Intro to Gender Studies

Hey Ashley! I checked and for some reason this activity came up as a draft, so I’m reposting it (for safety measures!). Thanks!

1. In what ways does culture shape so-called private experiences like sex and orgasm?

Obviously, culture is a major factor in not only how a society discusses sex but also how couples experience sexual pleasure. I know in my Chinese culture, sex (not to mention orgasms) is considered a very private matter that is only discussed between a couple. Such an emphasis on sexual privacy (or secrecy) tends to decrease inter-couple discussion about individual sexual pleasure, which may lead men and, especially, women to be unaware of what satisfies their partners and themselves sexually. Because sex tends to be viewed through a male’s perspective, a miscommunication about such matters may  let men maintain and further develop unrealistic ideas about sex and women continue to remain sexually dissatisfied. In effect, there becomes a social stigma that men are supposed to always provide sexual pleasure but women are somehow unable to experience sexual pleasure. Either way, men are the subordinate gender and women are expected to remain passive and demure in their sex life.

2. What other physiological responses are influenced by your cultural context? What other physiological experiences make for awkward conversations? Examine how, why, and in what contexts this topic is awkward.

If my Chinese culture is uncomfortable talking about sex, you can forget about talking about masturbation. As previously stated, sex is a very private matter that shouldn’t be mentioned in public, but I think talking about masturbation even between couples is considered a little taboo. In addition, I could also see how the American culture in which I live also makes such conversations very hard. Sex is mostly viewed as an experience for two people, so anything otherwise may seem strange, and therefore, unacceptable by the masses. But I think what makes masturbation and sex so awkward is the context in which we talk about such topics. From a personal standpoint, I don’t think I would be very comfortable talking about sex or masturbation with guys (maybe except for my boyfriend) but I have absolutely no hesitation talking about sex with my girlfriends. For some reason, I always assume that guys will say something crude or gross about sex, which also leads me to believe that guys feel more comfortable talking about sex with guys as well. In a past Masculine Monday activity, I remember one of my guy friends telling me that he is more self-conscious when talking to girls about topics that he would otherwise be more than comfortable discussing among his guy friends. He was afraid that I would be offended by something he said, so he would simply not talk about a controversial subject. I think such a mindset is what makes conversations about sex. On a side note, even though I’m comfortable with talking about sex among my girlfriends, I’m pretty sure we’ve never come close to talking about masturbation, and I think this stems from the taboo nature that is prescribed to women and their sexual pleasure.

3. Imagine that you were asked to develop a way to close the orgasm gap. What would you propose?

I would propose more communication between men and women about sex, but not just any kind of communication. It would have to be a very honest conversation in which judgment is not passed on either party. I also believe that women need to be more educated about their sex lives, and this can mean learning all of the reproductive organs, where they are, which cause sexual pleasure, and so on and so forth. I think the reason for the myth of the vaginal orgasm is because sex is often viewed from a male’s perspective, but if women are more aware of themselves and more open to discussing such topics, then men may be become more aware. But then again, men must also  become more willing to listen to women’s wants when it comes to sex and willing to learn about how that particular woman likes to experience sex.

Throughout this course, we’ve examined what Kimmel describes as the ways in which “gender inequality provides the foundation for assumptions of gender difference.” It is our understanding and our assumption of inequality between males and females that create the gender differences in our daily lives. In addition, Kimmel also shows how gender differences influence virtually every aspect of our lives, whether it be our culture, religion, workplace, 0r even our interactions with other people. Upon preparing for my final project, I decided that I was most interested in gender differences in culture and how mass media influences its audience on such an unconscious level, so much so that we hardly notice the constant stream of gendered messages that dominate our various forms of entertainment. More specifically, I wanted to display different forms of entertainment throughout the life span, the differences and similarities in content, and the overall gendered messages that are being sent to the male and female audiences.

