Doing Gender

I find West and Zimmerman's arguments about gender to be compelling and generally true. Good for them for taking the time to create definitions and argue about the ways in which we "do" gender. While I agreed with their arguments, I did have one problem with this article. Actually, it's an issue I have with many of the articles about gender. Why is it that all of these articles are obsessed about all the ways in which we do fall into our gender roles and worry very little about the ways we defy these expectations? Why are we so obsessed with defining our genders? Is it possible that if we stopped trying to define gender we would have an easier time dealing with gender?
These are just the questions that run through my head as I read articles like West and Zimmerman's. In the end I feel that they make points that are extremely important to the balancing of the genders. I just wish that in that balance we were able to better include individuals who don't fit into traditional categories more easily. The effect of gender roles on these individuals may seem pretty obvious but I feel that it is still important to consider these various types of gender representations when defining sex and gender.

The Case of Lower Income Students

Over the summer I worked for a few months with the Office of Parent Relations. It was a fantastic experience and the project I enjoyed the most was creating a presentation for parents and families of incoming first generation college students. I got to spend a fair amont of time researching the subject and then deciding what information about our university and college life would be most pertinent to these groups. Many of these families fit into the category of lower income as described in the article. In my light research I found that many students expressed anxiety about fitting in with their peers who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds. I feel that same sense of anxiety in the interviews provided in this article. 

What I find most discouraging about these articles and anxieties, however, is that often times these fears are rooted in reality. This article clearly displays the extent of the exclusion that students of lower incomes actually experience at their colleges. I also find the gap that occurs between individuals and their families due to their college experiences to be completely disheartening. The stress that is placed on students who experience these situations has to be gigantic. 

Borderwork among Girls and Boys

Ms. Laura is the last one on the playground.

Working as a teacher in a before and after school program you see at lot of weird stuff. I spent many long afternoons on the playground and watching my students go from blanket wielding Kindergarteners to beginning stages of hormonally obsessed 5th graders is always a treat. One of the things I observed the most were the interactions between the male and female students and how it changed over times. A vast majority of the activities between the two groups that I observed perfectly represents the activities described in Barrie Thorne's article. Chasing, invasion, and pollution rituals occurred almost every day.

 

The one place where I found this rituals to be oddly prevalent was in the line to wash hands and go to the bathroom. It was always a competition between the two groups and often times there would be taunting and teasing between the two groups. It was at this point that students often informed each other of the gender difference between the two groups. "Boys do gross things in their bathroom. They are NOT allowed in the girl's room." At the time I was too busy yelling at children to stop wetting paper towels and throwing them at each other to notice the social experiment happening infront of me. I wish I had paid more attention. 

The playground was often a place of distinct gender roles, as well. When it would rain the children were not allowed to play on the field and this would cause tension between the kids. The boys who normally beat the snot out of each other on the field were suddenly confined to playground areas that were normally dominated by the female students. This would often times cause tension between the two groups and fights often broke out. What would start as normal play would end up in the inevitable punishment of two fighting groups; groups that were often designated by gender. I find this to be extremely reminiscent of the activities the children in Thorne's article experience. 

Halloween

At one point in my childhood I had this horrible teenage neighbor. Each Halloween he would find new way to torture all the small children in the neighborhood and delighted in watching us cry. His constant torture had my paranoid mother so worried that she stopped letting us take candy from their home on Halloween. She often worried that he would put something into our candy. While I doubt that this juvenile pain-in-the-butt would actually poison our candy, I see how the role of the Halloween Sadist played into my own experiences.
I also remember being exposed to various kinds of Halloween safety propaganda. Teachers would hold entire class periods devoted to safe Trick-or-Treating and pamphlets were sent home every year. It also became and extremely popular trend to attend alternative candy gathering festivities. Many times churches and grocery stores would open up their parking lots and asiles for guaranteed safe candy giving, in order to fight the Halloween Sadist and ensure that children received candy only from adults that could be trusted.
Were we all just a little too paranoid?

