Questions from class

What roles do men and woman play - how do gender roles limit or enable men and woman to act in conflict?

If we look at words to describe them we get a clear vision of how men and women are suppose to act. Men are the aggressive, violent, brutal, animal like instinct, dangerous, wild.
They are going to be going out and downing the killing because it what they have to do. They have to protect the females and children back in the village or country. Men are seen as the strong ones who lead us to worry.
I think part of it is that they feel that they have ownership to women. They need to protect them. Women are their responsibility. It is like they are comparing us to house or a car some material object. They own us so it it there job to protect us from danger. That is way men go out and fight. At the same time when they go out to fight they are not realize the affect it is having back at home. They are either going to be killed or kill. War effect both men and women in terrible ways. For men they have witness horrible things and first hand killings. It mess up their mind. Just think about all the men who have come back form Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. Some of them come back and don't know how to cope with their family and every day life. It going to get worst with these drone killing.

Now men or possible women can set at a computer and just killed a few hundred of people a day. Just think about the damage that is going to have on people.

Back to the issue.
Women have a different experience with warfare and conflict. Where men are more direct in the everyday fights or conflict women tend to hold back and do a lot of back handed aggression. Just look at the movie Mean Girls. There was so much fight among them but it was not violent. Lindsey Lohan character says if she was in the animal kingdom it would be easy to solve the fights. Sense they are in girl world they had to go about things differently.

In war women are left back in the village to make sure things back at the home front are running smoothly. It also shows how women are limited by the reproductive roles. Physical they can not go fight wars for month is they are caring a child or have children that still breast feed. There are some biological factors that play into it.

Pop Culture gone Wild

I know that this article is a bit dated with reading but I just enjoy what Valenti has to say most of the time. It goes into some of the media aspect of conflict we have been discussing. Lets face it Media helps reconstruct the ideas we have about men and women. They are the ones that encourage the so called "box". On side I hate the box I am tired of hearing about the box. No one fits into the box so I thing it is unimportant and should just be thrown out. The only thing about humans and other animals is that no two are the same. We are different weather it be looks, personality, or biological make up. Everybody has some different compared to the next person. That my little ramble about it.

Anyways on to the article.
Lets face the fact sex is no incorporated into every life. Weather it be through conversations, tv, or music. It is some how going to come up. It is no longer something that is frowned upon as before. While there are still negative connotation around sex it have involved since the early twentieth century.
She focuses a lot of Girls Gone Wild. First off I have them credit for running a solid empire that has branched out past videos. In some respect Playboy and GGW are both well runned and managed business.
I don't support any of what they sell or promote. They are making money by objectify women. This is why I think playboy is a little bit more legitimate then GGW. The girls audience to be in the magazine. GGW finds drunk girls on spring breaks and takes advantage of them one could argue.
Some are argue that act of flash your boobs to people are good things. This is a new generation of feminist arriving. It saying that stripping or working at Hoosier is empowering for women. We have a choice to participate. Maybe they do choice to partake in these careers or activities because the money good. At the same time men don't careers like this they don't have to take off their clothes to the same magnitude that women have to. I just think that when women premote things like this they are continuing women stereotypes.

We are not moving forwards for equality with Playgirl, GGW, and Hoosier. If anything we are taking steps back.

What a girl wants

The movie we watched in class was interesting and thought provoking. The most interesting thing was that I was around that same age when Britney, Christine, Jessica Simpson, and Mandy Moore came out. The thing that stuck out most to me was how different gender perceived them. They are taking the same song or music video and getting to different interpretations of it. The young were walking away with a sense of empowerment. While guys see it has very sexual.

I thought it was so true as soon as I heard it. Many people interpret things to fit their beliefs. This is what the girls were doing when they see these videos. They are ignore the skimpy clothings and provoking dancing that these women are doing.

Even with the lyric which most of the time are filled with sexual messages, these girls just disregard them. They are more focused on who they are promoting "girl power". It is like we make excuse to way they can look that way but still be great role models to us.
Why is that excepted for us to do or society in the matter. I think part of it is the Media but overall I think to much blame is put on the media. The media wouldn't portray this idea if they did not have fan base.
I just thing that we need to take some of the blame for allowing this to be shown. While parents can't monitor everything their children do. They can still prepare them and talk to them.

Don't get me wrong I enjoyed this music to as young teen. I too probably was unaware of what they were wearing or saying. I just knew that they represented girl power to me that is all that was important.

More thoughts on the Movie

The movie we watched in class was interesting and it got me to think a lot about the violence we see in movies and at school. I never really notice that many if not all the major school shooting were committed by men. I knew about that but I never thought about the how odd or strange it was the most of them where males. I was looking more at psychological makeup rather than their gender. I also feel that is what the press focusing on to: where the bullied at school or what was their home life like. They play how the boys are nurtured rather than their nature. Which leads me to assume that people don’t play into the claims that boys are more violate.

However that isn’t support by saying like “boys will be boys”. When litter kids are rough housing or playing with pretend guns a lot of people accept it. Then we are playing into the stereotypes about how boy are supposedly more violent.

I just think there are so many other factors that play into to violent cases that deal with child shooting or even adults killing. I just think it is hard to incorporate the gender factor into these because you have to look at other aspect of the situation.

Chapter four

Freud based his theory upon the story of Oedipus. In my personal opinion I feel like he stretches it too far with the theory when apply it to women. That mostly likes has to deal the time he was conducting his research. He did take in conduct for other psychological disorder one might have or what past experience had on people. We saw this with the case of Dora, his diagnosis was hysteria just because she didn’t want to get married. There are some valid points to Freud it does not play into biologic factors. It really looks at how the child was raised. The only biological factor is whether or not you are male or female. Depending on what sex you are is how you are supposed to grow up. I have to side with the feminist on this one more. We have to look more at how the children are reared; rather than their biology. We also can’t have “normal standard” for how men and women are suppose to be. If they don’t fix a certain box they were expected in society. This is still an issue today. We have ideal ways in which people are suppose to behave. The other thing that frustrated me with this chapter was how Freud and other men also claim that women were inferior because they did not have a penis. I understand that it was part of the times however it such a ridiculous claim. That claim helps Freud to infer why young girls and boys separated from their mothers eventually.

Tough Guise

I had mix emotions about the movie today. I thought that the author brought up some good points but at the same time it really attack American cultural. It did not really leave with a positive out look on life. That could be because we did not end watching all the movie. Or maybe it was because the director wanted to leave you with the sense that this was the way are society worked.

I also really get annoyed when documentary have a lot of statistics in them. That is what this guy did. He read us form so many finding and did let us know where they were form or what kinds of samples where they. It made with question weather that information was valid. It was surprising to me just how high it was actually. I knew that the percentage of rape and Domestic violence were going to be higher for men that women. It was just shocking to actually see the numbers. Especially for other studies like road rage and alcohol related injuries.

It just caught me off guard the number of women who are going to get raped. I think it is difficult for me to believe that because I have not had a personally experience where I knew some one who was hurt or raped by a man. I look at my lifestyle and where I live I really don't have to worry about issues like that on a daily basis.

It makes it harder for me to believe how violent men are because I don't experience it to leave which the guy is arguing.

I did really like how it talk about the how the dominate group is never said. After thinking about that I see how true it is. If a man does something you never see there gender. It the same with race. I found his work on the that to be fascinating. I want to explore that more in a later blog and hopefully some of the writing talks about that so. Next time I want to connect more of literature pieces on masculinity to the movie.