Language Evaluates Gender

This week one of the gender issues that we discussed in class was how language evaluates gender. In the text book it describes how women are often referred to names such as baby, sugar, and chick. What I found interesting is that women who are sexually active are called sluts and men who are sexually active are called studs.

There are other words besides the word slut that women who are sexually active have been negatively termed such as whore, tramp, and floozy.  However, men who have been sexually active have been more positively termed as rascal and a Casanova.

  I think that not only are women called those terms when they are sexually active, but women who have not been sexually active are also called negative things. When a man is single he is called a bachelor and when a woman is single she is called a bachelorette, but if a woman stays single for many years then people use negative terms such as spinster or an old maid. So, to me, it seems like either way women are almost always negatively seen in society’s eyes on how sexually active they are.

I have found this article online called The Myth of Being a Slut and I found this quote from the article very interesting, “The myth of the slut is used to control women so they will sit down, shut up and keep their legs closed. As for men, they are seen as sexually promiscuous by nature.” From this article, I now believe that women who are sexually active are not sluts. People have called women sluts so that they can hurt them and try to force them to do what is to be expected of them by however society sees fit.   

 Ouimette, Nicole. The Myth of Being a Slut. http://www.lawsonry.com/2011/964.html  

Wood, J.T. (2011). Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Boston: Wadsworth.

Fathers' Rights Groups

The chapter topic in our textbook says Men’s Movements in the United States. One of the movements for men that I thought was most interesting was the Fathers’ Rights Groups. This is a group that deals with trying to get divorced fathers the right to have custody of their kids. In a court a judge usually grants the mother sole custody of the children, but who says that fathers are not just as caring or loving of their kids as the mothers are.

People have a stereo-type that mothers are the gentle loving care givers that children need to be exposed to. The fathers are who people see as the ones who work and do not pay enough attention to the kids. A good example would be the movie Kramer vs. Kramer a married couple gets divorced; the woman tries to take care of herself and leaves her son for her ex-husband to take care of. The father has to take care of his son and he grows a new kind of love for him. The ex-wife decides that she wants her son back, but the father does not want to give his son up so they go to court and the mother wins custody because it appears to the court that the mother is more nurturing than the father. Also, the court was ignoring the fact that the father had been taking care of his son like a responsible single parent. It was not fair that his ex-wife got custody of his son just because she would appear to be more caring than the father.

The movie may be fiction but the story of its situation is true for many fathers in reality. Why is it so hard to see that men can be nurturing fathers as much as mother can be for their children?  Just because a man is seen as the one who goes to work and seems to void all care and compassion when it comes to children. People shouldn’t judge how a father is supposed to act because many fathers would do anything for their child because they love them unconditionally.  

Wood, J.T. (2011). Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Boston: Wadsworth.

From reading our class text book, the author Wood (2011) stated this fact in the text, “The most prominent spokesperson for STOP ERA was Phyllis Schlafly, who traveled around the nation to persuade people that feminism was destroying femininity by turning women into men. She told women to return to their roles as helpmates and homemakers and affirmed men’s traditional roles as heads of families” (p. 91).

 When I was in 9^th grade I went to a Christian school where all the teachers and officials had similar beliefs compared to this statement. The school had a very strict dress code; all of the girls had to wear either dresses or skirts. Girls were not allowed to wear pants at all. I didn’t really enjoy dressing like that on a day to day basis, but I went along with it. It wasn’t until the second semester that I realized why they wanted us girls to wear dresses every day.

 During the second semester they made all of the girls take Charm class; one day the teacher told us that the reason why we wear dresses every day, and not pants, is because that’s the way that God wants you to look. God does not like it when we wear things that distort our femininity.  Also, all of the teachers taught us that when choosing a career path the girls should choose a more traditional career that is suitable for Christian women such as, teacher, nurse, or a missionary.  If girls choose not to do this then it would be suitable to get married and be a homemaker and let the men take care things. At the time I was very confused and scared because they made me think that this was the way God wanted these things and I did not want to accept those things. However, I learned that nowhere in the Bible did it say that women shall not wear pants or that women should only have certain jobs.

Wood, J.T. (2011). Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Boston: Wadsworth.

Test Drive

Hello everyone, I am writing this first post as a test-run to see what what it will look like on my blog site. I will blog about my first discussion later today.
2:06 PM
2/11/12