Inside Toyland

Currently, I work for an organization that is gung-ho in its mission to create equality amongst employees. However, I haven't always experienced this kind of determined justice. For a year I worked at a job that could very easily be compared to Christine Williams' position within each of her toy stores. For instance, in both places there was a defined sense of gender roles.
For Williams she found that only women worked at the cash registers in her stores and white men often times held leadership roles. In my former position, which I will not name for fear of my former employers wrath, there were such distinct gender roles that I almost lost my mind. The women with whom I worked and I had a very distinct set of expectations that included kitchen maintenance, cleaning, decorating, and interacting with young children. These were very stereotypically feminine tasks. The only time we could convince a male coworker to perform any of those task was to directly ask for help, otherwise they would completely disregard these tasks. Also, our male coworkers were given tasks that included building and leadership positions.
In addition to this obvious sexism, every employee at this "family owned and family friendly" business were all from the same racial and economic circumstances.  Not a single minority was employed and one had not been employed for many, many years. I find that this relates to Diamond Toys, in that very few minorities were employed at this high scale store.

Cyberspace and Cyberselves

I understand the argument that Waskul is trying to make with this article. It could basically be boiled down to the fact that the Internet is a scary, scary place and you have no idea who  you're talking to, nor does anyone know who you are. Waskul explains the fluidity of identity of the internet and the basic ways in which individuals present their perceived identities online. However, I find that this article has a negative bias and I can think of one important reason why this is so. Waskul was hanging out in chat rooms for hours doing research. In the current Internet culture, chat rooms are comparable to strip clubs. While strip clubs are entertaining, not everyone spends all of their time watching daughters and mothers remove their clothing for the sexual stimulation of others. There a millions of people on the Internet who are finding ways to genuinely communicate with others, despite the fluidity of online identities. 

An example of a counter to the Internet's deceptive nature is the YouTube phenomenon. Thousands of people have flocked to YouTube to do away with the anonymity and bear the realities of their lives through a diary method called "vlogging". My favorite example of vlogging stems from a duo that identify themselves under the screen name of The Vlog Brothers. (I will admit, their screen name is important and helps to identify their purpose, so that's something that I agree with Waskul on.) This brother duo began creating daily videos as a way to communicate with each other and then created an entire subculture called Nerdfighteria. While the main goal of the community is to "decrease world suck", a large component of the community's communications are perceived acceptance and portrayals of the characteristics that actually belong to an individual through their online persona. In fact, it is encouraged for members of this Internet based group to engage in "real life" activities with one another, thus fighting the online identity issue.

Of course, this isn't a perfect counter example and Waskul's arguments are applicable in certain settings. However, I think it is vital to note that the fluidity of chat rooms is not completely applicable to all online interactions. The cyberself is not the scary entity it is made out to be.

DFTBA

The Self as Sentiment and Reflection

I would be lying if I said I wasn't being completely judgmental when reading this article. There appears to be something about writing on the subject of "self" that draws out some strange, strange things. The problem I have with this article comes down to the way in which the author chose to approach writing about the subject. Normally, my dissection of another person's literary pursuits wouldn't be relevant, but I think it applies this time. Please, bear with me while I attempt to connect the dots.

The author of this article, who happens to have the middle name of Horton, discusses the social self, but is careful to explain that he does not believe that there is a non-social self, it's just that all those other, lesser, people call it something else and he had to find a way to distinguish his topic. Cooley (the author) then spends several pages using perceivably unique phrasing to describe the phenomenon by which individuals build their concepts of self based on the way an individual relates to others. This can mean that we define our sense of self based on how we relate to other beings through our interactions or the way we think and perceive situations. A decent example of this, which was included in the article, was the description of how an item is only able to be described as "mine" because it relates to other beings as not belonging to them.

While the points Cooley makes are interesting and it is possible to walk away from this article with a general understanding, I found myself looking down at the pages and thinking, "Wait, what?" Cooly's sense of self is doused like bad cologne all over this article. It is apparent that Cooley wanted to be seen in a certain light and is willing to write in a unique style, so as to put off a very specific sense of self. In order to project this sense of self Cooley uses "unique" writing techniques to explain his thought processes. For example, phrases like "fondling it in seclusion" are used with strange metaphors that really don't help support Cooley's case. Why does he do this? Part of me is completely baffled and unable to explain why anyone would want to present scholarly material in such a way, but it could be argued that Cooley is attempting to project his sense of self by writing in such an unexpected manner.

Or maybe people are just weird. That's a completely reasonable possibility at this point.