back to commercials I think that people in the marketing or advertising field need to have an idea of what sells. Especially to what is appealing to women, men, or both. There is such a struggle in the field looking into. When design an ad you have to figure at what gender it is appealing to and what type of person. Media has a lot of influence on gender and divides. Media keep enforcing certain ideas. If you look at commercial aimed at children products. The girls are always playing with dolls or stuffed animals while the boys have the trucks or building blocks.

Media has a huge influence on how men and women are perceived cultural. The shows were women are not stay at home mom, they deal with the struggle of are they being good moms. You never have a show with successful women or are moms not have a internal or outside conflict.

Full Frontal Feminism

Overall I really like this article. The author's style is very informal, which I enjoyed. It was easy read that had eye catching remarks. It has to be good when the author starts off saying every word that I find offensive to women.

She makes a valid point. The worst thing men and women can say about each other is that they are a girl. It does infuriate me that this true. However I never considered myself a feminists. I was believed that that there should be some equality among men and women but there are differences. Like personally I am glad that they have never fixed the draft law. If there is another drafted I am not part of it.

I don't think I would still ever label myself as a feminist. Part of the reason might be because they still have negative stereotype with them. If guys who say that they are feminist, if there are any, get ridiculed for this choice.

Nobody ones wants to omit that they are something that everyone in society does not like. When reading this all the stuff that is said about feminism is true in my eyes.

The women suffrage in the early 1920's, that was filled with a lot of wealthy women at the top. Like the author said in the 60's and 70's it was more privileged women we were hearing about.

I think there is a lot of truth to this article and the author tries to leave you inspired. There is a lot you can do with out being a die-hard member to the cause. I think that is important for people to understand and walk away with that. You don't have to be on the front lines defend or changing the laws. You can take that more behind the scenes role.

On a side not, my favorite quote from this article is "Got that girls? Without a husband to depend on, you'll be selling crack in no time!"

I thought it was the most ridiculous claim every. Feminism is responsible for increase number of crimes. I don't see how the attributes people assign with women could led to a life crime. It goes against what are called gender qualities are. It just really made me laugh and question the people behind a claim like that.

First day week

Overall I enjoyed the first week of class. I think that they early discussion we had was good and showed a wide range of opinion.

I really enjoyed the Glen reading. I thought that the race and gender part was very interesting. The idea of how Blacks women are usually ones left out when. I had never really put much thought into it before. After reading it, It was on of the moment. When you know that it is so true once it has been brought to your attention.

The other article was interesting. It had a lot of new vocabulary that I see will be playing an important role later in the course. It was a good opportunity to see some of the concepts that we will be taking about as the semester unfolds.

In addition I loved the activity we did in class. When trying to see how women should be or how we see them.

I know personally when I was making the list for media or society. I was taking my ideas from what to famous people look like, what is on TV, or even how women are treated in other countries. I think that when doing an assignment like people to retreat back the "leave to beaver stereo types". While they do exist somewhat in today's cultural, things have changed. Women have evolved out of the housewife role. They have more choices. They are still persecuted at times for choosing work or the house, or having or not having an abortion.
It was so clear when looking at the different posters that how we think the media views people and we view ourselves is so different.

On another note, I think that cultural the role of women and men are different I hope that we dive into that as the semester continues.