Exploring Gender

            Gender expectations are engraved in social relationships and institutions and they impact the way people understand each other and operate in society. According to Parker (2008) sex comes from biology and anatomy, whereas contemporary feminist theory usually sees gender as the constructed product of culture rather than the natural, inevitable product of biology and anatomy. Basically, sex is related to biology, and gender is related to cultural assignment and the individual’s choice and portrayal of masculine and feminine qualities.             “Masculinity is a gender process typically associated with the male sex that impacts gender relations and personal identities for individuals,” (Locke n.d.). Masculine traits can be exhibited by any sex or gender, but are most often attributed to men. “Conceptions of masculinity are often perpetuated through cultu...

Vancouver Poetry Slam Published on Jan 8, 2014 Dia Davina came in 1st place with a score of 57.0 on January 6th at the Vancouver Poetry Slam. This is Dia's poem In Between https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxzAhWC4giI This is one of my favorite slam poems. Hopefully the video I attached will work, but if not I posted the link above or you can just go to YouTube and type in Dia Davina-In Between. So lately I’ve had a lot of people ask me, in this class and outside of it, what it means to be gender queer. Truth is, it is different for everyone and it’s not always easy to explain. It is who I am and how I feel. Some day’s I’m masculine some days I’m feminine, I’m not really sure how it works. It’s like I’m a boy in a girl’s body sometimes and other times I’ll be the girliest girl you’ve ever met. Anyway, the video above is Dia Davina performing her poem In Between, and it has been my favorite poem for a while now. I can really connect and relate to her experiences, tho...

 “A standpoint is a place from which to critically view the world around us,” (Griffin, Ledbetter, & Sparks, 2015, p. 431).             It is our perspective, outlook, and viewpoint of the world. Standpoint theorists Sandra Harding and Julia wood claim that, “the social groups within which we are located powerfully shape what we experience and know as well as how we understand and communicate with ourselves, others, and the world,”(2015, p. 444). Standpoint theory allows us to look critically at the relationship between power and knowledge within different standpoint locations in society. It allows us to look at the world through different perspectives.             When it comes to gender, standpoint theorists see important differences between men and women. One of these many differences include that men tend to want more social autonomy, and women tend to wa...

Have you ever had an argument, conflict, or miscommunication with a person of the opposite sex? Most likely you have, but have you ever considered the reason for these mishaps being a result of cross-cultural communication based on your differing genders? I definitely never considered this, until I learned about the communication theory of genderlect styles.             Men and women, although more similar than different, are still raised differently, treated differently, they act differently, think differently, and have different gendered experiences and expectations within society. So with this, it is not far off to say that men and women come from, and interact within two separate cultures. The term genderlect, according to Griffin et al. (2005), suggests that masculine and feminine styles of communication are best viewed as two distinct cultural dialects. In other words, when men and women communicate they do so cros...

Have you, or one of your opposite-sex friends ever been in the friend zone and didn’t want to be?             “The friend zone refers to a situation where there is a mismatch in romantic feelings between two individuals. For example, sometimes this is a sexual attraction mismatch, where one person is interested in romance while the other wants to just be friends,”(Nicholson, 2013, p. 1). Why does the friend zone exist? Better yet, on a broader scale, the real question and purpose of this post is, can heterosexual men and women be strictly platonic friends?  According to Adrian Ward’s (2012) study, investing the capability of truly platonic opposite-sex friendships, “Two people can experience the exact same relationship in radically different ways,” (p. 2). The results of this study found large differences in how both men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were found to be much more attracted to their fema...

(Trigger Warning) “A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze,” (Atwood, p.165). -The Handmaid's Tale             When a rat is in a maze it believes it is free. It thinks because it can move around it is no longer in a cage, when in reality it is still trapped. Sexism has been a continuous maze in our society, and folks, it is still here. We are still holding up those elaborate walls to the kingdom patriarchy and just because we almost had a female president doesn’t mean woman are equal, it means women are just now being allowed to move around. Pharr (2001), “Sexism, that system by which women are kept subordinate to men, is kept in place by three powerful weapons designed to cause or threaten women with pain and loss,” (p. 143). These weapons include economics, violence, and homophobia, (Pharr, 2001). Holding up Sexism Keep wages, education, and training opportunities scarce and wi...