Hook

“Acts of violence in this society… occur between the powerful and the powerless” this idea was engaging to me, and I am going to expand upon it. Often time’s society sees men as more powerful, and statistics show that men commit more violence. This power to men has been given to them by society who says that they are the ones who walk all over others, and this is the resulting action that occurs. In our presentation in a little over a week and a half we will discuss many violence’s that are committed against women, but it is society that places women as powerless when atrocities are committed against one another. There is no knowing what one will do unless the power is given to them, and currently men have more power. Look at wages, our president, the list is endless. Women have gained a lot of power, but until we have equal power, acts of violence will be more prevalent against us.

And the women…

After talking about femininity I found that one of the largest health problems for men is that masculinity is never compared to femininity, femininity is only compared to masculinity. This makes it difficult for men to move beyond the ideas that have been made for them.

In our most recent class meeting it was very interesting to discuss women in class today. Early in the semester our professor mentioned how women are not as bothered about discussing stereotypes because women are always talked about, and analyzed. I found today in the discussion it difficult to carry on a conversation. All of the women in the classroom have heard all the arguments beforehand, and we have discussed solutions and plans with friends to violence against femininity. There didn’t seem to be a lot of new ideas to be discussed because everyone in the classroom wants more. I have always said that playing devils advocate is the most exciting place to play because it always livens up the conversation, and I think when we talk about women again I am going to play the role in order to create more controversy.

Men and Power

When looking at men in terms of power as we did in class today, in order to break down the previously made comments on our Tuesday class right before this, our look into weather or not masculinity was a health problem brought up many questions, ideas, and emotions. There were questions on if this was a fair question to ask because of the direct impact such a question can have if masculinity was labeled as such. I believe that if it really was a problem and then was labeled as such, it would not be a disaster. My favorite conclusion was that there are complications with masculinity, just like in femininity, and these ideas must be addressed but do not have to be the sole thought of the situation. If things turn out as such then the emotions within being put into a small box of ideas begins to come out.

Ummmm….

I could go on and on about the men’s discussion in class today, but I do believe that this one can be summed up simply. All of the things that we have described as putting men into a box, the men showed today. That is all.

Masculinity

As always, do to my extreme like for Valenti’s writing I am going to focus on her reading for the week. “Boys do cry” articulated well an idea that has been floating in my head, that boy too soon are expected to act in a certain way, and they often act beyond their knowledge as they grow. When saying this I am not attempting to be offensive because girls do this as well, but the traits that boys show are often violent and destructive to themselves and there families. How to move away from this is always the difficult conversation that must be had because if it is society that places boys here it must be societal actions that will save them from their own destruction in the future.

Feminism

When looking at the different ways that feminism can be expressed I found very interesting ideas. While I had read the Marxist perspective because I have some background on these ideas, many of the other types of feminism that were later discussed in class either fit these ideas well or completely went against them. When looking at multi-cultural aspects it was apparent that the individual was very important and that self-expression was important, this was echoed in ecofeminism, which saw oppression of women as an oppression of all living things. Marx had a much more cynical perspective when look from his point of view, and these ideas are hard to recreate. An aspect of his model that seems to help feminism is the idea to always question the system so that one never gets stuck in their ideas. Getting more feedback to what everyone in the class agreed with would have been very interesting for this topic because of the diversity of the subjects.