Disability and Femininity?

When you think of the word "disability," what do you normally think about? Maybe you think about a person who is suffering physical disorder, like a person who must use crutches, a wheelchair, maybe a walking-stick. Maybe you think about a person who suffers from a mental disorder, such as mental retardation. Maybe you thought about someone who may have health issues, like Asthma, or some sort of allergy. However, do you ever think about someone who just can't do a task that someone of the same or other sex can perform? For example, when you see a boy throw a ball, and it seems to be different in the eyes of someone looking at a regular boy who can actually throw a ball, and you label that boy "oh he throws like a girl" (think about the movie The Sandlot, where Ham Porter challenges an older group of boys in a baseball game by saying to them "well you play baseball like a girl!" Obviously many people may look at this and laugh. This is the type of stuff that I can admit I said when I was growing up, just to entice someone to play a little stronger, a little better, or just to light a fire under them. Of course, this may be classified as a disability from a gender perspective, by comparing femininity to disabilities. This may be hard to believe, because everyday there seems to be some sort of comparison between men where someone would say, "You play like a sissy" or "quit acting like a girl" and so on. While I am not trying to change anyone's thought process when thinking about disabilities, it is important to take with you the fact that classifying someone's inability to perform at a sport or perform at a task that is more natural for them to perform in does not require anyone, a player, a coach, or a parent to tell them that they are playing like a girl. Just a thought.

White Privilege

Google, for a moment, the word "white privilege" and see what you come up with. If you look at Wikipedia (yes maybe the least trustworthy site, I know, I know) and you will come up with something like this: white privilege is a way of conceptualizing race inequalities that focuses as much on the advantages that white people accrue from society as on the disadvantages that people of color experience. In other words, white privilege deals with the advantages white people have over those of color in society, whether it is in the workplace, crime, school, you name it. This of course made me sit back and think for a moment of the things I was taught as a child growing up in a country that Eminem put it best in a song: White America (although not as controversial as the song is, of course). I am a white male, and over the past 21 years of my life, it would be very disappointing to me to believe that I have been given the advantages because of the color of my skin, or because of the color of my parent's skin, all because they may be white. Of course, the topic of "White Privilege" is not directed to every white person living in America, but a theory that is more drawn up from the minorities' viewpoint because of the disadvantages that have come about for them while growing up in America. My parents have always taught me to never take for granted anything in life, and that I am to always work my socks off to be successful, because nothing is ever given to you; you must take it yourself, and the only way to do that is to always try your best. Thus I have been doing that ever since I learned how to talk, to walk, to write, to think critically, to play sports; everything I did in life, I did with hard work, determination, and the drive to succeed. However, after reading some information on the idea of "White Privilege" I know think about the non-white person who may have gone through all the steps that I did in life, only to come away empty-handed to some white person who didn't do anything to get the job, but only received it because of the color of their skin. I find it disheartening, and obviously something must be done. But now the year is 2010, and while there have been many advances in the hiring of colored people in the work place, "White Privilege" may seem to be decreasing. But we cannot take things for granted, because while I may be typing this post, someone may be going through the harsh realities of "White Privilege"; such the cold realities of this country, of this world, and of this concept.

Challenging the Pseudo-generic Man

On the discussion board, I discussed about the slide on the lecture for my class about the Pseudo-generic "Man" and the examples of phrases that use male nouns as "generic." Such an example is "All men are created equal." As we celebrate today our patriotism towards America of our freedom and the Declaration of Independence, it is interesting to look at that sentence from a feminist point of view. While we associate the sentence with feelings of liberty and freedom, the thought that only men appear to be entitled to be equal is an assumption of what that sentence means. I can't speak for Thomas Jefferson and explain what he was thinking at that time when he was writing our great Declaration of Independence, but I am sure that women are just as entitled to their right to be equal as men are. Sure, Jefferson could have done what the people who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, in which it read "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights..." but, unfortunately, he didn't. Of course, the purpose of the activity the slide was presenting wasn't to bash the most famous line in any American document, but it was to show that "man" or "men" seem to be thrown in to many sentences, such as "mankind," "manpower," "man's best friend," and the list goes on. What the slide wanted to show was that instead of saying "man" (or even "woman" or "women") try to use something that can combine not only men and women, but also people of color, race, ethnicity, and so on and so forth. My final example is something that I was taught in my freshman year of high school. Conflicts are one of the most important functions of a fictional literature that is to be thought up before writing any story. What I found on Wikipedia is a list of all the concepts one can think of when writing a story. What I was taught in high school were "Man vs. Man," "Man vs. Nature," "Man vs. Self," etc., but when you look at the Wikipedia page, you will notice that it has "Character vs. Character," "Character vs. Nature," "Individual vs. Self," and so on. Thus I was taught a Pseudo-generic "Man" phrase without even realizing.