Since I come from a Child Development background, I’m always interested in learning about a process and understanding how one kind of development affects another. Throughout this semester, I have definitely used that kind of mindset in understanding gender (and, interestingly enough, I’ve also used what I’ve learned in this course to better understand the development of children in my other courses) in that each level of our development signifies an ideal that we learn about our gendered selves and each level of our conditioning builds upon the previous, thus making up our own individual definitions of gender differences. I attempted to display this in my collage. I decided to use a collage because I really wanted to use a medium in which all the components seemed to “mesh” together, creating one whole piece that portrayed a central message.

My piece should have shown a gradual progression in how media portrays the gendered developmental differences that are seen in the transformation from girls to women and from boys to men. The only difference that I saw in the women’s magazines were the specific age groups they targeted. Even though content became more specific and more graphic as the age of the targeted audience increased, there seemed to be the same message throughout this “lifespan”: girls, be cute and pretty and make sure that cute boy over there thinks so too because that’s what really matters; and women, don’t forget to always be super sexy and eager to please your man because that won’t only make him happy but it will also make you happy. There was not much difference in the male timeline or “lifespan.” My impression of the men’s magazines that I read were that boys need to like sports and video games (anything less is [gasp] “girly”), and as they get older, it is only appropriate for them to have huge muscles, be super fit, have a good job, make a lot of money, and have a lot of sex. I also attempted to show how many of our discussion topics throughout the semester were ever present in something as trivial as a magazine article. Such topics included the division of family roles, the gendered differences in the workplace, and the ever present appeal of aggression and violence in males. However, the interesting thing that I’ve found about magazines and mass media in general is that they not only give us a glimpse into what ideals society presents for us but also what we the reader believe societal ideals should be. After all, we are the ones who ingest mass media, so they’re only giving us what we want. Mmm. Gender inequality.

Finally, let me bring everything full circle. I wanted to show the gradual conditioning and development of gender inequality and, therefore, gender differences throughout the male and female lifespan. I wanted to show how such a difference in gender development is portrayed in expected actions, ideas, ambitions, and even daily routines. I wanted to show that we not only consume media; we create media.

We are illustrating the various gender inequalities that men and women face in the realms of the classroom, religion, the media, the workplace and the family, in intimate relationships and in terms of the body. We use a male and female character, Dick and Jane, throughout our digital story to show this inequality. Although not tracking the changes as Dick and Jane age, the realms do follow somewhat sequentially by age, and instead of illustrating the gender inequalities through the lens of a brother and sister we chose the viewpoint of a romantic couple. Our main goal was to show that gender inequality leads to the notion of gender difference in society. Kimmel states in the Introduction that “gender difference is the chief outcome of gender inequality,” and that it is “man’s position of power [in society that] assure his relative superiority over the women” (4, 9). With these ideas in mind, we selected examples that highlighted the gender inequality, but also those that exhibited man’s power and dominance in society. We did not seek to favor females in our discussion of inequality digital story, but the gender inequality is more apparent and prevalent in terms of females that it was nearly impossible not to depict. We did include examples of inequality applicable to specifically men, though, including custody arrangements after divorce and the “feminized” notions of love.

Hey guys for my final I did a paper on Sexism in the workplace! Heres my  paper if u wanna read!

