Blog # 1

1)
-How do you know?
(b) Something meaningful from this reading by Green, was the concept that society, from the dawn of time, has always tried to categorize us by being one of two genders; male or female. It's interesting to me that we have to follow the rules of gender or else we are isolated, degraded, or even chastised. One in One-hundred people have bodies that differ from those of standard male and female bodies, so what happens to them? Ignorance and fear takes over society and then that population is ousted from societies fictional representation of what being "human", "female", or "male"is. Green makes it clear that what is shown on the outside is often a veil for many, and that gender shouldn't always have to correlate with sex.

-"Night to his Day"
(c) It never dawned upon be that I was living by societies rules when i make assumptions about gender, and that I myself was doing gender without thinking it. Lorber states that gender is a "socially constructed [status]". I never imagined that others societies, other than Western, could allow other genders, or recognize other genders, but at a cost. What I don't understand that if we, a generation that is more modern, advanced and "somewhat" educated in a sense, can see that we are all different in many ways, why can't we allow ourselves to see that we don't have to fit into one gender?

-A Continuous Nonverbal Communication
(b) As I was reading Wilchins , a question came along that was meaningful to me. Why has it taken so long for gender's emergence as a civil rights issue? If we as a society are all one human race, why is there the need to have to discriminate or make less of others because of the way they choose to live their lives, and it is the fear of the unknown. For so long society has lived a certain way; either your male or female, act feminine or masculine, right or wrong. We don't have a gray area when it comes to gender. We have rules we have to follow, and if we don't follow those rules, we become unprivileged and lesser than human. It seems to me that even if there are rights that pertain to equality for men and women, what happens to those "equal" rights if you don't fit into the category of male or female, or if your sex is ambiguous. What rights do they get. Couldn't we just have rights for everyone without having to categorize them.

-Gendered Bodies: Feminist Perspectives
(b) A gendered society, as Lorber and Moore puts it, is one where our lives are categorized into men and women, and based on your genitalia, there is a systematic allocation of people in gendered positions that are done through a social process, that might even be unrecognizable. It doesn't make sense that if I was born with a vagina I would have to live a certain way and fall into certain expectations and do certain things because I was born with a vagina. Because of this I feel that the oppression that women have gone through is never-ending. Yes, through time women have "earned" the right to vote, and "earned" the right to an education (in some ways), but we as women continue to follow the rules of how to dress or act to show that society is improving. If I didn't want to wear make-up, or fix my hair in the morning, I would be a hippy feminist that doesn't give a shit about what she looks likes and most likely be called a dyke because of it.

2)
(b)
My brother is sixteen, I think, and since I have started coming to CSUSM he has really noticed a change in the way I think. When I began taking Women's Studies, I think he really hated me, because in just about every conversation I could apply my learnings about oppression. When I was reading "How do you know?", by Green I wanted to ask my brother how he knew we was male. His answer, "You swear, I'm not a fag", and that was it. My brother says that he's all about equal rights at his sixteen years of life, and that he's pretty open to just about anything, but even the concept of gender and how being a "fag" really had nothing to do with him "knowing" he was a male wasn't really a valid rationalization was extremely ridiculous to me. Ignorance comes from fear, and he fear comes from society not being able to accept different views and understand that everyone is different. I thought that this really tied into the idea that people automatically assume that gender comes either in a male or female, and masculine or feminine. Society has made us believe that gender is only acceptable in two ways, and my brother automatically assumed that your either a boy or a girl, gay or straight.