Communication Tips for Relationships

If any man and woman have been in a relationship for an extended period of time, it is plainly obvious that how a man communicates and how a woman communicates is very different, almost to the point that they are at polar opposites. While it is clear that women communicate in a more polite when talking, that does not mean to say that men are people who are always angry or that they always want to be right. There are many reasons behind why communication between men and women are different. For starters, a man and a woman may not have any communication differences at all, at that it is more likely for that couple to be very similar (not always do opposites attract). But when the couple are different, then one must look at the person's history. A person's upbringing plays a large part in the reason why that person is who he or she is today. Another reason that goes along with this theory is a person's genetic background. Sometimes a person's communication skills are friends, social groups, society, peers, etc. These are just a few reasons as to why men and women may be different in the communication aspect in a relationship. Through the discussion boards for my class, I have seen many posts about why men seem to be so different and why they have to act tough and why they don't seem to have any feelings at all. This could be many reasons, and many of those reasons are explained above. But here is what I know: a man who claims they have "no feelings" are liars, because I sure do have feelings. In my current relationship with my girlfriend, it took me some time to open up and share my feelings. In my opinion, men will open up to their girlfriend or lover only when they feel comfortable and when they don't feel that they are pressured to do so. The comfort level is probably the key reason, because if a man has been spending a lot of time with their guy friends, and if they are saying "we don't have feelings because we are too tough or too cool for that," chances are that the men who hangs out with that crowd will take some time to open up because they always believed that they are "too tough" or "too cool" for feelings. Men do have feelings, and their communication skills are different from a woman's, but that doesn't mean that they can change. For women though, they just need to not try so hard to make a man open up to them, because a man will come around in time. That's just my two cents though.

How Pornography Can Make a Man Weak (in the mind)

When I was watching and taking notes in my class, there was a slide that talked about how pornography is an example of vulnerability. This vulnerability is directed at men, especially the penis. From what I could gather, pornography is an attempt for men to escape this vulnerability, because us men are seen as something that lacks and emotions or we intend to suppress these emotions so we can be seen as more tough. But the penis of a man is a vulnerability because it is the one part of our body that is very sensitive and can make a man fall to his knees in pain (my apologies for any men who are reading this and cringing at the image of that happening, and my apologies to any women who probably did not want to know any of that). Moving on, pornography blinds men into believing that their penis is stronger than they actually seem to be, because it can make any women weak to the knees and would throw themselves to the men because of either the size of the sheer pleasure that the penis could bring. But this isn't the way the world works, and it could explain why men seem to act violent or get angry when pleasure doesn't come to them when they think that it should. Pornography is like any movie, it isn't suppose to be like what it is in real life, thus it is a movie. Men should take note that they are best to accept that their penis isn't a weapon or a powerful device that can make women flock to them. Pornography not only makes a man or a man's penis weak, but it also makes a man's belief of reality weak because they believe that what they see in a porno is what they expect it to be in real life. Moral of the story: stay away from porn movies guys, and try to accept the world as it is.

The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique, written by Betty Friedan, was a book that is more commonly associated with discussing the "problem that has no name." This "problem" as explained by my professor in my lecture, is that women are increasingly taught to believe that their existence and happiness is limited to being a housewife or doing things only a housewife would do. The message Friedan was trying to make was that women during that time period in which she wrote the book was a time when women felt dissatisfied with the way things were going at home and they wanted to do something to change it. The problem was not a sexual one, but more of a personal one. Women during this time period wanted to have careers, to have goals in the work force and not always be a housewife. World War II granted women this chance to work because women were needed while the men were off at war. The time the war was going on and until it ended allowed women to put their education to the test and do something that wasn't dealing with making dinner or changing a diaper on a baby. The sort of jobs were working in factories or working in businesses. While this was short-lived due to the return of the men fighting in the war and the necessity for the men to get back to work, it allowed women to feel that they don't always have to be a housewife, which I think is really powerful. In a way, this reminded me of the movie and book Revolutionary Road, where the wife wanted to get away from her boring life and get back to her dream of being an actress. While the movie and her (and her husband's for a short time) ambition to go to Paris is different with the whole "New Woman" movement, it is a similar aspect that women grew tired and bored of the same-old routine that women did before they started to work real jobs.

Video of End Woman's Suffrage

I watched the disturbing video from Module 6 about a man who went around a high school campus asking the women of the campus to sign a petition regarding ending woman's suffrage. As i finished watching the horrific 3 minute video, I was left shocked by the amount of women shown in the video who signed the petition. There was only one woman to my knowledge who refused to sign it, showing that at least one woman in the video at least knew something about woman's suffrage. Whether or not the other women in the video did not know woman's suffrage, or confused "suffrage" with "suffering" can be debated, but it is important to know that the man doing the video was not so much wanting to end woman's suffrage, but to show that woman's suffrage is probably not explained enough in secondary schools, as explained by my professor. Whatever the case may be, from my point of view at least, women need to know the history of their long fight for some sort of equality in a world where men are, more often than not, dominating. Although I was taught about woman's suffrage in my middle and high school, my parents lived in Seneca Falls, NY for a few years before moving to my birth town, Ithaca, NY, so I was at least exposed to some of the history of Seneca Falls through my parents. So to see the women in the video sign a petition that they probably have no idea what it is about is what shocks me the most, especially a school that is a National School of Excellence given by the U.S. Department of Education. Maybe showing that sign at the beginning of the video was to show some irony before the interviews began.