Week 5: Culture

          There were many parts about the lecture and tutorial discussion this week that stood out to me.  First, it caught my attention when we were talking in lecture about arranged marriages and mail order brides.  I took a marriage class at my university back home last year, and I found this to be the most interesting and different topic that I learned about.  There is also a practice in Vietnam know as matchmaking, where someone from Vietnam has moved overseas, and finds someone else overseas that they set up with a family friend back home.  It is known as a social remittance, which means giving social aspects back to your homeland while you are abroad.  I was so intrigued by this topic because it is so unlike anything that I have ever heard.  This matchmaker has to work out all of the meet ups and visa problems that occur, and she almost never gets repaid.  It is a new form of arranged marriage that people are looking to in Vietnam.

            In the tutorial, there were also a lot of points in our discussion that stood out to me.  I truly believe that education and awareness is the key to shining a light on a lot of the problems that are happening in third world countries.  It is hard to judge people on what they do in their villages because of their cultural values, but it is equally as hard to not see that female mutilation is painful and wrong.  I was really taken back by all of the videos we watched in class, and I couldn’t help but think about how much I wanted these young girls to be educated and know that they have other options.  Being brutally mutilated is not the only way to be marriageable, but how do you tell that to a young girl when she doesn’t know any better?  It is a difficult and sensitive topic and I truly wish that they will find peace and education in their villages, because the complications with cultural acts, such as female mutilation, could really put many girls lives at risk. 

Week 4: Socialization and Gender

          Talking about gender and education this week really made me reflect on my job working at a day care in high school.  I usually worked with 3 and 4 year olds and their sense of gender at that age was incredible.  There was rarely a time when you saw the boys and girls playing together, because they were all interested in different things already.  There was too many times when I had to get in between an innocent fight between the boys before they got hurt.  After I would break up the fight they would get made at me because they were trying to see who was "stronger".  It is incredible that at that age they are already worried about being masculine and one-upping each other.  On the other hand, the girls were much more delicate and would always want to play house and read princess books.  At one point I did not even need to look at the words on the pages of Sleeping Beauty because I had had it memorized from reading it so many times.  Surprisingly, there were problems with reading books too, because they would fight over who go to sit on my lap or who got to lean on my shoulder.  Once again, I was so intrigued about how young their feminine sides showed and how they had to be near or touching each other all the time.

          I also saw examples of this when I was a nanny for two summers in a row.  The first summer it was just a one year old girl who I was watching, so the gender roles were a little less obvious.  She would play will all her toys, whether they were neutral or feminine, and not worry about a thing.  In the spring, she was blessed with a little brother and just like that her feminine side came shining through.  She no longer played with her neutral toys, saying they were for her little brother because they were "boy toys".  She would only dress up in Disney Princess outfits, and when I would try to get her brother involved and put one of her dresses on him she would start crying saying that he was a boy so he was not allowed to like princesses.  It is amazing that at such a young age she knew about gender roles and stuck by them like she was under oath.  I’m curious to see if this ever goes away, or if she will forever be connected with these roles.

Week 3: Theories

           Going into Week 3, I was not too excited to be learning about theories.  To me, even the word theory makes me cringe.  I always thought about theories as just a boring way to describe why certain things about the world are what they are.  I have to admit though, after just the first couple minutes of the class I was intrigued.  I find it extremely interesting that so many people spend years dedicating their life to proving a certain theory.  It is dangerous if you actually take a second to think about it, because there are probably so many cases where people will fudge the truth just to prove their theory correct.

            As we were talking about this in class, I could not help but think about how people do that in every day life, no just when they are trying set a theory in stone.  I thought about how many times people have blurred the lines of truth and lies just to make a point in an argument.  Even worse, how many times I may have told a little white lie or exaggerated the truth just to make a point.  It is kind of sad if you think about what people will do in order to be right in a conversation and not have their ego bruised by being wrong.  I think this plays a huge role in gender communication, not only just in relation to theories, but also in the ways that males communicate with males and females communicate with females.  There have been too many instances where I have witnessed my brother and my dad making stuff up just to try and prove each other wrong in an argument, which is so similar to someone fudging evidence when trying to prove a theory.  It is crazy if you think about it, how much gender communication theories connect and relate to real life.

Week 2: Sex and Gender

I couldn't help but laugh during our lecture this week when we were talking about the differences between male and female speech habits.  My brother is two years older than me and we get along pretty well.  Because of this, we are pretty comfortable around each other so I am able to see how he talks around people he is not trying to impress.  Trust me, there is a huge difference!  There have been so many times when I have been having a normal conversation with my brother when someone else comes in the room and his voice and language completely change.  More than once I have looked at him and said, "What are you doing?  You're voice doesn't sound like that!"  He will usually get really embarrassed at this point and say that he doesn't know what I'm talking about.

          This is why I thought it was really funny when we were talking about how males use language and gender to gain status, because as soon as someone else came into the room TJ's voice got lower and I could tell that he was trying to gain report.  He was more short with his answering, trying not to give too much away and show that he actually enjoyed communication and disclosing information, because that might be seen as too feminine.  I wonder if this will ever change when communicating with men, because I don't know if I will ever understand why boys like to put on a front that they care more about establishing report than rapport.

Week 1: Introduction to Gender Communication

What does it mean to be masculine?  What does it mean to be feminine?   Who are we to judge how masculine a male is or how feminine a woman is?  When I was younger, one of the most common questions that was asked was “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  From around the age of 4 to the age of 12 my answer was the same every time.  I always responded, “I want to be a cardiologist.”  The range of reactions that I got from people was hilarious.  Most adults would just laugh and say that that was a man’s job and if I wanted to go into the medical profession then I should want to be a nurse.  Turns out, I’m very bad at science and when I got into higher schooling I realized quickly that I did not what to go into the medical profession at all, but that does not change the idea that people told me from such a young age that I couldn’t be a doctor, I had to be a nurse.  Why does our culture think this?  Why is it unfeminine to be a doctor or a surgeon?  I am a firm believer in anyone can be any profession that they want to be.  I don’t know if I will ever understand why some jobs are considered feminine and some jobs are considered masculine, but I hope that it changes in the future.  I hope that people see that they have to let little kids know that they can be anything that they want to be, and they do not have to fit into the stereotype of male or female.  Why do I say this?  Because I truly believe that there is nothing worse that not being comfortable in your own body just because you fear that you do not fit in with your gender.  Being who you are is so important, so why would you want to be something that you are not?