Tennis impersonation

I was reading that Caroline Wozniacki was being accused of racism when she impersonated her friend Serina Williams during a exhibition tennis match. The feminist group that reported this as racist stated that because she represented Serina in a hyper sexualized way, with a big ass and a huge chest, she was  making fun of the community of black women. This is completely absurd to me, first off Wozniacki and Williams are friends and Serina laughed at it when she saw it later that day. Just because Wozniacki is white an was making fun of Serina who was black does not make this a racist statement in any way. This is just someone trying to make a story out of nothing because they have nothing better to do with their time.

Police Officers

So today I was reading an article that was talking about a male police officer in New Hampshire. He was suing the state because they would not hire him full time due to a lack of being able to complete the physical test. The argument that he is making however is that he is only not completing the test because he is a male and the standards are higher for males. This struck me as odd that the physical requirements were different for male and female officers. As a person that is supposed to be protected by the police I want all of them to have to pass the same physical requirements. Also doesn't this just subject the female officers to being looked upon as inferior. Yeah they are police officers now but they are not held to the same standards as their male counterparts. To me if the main argument is for equality then everything should be equal the physical fitness test included.

Law

Last class I also found the conversation on the law very interesting. I came out on the side of Lydia, that being that the rape victims don't get ignored but if there is no evidence there is nothing the police can do. The case of Jerry Sandusky was brought up as a rebuttal to this argument, but in my eyes his case is a special circumstance because there was more than just one person saying that he raped them, also they had people that saw him in the act testifying against him. So his case was not that of a he said she said argument it was a he said and a whole bunch of people said argument. I also think that the way the law is set up now of innocent until proven guilty is the way to go, I don't want to think what it would be like if it were the other way around.

environment of fear

Last class the group that was researching rape was presenting. It was very interesting to me to hear how the girls in the class felt scared when they walked next to a guy at night. The reason it was interesting was because they said that the guy's need to stop acting weird. When asked how that was possible non of them had an answer. This was the most frightening part because as a male I don't try to act creepy but just from me being male I am subject to that definition because of the environment of fear that women have when walking at night. So I ask again what would be the best way not to be creepy because I am not trying to frighten anyone.

Beyond Tolerance

The beyond tolerance speaker this past thursday was Loretta Ross, her talk was on women's human rights and politics. During her talk she came to the topic of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how he was not trying to lead a civil rights movement but a human rights movement. She then described what the Human rights, that are divided into eight categories, were that we are legally required to have by international law. This is where the talk got really interesting because no one knew that this was international law and no one knew what the human rights categories were. In my opinion we need to do a better job in teaching young people about what rights they are supposed to have not just from the constitution but also by international law.

Female Physical Recreation

In class today Celia asked me to say what the argument that I read was about, I want to expand on what I said in class. The article was about the overall health effects that physical recreation can have for a person. It mainly deals with the difference in what men and women are permitted to do for physical activity. The women cannot go outside of social norms and play sports because they are associated with masculinity. This hinders what women can do for physical recreation and this generally hurts the females because they are not given the release that sport gives. It also talks about how females are other-centered and always think of what they could be doing for other people instead of themselves. This also keeps most women from being able to enjoy physical recreation in their leisure time because they are always doing things for other people instead. 

Equality of Sexes

Today in class there was a point made about how we always think about how women can do whatever men can do but we do not think the other way around. I thought it was interesting that women are always looked at as being the care givers and that men cannot be. So the men cannot do something that the women can do. This is very interesting to me because the argument from feminist groups is that the sexes are equal, but there are very few discussions about how men can do the things that women do. To me if there was discussion on both topics a lot more would get done because the feminist groups would be able to show that the sexes are equal. 

Gender and Sport

For the literature research paper my group is doing gender and sports. I have always wondered why there are female only leagues. I have always wondered this because any woman from those leagues that you talk to says that women can compete with men, but men are not allowed to enter their league. In golf the men are not allowed to compete in the LPGA but the women are allowed to compete in the PGA. If women can compete with men why are there two separate leagues then. Also why are men not allowed to compete in the LPGA, if women were not allowed to participate in the PGA their would be an uproar about how that is sexism.

Basow Historical Perspectives

It was interesting to look at Basow's paper and what she had to say about the historical theory of gender relations. It was interesting to see that when people were in hunter- gatherer societies that both genders were relatively equal. However, as society moved into an agricultural society gender relations started to turn into a male dominant power dynamic. In this society most women were viewed as property and as a commodity. This was the most interesting part because this thinking is the backbone for most gender relations now. It would be very interesting to see how different the world would have been if the power dynamic between the two genders would have stayed equal.

The article that I am analyzing for our argument analysis paper deals with the topic of girls not having as many opportunities for athletics as boys. It shows that it is not socially acceptable for girls to participate in masculine sports even if they are very good at them. To me this seems very wrong and needs to be changed. I know that when I was playing tee ball half of the team was made up of girls and most of them were better than the boys, but after tee ball the girls were not allowed to play baseball any more they had to go play softball a more feminine sport. Looking back on it now I don't know why that was done I mean if the girls can play baseball and are good at it they should be allowed to play as long as they like. Coaches need to stop worrying about what gender their players are and start worrying about how well they can play the game.

I really understood the way Goldstein defined the differences in relationships for men and women. Being a guy I do constantly compare myself to all the other guys in the room to see where I stand. I often use violence and aggression to try an assert dominance. I definitely look at this as being a hierarchal system where the most dominant man is at the top and all the others want to try and take him out. It was interesting to me though how she defined how women want to build relationships in webs. I have never really thought about it like this before. I thought that women would build their relationships the same way that men did. I did not think that it would be this different of a structure. I was really able to understand this when I thought about the difference between my mom and dad. My dad has a few close friends but my mom has a lot of friends, so i would consider her to be apart of the web and I would consider my dad to be closer to the hierarchical system.

Women's Rights

While I was reading Women's Rights are Human Rights it occurred to me that the paper was written in 2000. Now that is not that long ago and I was blown away that this was not accepted before this point. I mean to me that statement seems like a no brainer, yeah women are humans so they would have human rights. It was hard for me to understand how it took ten years for the people fighting for this to have someone listen to them on a national and international level. To me this should have happened a lot sooner and it really shows how far we still have to go for gender equality.

Gendered Objects

The gendered object assignment for class to day was very interesting. I was really interested in the amount of different types of objects that were brought into class. I never realized how many things serve the same purpose but are gendered differently. This was very apparent with the razors for males and for females, it was also apparent for the two different lip glosses and the different kinds of antiperspirants. This made me think about what would happen if these objects were not gendered and how that would change the dynamic between the two genders and how that would change the stereotypes of those genders.