Gendered Items

Seeing what each person brought to class not only exemplified the previous class period by many of the students bringing items that fit their perceived gender, but also explained how society as a whole interprets gendered items. As a whole even those things that were used by almost every gender was still given feminine or masculine qualities, and as our class decided these qualities were often used to see the items to people.

That isn’t really what boys do… is it?

The volunteers that stood up today and depicted their interpretation of what a situation about the opposite gender brought a lot of insight to me on the finesse  that is associated with doing a gender well or correctly. Something our class elaborated on that I believe could only be done in such an environment was how the opposite gender has difficulty picking up on those differences. This related back to the Connell reading well because of the association with the differences that are within gender. In the conversation we all truly understood where we are coming from as academics when discussing the topic. We found from this exercise that there will be many things that we will have to rely on people of the opposite gender to explain to up because it is difficult to truly understand only though readings. The reading additionally incorporated cultural differences and practices, and in the upcoming weeks it is going to be interesting to view how peoples upbringings will effect the way they view the gendered conversations we have.

This Blog is meant to analyze the readings from Gender and Conflict as well as reflect upon the topics discussed in class.

The first day of class was already an interesting event that was not undertaken lightly by many. As a part of getting to know one each other we each had to do a standard introduction then something interesting about ourselves. Now the part that was so fascinating was that many of us had a hard time finding something about ourselves that we thought was valuable enough to share with a classroom of mostly strangers. Everyone eventually found something that they found valuable about them, but I hope for future classes that everyone is more easily able to share their experiences.

I believe there is much to learn from this classroom, and that the differences that we are most frightened to shared are the most important others can learn from.