A Day in the Life of a George’s Girl

I distinctly remember the first time I ever stepped foot into George’s, I needed a job to pay for school and someone had mentioned it in passing and I had decided to give it a try. My interview was perhaps the most memorable thing about my early days at Georges, perhaps because my initial interview started with the general manager and over a series of the next twenty minutes, had an interview with every manager. The unique thing about George’s is that management is made up entirely of males, and little did I know, but I was being “rated” before I could officially get the job. They followed a very similar idea to that of Hooter’s spokesman Mike McNeil in that: “waitress’ serve food with a side of sex appeal…to have female sex appeal you have to be female” (pg 259 Kimmel.) I was told when I was hired that I was hired specifically for the “deck,” a place I later discovered to be more of the bar scene and a place for only female waitresses and the occasional male bartender. Initially, I worked in the restaurant, and experienced very little if any sex segregation because ultimately people do not care either way who brings them their salad and rolls. At George’s, working on the deck is considered a privilege and something you earn with seniority, there were girls who had worked there nearly two years and had still not worked out there. Needless to say, when I started down there a month after being hired, they were less than friendly. At the time I was only eighteen and had a few jobs previous to this, but none like this. Being a Baylor student and only eighteen, I quickly found favor with management and the girls were no longer allowed to mess with me Contrary to what we learned in class, George’s does not play by the typical rules. Men do not make more, unless of course if they are management, and women are paid not based on their ability, but on their appearance. Perhaps a better example would be the George’s I am currently working at in Hewitt. Here, the prettiest girls who’ve worked there the longest make the most (exponentially), “pretty” girls working on the deck make nearly twice the girls in the bar floor or restaurant, and guy servers have little to no hope of making anything close to the girls. The reason, as has been explained to me by management, people like attractive people. “Men want to be waited on by females/(“hot ass chicks”), and females don’t really have a preference” (Management.)This theory is enforced when there are consequences for not wearing make-up, and the rules regarding shorts are “the shorter the better, but no cheeks.” And the rules regarding dressing up for holidays such as Halloween consist of: “no boobs and no butts…all else goesAs far as training goes, sexism runs rampant. George’s has a very extensive training program; which concludes with a menu test that’s nearly 15 pages long, fill in the blank. Normally, the tests are graded very harshly so as to ensure the best service for our gests, however, I distinctly remember my boss throwing mine in a pile, telling me he was sure I’d passed, and that I was on the floor Monday. Lucky for him, I actually knew the menu and was sure I’d passed the test. Not so lucky for everyone else handing our male managers a test, is that’s that not always the case and we end up with really stupid pretty girls with hopes of working on the deck. The unique aspect of the deck is that unless it is a dire emergency or it is one of the two male bartenders, the deck is strictly a “T&A” show. This is by managements’ rules, but also on behalf of the customer. Customers will actually refuse to be served by a male while sitting on the deck because it is “not why we came to a bar.” Once again enforcing the sexism we talked about. The deck is an extreme case of sex segregation and does not accurately portray what it is like working in a restaurant. I know this because I took nearly a month off and worked at S.A.M.s on the Square to get a breath of fresh air. Here, no one got special treatment, guys were on the same playing field as the girls and everyone made roughly the same money. As much as I enjoy equality, the sexism and sex segregation I experience at George’s actually plays in my favor and helps me make the money I need to pay for school.While it is difficult and frustrating at times, and I can definitely understand why Kimmel stresses it so much, a sexist workplace does have its upsides. Since it is common knowledge that girls make more than guys even in the restaurant, the guys we do have bust their butt to go above and beyond to be on the same playing field as us. I find this ironic and mildly comedic and served as a great role switch. Although I don’t condone using sexuality to get the shifts you want or the section you want, that’s how it works there at George’s and similar to the Hooters argument made by Kimmel, George’s just wouldn’t be George’s without the deck girls.

Genderless Sutures  <– Hey guys, here is my poem in case you want to read along.

Tyler

Alex I promise I’m not stealing your idea…

I changed my final project to the spoken word as well.

This happened for a couple of reasons.

1) I heard Ashley mention “slam poetry” at the last class period and that sounded interesting and much different than anything I have ever done. I’m not quite sure it’s exactly “slam” poetry, but poetry nonetheless.

2) My friends thought my former final project idea exploited them, and after I thought about it, I realized it kind of did.

The poem I am writing is not only about everything we’ve talked about this semester, what I’ve learned, and what opened my eyes, but also my discrepancies with small morsels of the material.  I’m basically just hoping it’s an honest representation of how this class has affected my perspective and caused me to seriously think about the gendered world we live in.

Tyler

I know this is last minute, but I will make a slight adjustment. I will still use the same topic as mentioned before but I am just changing the medium from a short story to a poem, more specifically sonnet. I feel that I can effectively communicate better through poetry than a short story. Plus, throughout the course I was looking forward to do some poetry work but never happened. I believe that now is the great time to create poetry in regards to gender.

Chelsea Dagger — The Fratellis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5fBdpreJiU&ob=av2e

Somebody Told Me- The Killers