Blog #5 My Playlist

I chose the song S.E.X. by Lyfe Jennings because I think it sends out a message to women. In most of today's songs, they talk about girls being hos and putting it all out there and degrades women. In many rap songs as well as their videos, there are women in the video who are wearing barely anything. Women are the sex objects and it makes it seem like its ok to act like that and sleep with everyone. In S.E.X. it encourages women to not just sleep around. Think about it in depth before you sleep with someone. You do have a choice, regardless of what societal pressures are having on you. Mr. Mom was another really good song. It is about a guy who is doing what the sterotypical stay at home mom does. He thinks it is going to be a breeze and gets to stay at home doing nothing at all and sleeping in. Much to his suprise, he finds out it is really hard work. Prob even harder than working an actually paying job. If every man who thought that stay at home moms did nothing and should wait on them hand and foot cuz they have "worked" all day and is tired could experience what this Mr. mom did then I think alot of thinks would change in society, perhaps women would be respected more and be treated more equally with men. I'm still a guy makes it clear that despite what women think, he is still a guy. He is explaining that women see everything all cute and sweet, and fragile and he sees things down to the gore. Like a deer, he sees it as something he can kill and show off and a girl just sees it as Bambi. Well not all guys or girls see it that way. It does not matter your gender, we can see things the same way, it does not have to be seen differently because of our gender.
My music taste has changed quite a bit. I used to like the rap, hip hop, rock songs that mostly just degraded women, and hated the sappy country songs. I still like what i used to but look at it very differently and now lean towards listening to the sappy, "girly songs". I do not like songs that make men above women and women just something for them to use and put under the rug when they are done with them.

paper #1

Growing up I gender was never a big issue for me. I did not know that the traditional woman was stereotyped into staying at home taking care of the children, cooking, and cleaning house all day. My mom and dad both worked. They would take turns cooking and we all helped to keep the house clean. When I was too young to be in school, my grandmother would watch me. When I did start school, one of my parents were always off at a time where one or the other could come pick my sister and me up from school.
I grew up in a rather small town. So when I hear other people in class or any other places say they grew up in a small town and were raised or exposed to women staying and taking care of the home, it surprises me. My mother has always told me that I could do anything I wanted to. I do not think she ever had the expectations of me being a stay at home mother. She has always thought I would be a independent business woman because I always said I wanted to be a lawyer, but I have since changed my mind and want to be a radiologist. She taught me that I could do whatever I set my mind to, to follow my dreams, and do not let anyone stop me.
The first time that I realized that a lot of people had the idealization of the role that women and men should take on was a few years ago, after my sister married her husband. My sister married her husband a month after she graduated high school. She continued working at the job she had been working since she was 16. She chose not to attend college because she was tired of being in school and never could decide what type of field of study to go into. A couple of years after she was married she had her first child a boy. A third, named after his grandpa and his dad. She quit her job and chose to stay at home just to cut the cost of having a babysitter. Also , because she did not trust leaving her child with a stranger. There was no familly members able to watch her baby everyday while she worked. She liked staying at home with him. She developed a system of having dinner cooked when her husband got off work. After a while it was just expected of her to have dinner made. He would think something was wrong with her If she did not .
About 2 years later, she had another boy. For the first couple of months things were going good, but then she started getting tired of staying at home all the time. She stopped cooking dinner everynight and made her husband and start cooking too. He would always complain though. He would say “UGH, I am too tired. I worked all day and all you had to do was stay at home and do nothing.” So, after years of this going on, she has become very depressed and unhappy with her life. I have seen her husband standing right in front of the refridgerator and my sister sitting on the couch and he ask her to fix him a cup of water. And she does it!
I never said anything about it to him because I did not feel like it was my place to say anything about it. But one day we were watching tv and something brought up about how stay at home moms. He was saying that all women should stay at home and have the house cleaned and dinner cooked for when their husbands came home. I just had to say something about it. I explained to him how women and men are equal and men stay at home sometimes while women work. I told him that it is a 24 hour job that never ends. He is so tired when he gets off. But that’s the point he gets to come home and rest and ignore his kids like he does but my sister always is messing with them. She works all the time it is just not a paying job. He went off about how the bible says men are better than women and women should obey the men and whatever. I got so mad at him and still do not like to be around him sometimes for the way he acts. I have never had problems with gender or even realized that there were people in the world who thought this way until this.
That situaion has definetely opened my eyes to the way gender affects some people. I am sure things like this occur all around the world. Even in other countries where women are looked down upon. And in the old days where babies where left to die because they were not born a male. That is so sad. We all have the same oppurtunities given to us to make an impact on the world regardless of our gender. Gender to me should not affect anything. People should not be discrimminated against because of the gender they were given when they were born. I should be about what skills a person has and their personality, not their body parts.

Blog #4 Gender roles

I looked up the classes that are in the women studies department, and I noticed that some classes deal with gender and are not "women studies" courses. I would like to take Body Image vs. Reality sometime before I graduate. I would like to get a job as a radiologist after I graduate. I never really thought about the importance that my gender would have in the work place, but after taking this course, I have become very aware of gender remarks in my everyday life. I would like to think that my gender would not affect my job as a radiologist but I know that there will prob be some kind of situations that it will affect. I know right now with the job that I have women just do not do certain types of jobs. It is not a rule or anything , its just that women don't work in the back and the men don't work in the front. I never really thought anything about it untill this course. This course has opened my eyes to a lot of things I was never aware of. I am definetely going to be taking some more women studies courses at the university.

Blog #3 Iron Jawed Angles

I really liked the movie "Iron Jawed Angels." I learned alot about what women went through to get the right to vote. I really had no idea they went through such extremes to allow women to have a voice in politics. Not even just that but to be treated as equals among men. I must say that I will definetly register to vote and be voting in every election from now on. If I would have known how those women were treated then perhaps I would have been voting all along. Like hooks said in Feminism is for Everybody, if everyone was educated on feminism then everyone would support it. What suprised me most about the film was that women were rude to Alice Paul and the rest of the NWP as well as the men. I guess it was just so deeply embroided into their way of life they never thought of having a voice and was rude to them because the men were too. When Alice Paul got arrested she went on hunger strikes to prove that they were in there for committing no crime. She was forced fed raw eggs and threw up. I think that this is what ultimately gave women the right to vote.

Blog#2 Interview

I interviewed my grandmother. When she was little she was able to grow up spending lots of time with her mother because she stayed at home and took care of her children, as well as clean the house. Her father worked many hours so she did not see him much. As she grew up and got married, she played the same role as her mother. She stayed at home and took care of my mom and aunt. She liked doing that. She waited hand and foot on my grandpa. When they moved to Oklahoma she had to get a job. She was 30 when she had her first job. She told me that women should not have ever fought for equal rights because now women have to work. She enjoyed staying at home with her children. She would not have wanted it any other way.
Feminism is a fight to have women and men to be treated equal. I am conscious of my gender because of my brother-n-law. My sister is a stay at home mom and waits on her husbsand. He will be standing up closer to the refrigerator than her and ak her to fix him a glass of water, and she will. She sees noting wrong with it. I said something to him about it and he told me that in the bible it says women should obey men, and my boyfriend will have me trained. I told him we are equal regardless of race and I will not be "trained."
Women have worked far too hard in the past to have the same right as men to go to waste. If only all women could see they were as equal as men then perhaps the world would be different.