Thursday, June 4, 2009

Week #3 Comments on Classmates' Posts

Sarah P writes:

"This weeks Eureka moment came for me while over viewing the DB question. I realized I live such a sheltered life because half of the mentioned names for insulting sexes used ever come out of my mouth. And I'm fortunate enough to have friends and family that don't refer to each other as "bitch"-as a lot of females who are friends do- or any name rather. I know a lot of people use these words in everyday language and I agree that it is so demeaning. Why-especially women cause when we abuse each other that really upsets me- why do we feel the need the need to degrade each other? Is it for the entertainment of men? Is it because we are so use to men using these words that we can't find anyother words to use? It's just really upsetting to me. Women-lets respect eachother a little bit more and try to refrain from calling eachother names. We're not bitches, and from one women to the next we all know what sort of issues we have that make us a little short tempered, so lets be more sympathetic to that. So to all my ladies in the class, if you call your girlfriends bitch, try to find another word that doesn't bring us down to a lower level. We're better than that!"


Maria's Blog for Gender and Communication said...

Hi Sarah P-
I appreciate your call to all women to not use harsh names with eachother. Kudos for seeing the need to confront this. Though I have not utilized these names for my friends, I realized that many people use harsh names for eachother in order to express their angst. They are unable to describe what truly bothers them about someone (which I have done for people who are not my friends), and just settle for name calling. I believe we all should learn how to better identify our feelings so we know what hurts us, instead of reverting to caveman behavior of grunting and name calling.

Rhiannon's Post and My Comment

"My second Eureka moment occurred when I read the knowledge check to chapter 5. The four statements in the beginning of the chapter literally made me laugh out loud. "I now pronounce you man and wife." I never took the time to notice how society truly does designate a man as an individual while a woman is only seen by her relationship to the man. This sentence never seemed off to me until Wood brought it to my attention in the text. I think that now, it is becoming more common to say "husband and wife," but I just thought it was interesting to see that "man and wife" never sounded wrong to me until it was pointed out. The same goes for terms such as freshmen, policemen, and firemen. Sure, fireman sounds better than fire-person, which just sounds like some sort of mutant, but why hasn't the term always been firefighter, or police officer, rather than designating the position to a man only?"


Maria's Blog for Gender and Communication said...

Hi Rhiannon-
I appreciated your comment on my post! I also liked your post on the ludicrousness of society's understanding between men and women. I particularly enjoyed how you pointed out that men are seen as independent, while women are traditionally seen as more dependent. Through our recent readings in the text, I realized how popular it is for a woman to be seen as empty or not complete, without a relationship to a man. Our text pointed out how even the strong independent women shown in movies will still value a relationship with a man over every other relationship. The examples noted in the text were Rose in the Titanic, and Charlie's Angels. Both had their romantic ties. In the case of Rose she was empty and a bit broken until she found Jack (DiCaprio) who opened her eyes to a new way of living. This can seep into our very beings as female viewers of these movies, and us believe that no matter how successful and healthy we are, as women we are meant to be in relationships with men as to be better human beings. That could be why many women commit too easily in relationships at a young age. I wrote a lot on this on the blog for my literary journal called HerStory. I think you would dig it. Go here to read it: http://herstoryjournal.blogspot.com

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