ttttake away

This class has provided me with the insight I need to examine the inner-workings of our gendered society. Honestly, my favorite part about having taken this class is being able to point things out to my friends. I like being able to take a gender-critical outlook on everything I interact with. More specifically, the issue of pink v blue, domestic workers, plastic surgery, masculinity, etc. Whenever friends of mine make comments like "oh he does/looks like this, he must be gay," I can swoop in with my knowledge and provide my newfound insight.

Take Away

Besides my newfound inability to watch TV without analyzing every commercial and trying to somehow relate it to a concept we've talked about in SWMS, I believe that I have learned a lot from this class. First of all, what this new mindset shows me is that I definitely think a lot more critically about things that would have surely gone way over my head before. Not everything is the way it is because of some natural phenomenon - pink isn't for all girls just because that's the way it is and women aren't housewives because their bodies are biologically hardwired to perform as such. Rather, our culture has evolved in a manner to promote these ideologies and that is why they may seem so "natural." Secondly, I believe I have a better understanding of human interactions and relationships. Before I took this class, everything seemed very easily categorized - you could be straight, gay, or maybe even bisexual. But after having taken this class I have learned that this is not necessarily the way things work. People ascribe to different sexualities, different attractions, for different reasons at different times; not everyone fits as cleanly into a slot as one may think. Third, and perhaps the most important point that I've learned, is that self-identification is an important aspect of one's life. I don't mean that everyone has to decide who they are and label themselves as such, but I mean that it's important to think for yourself, to realize how much of yourself is actually you versus how much of yourself has been taught to you, or rather shoved in your face by a longstanding society. At often times it may be hard to differentiate between the two, but it's important to think more critically about what you learn in everyday interactions and to not automatically accept anyone's opinions or rules without thinking them through for yourself.

Take Home Message

I have learned so many concepts and beliefs that American society has set forth for millions to believe in the categories of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Each of those categories have issues that we face everyday; men being superior to women, homosexuals vs. hetersexuals, and race and class. America is an unfair, messed up place where many people believe anything that the majority believes. Men should be over women, homosexuals is invalid, people of color are unequal, and people that live life under the expected standard of living is not important. I just hope and pray that America will recognize all these problems and strive to correct them. Nobody is perfect and each and every human on this Earth should have an equal opportunity and should be able to live life without worrying what others think of them.

Take Home Message

What really sticks with me from this course is how society easily downgrades women. I never realized how much pressure through the media that is put upon a female to achieve a perfect image. As a male I get self conscious myself, it could be from the past knowledge I learned from growing up or just a natural feeling I have. I don't really pin point it on the media that I see today, but how the media emphasizes the perfect women I cant imaging how it would be if it was the other way around for men. If being self conscious was just a natural feeling, the media definitely enhanced that feeling for women over men and put a far more pressure to achieve a certain appearance.

Take home message

This class made me more aware of gender ideologies, and how it seems that as a society, we hold on to stereotypes about men and women that are not always true. We classify people according to male or female, and many times it is difficult to move past that category because of the way people view others according to their gender. I also saw how gender is a societal construction, fiercely upheld by society: from the way fathers discourage their sons from playing with toys that may be feminine in any way, to how men discourage undesirable behaviors by calling them gay. These types of thoughts are everywhere and the only way to escape them is to realize they are present and try to change our outlooks on them. The problem is that most people do not even realize they possess these ideologies because they are so engrained in us from birth that they seem natural, or even biological, not socially constructed.

Take away message

It’s my first time that I’m taking a class related to gender issues. But this class changed my view point about different things that I’ve accepted without even thinking about them. It got even more interesting towards the end of the semester. I learned a lot about the concepts of femininity, masculinity, domestic labor and etc. However, one of the important things that this class taught me was that advertisements always portray something which is not real. Likewise, Disney movies always show female characters that are perfect in every way, and this is why women in real world try so hard to reach the same unreachable perfection. The important message that I got from this class is that media has a huge influence on us, even though we are not aware of it.

Take Away

I'm glad this course re-educated me on the definition of feminism.  I understand the roles society has created for gender better and do see it a lot of my life now; smaller things such as the products I buy and the characters from the movies I see remind me of the concepts I learned in this class.  Sometime, I do feel a little bit self-conscious about my choices because they do follow a lot of what society expects of femininity, but I've learned to stop caring about gender constructs.  I realized it's not about fitting into any role, but keeping myself from being pressure to consider them in terms of separate categories.