THE CHAPTER FOUR

This chapter on the Psychoanalytic in Tong brought to light a whole to take on Freudian theories for me. Looking at how a they way women act and how it is all driven from somewhere deep inside their psyche. Tong explores how gender identity, and gender inequality is all due to some apparently troubling early childhood experiences and attachment stages with our parents. Giving the background on Freud his stage and ideals of childhood sexuality, Tong sets the stage to provide information of feminists supporting this role. Freud says that it is harder for a girl to reach "normal" sexual maturity because she must stop loving another woman (her mother) and begin loving a man (her father). Freud says that it is also hard because a female could essentially have too much sex or just give up on sex all together.

Is there a time when males are ever accused of engaging in too much mastubation thus resulting them to "give up on sexuality altogether?"

Freud also says, "their super-ego is never so inexorable, so impersonal, so independent of its emotional origins as we require it to be in men"

thus implying that it is the super-ego - the sense of right and wrong- is what holds women back from being equal to men and it is the id that is driving the women.

The chapter goes on to talk about duel parenting and how that would alter the structures of society and place more emphasis on the father to be seen as a more significant role in a child's life.

Also discussing how boys are forced to reject their mothers because they cannot have sex with them and they do not want to regress back into the state of total vulnerability like when they were in the womb. This is the reason that both boys and girls push away from their mother as they grow, argues Tong.

while the stages of development and Oedipal theories offer information to be learned from they are hard to be taken as hardcore facts in today's society. But, they still offer many underlying themes in the media. So, if Freud is so rejected why are his ideas and thoughts and theories still driving the one thing we like to indulge most in?

Men as Gendered Beings

This text by Kimmel and Messner, while short raised so many important questions and new ideas. They took a new look on gender conflict. Their thesis was that men's public image is all that is seen, but beyond that there is a lot more to be seen and understood. When gender is brought up the word female or feminism is instantly thought of, men often define themselves in a negative way with female traits. However, Kimmel and Messner argue that gender is not a lense in which men view themselves through. Our society is flooded with gender organizing jargon that has become invisible to us yet, it is how we live our day to day lives.

Kimmel and Messner argue that to men gender is invisible, men simply see themselves as human beings or generic people. Whereas women define themselves as women. But even women all can't unite under one umbrella of womanhood. There is a portion of the text that displays how race can be seen as invisible to white women just as gender can be seen as invisible to men. So does that mean white men are struggling with an identity crisis?

In class we discussed how you know that you are a woman because you aren't a man. Wouldn't that be gendering men and giving them the authority and control over gender?

Another notion brought up in this text is the idea of male public roles and how society views men only through those roles. If they were seen through the private roles in the home what impact would that have on they way we view masculinity and men in general?

Disney

We have all heard the horror stories of how racist and sexist Walt Disney is but here is just a little something I stumbled across that shows how the feminist movement has made large strides.

in case you can't read that ... here is the link

http://halucine.soup.io/post/77328149/Rejection-letter-to-a-female-artist-from

the next generation

So, the other day I was babysitting and the 6 year-old girl (child of a professor) who recently began watching the Brady Brunch she was explaining to me the family and how there were 3 girls and 3 boys and their parents and their house cleaner etc. Then she got this look of excitement on her face and said "the mom doesn't even have a job! " As we talked more she made it very clear that mom's always had jobs but this mom was special because she got to stay home and she got paid to do it (not true but that's what she thought). I asked Hannah if she thought that any of her friends had moms that didn't work and she looked at me funny and told me with certainty that all of her friends mom's had jobs and worked for a living. "what would they do if they didn't " was her response. While this is one girl in one small town in one classroom she was enchanted by the idea of a mother not working. So does this mean that there is a change in what the next generation thinks of what a "typical family" should look like? Or is it just a unique situation?

BaBiEs

In a lot of the readings it has been made clear that one of the largest differences between men and women is the reproductive aspect, women can have babies and men cannot. In class we talked about the ability to have children over the choice of adoption and how that would affect the family. What we didn't really touch on was the dirty stuff, the human nature, our internal drives that we try to suppress. It is evolutionarily our nature to enhance and further our gene-pool. Therefore, because men cannot physically have children, they get their wives or other females pregnant thus, extending their genes another generation. Does this mean that when a child is adopted the father or mother does not love the child? I would argue that in some cases strictly due to our human nature that it is harder to invest as much love for a child that does not carry your own genetic material than for a child that does. That is not to say a parent of an adopted child will not love their child to the best of their ability or would love another child more. It is strictly the laws of human nature to want to enhance your gene pool .

What is gender?

I feel like any time gender is brought up we are automatically talking about women or feminism. Does this mean there are no gender issues with men? In Gender and Race by Evelyn Nakano Glenn, she takes the issue one step further claiming that race is the study of men of color and gender is the study of white women. Glenn continues to say that gender provides a look into historical, cultural, and situational definitions of what it means to be and man or a woman. Thus, stating that there can be no one definition for a man or a woman? If each culture is different and each person comes from a different kind or historical background with different baggage that aides in shaping their person, then how can there be such specific "boxes" of men and women? Glenn argues that they are "never fixed", so then what would a socially constructed box of a women look like in 1920, 1950, 1990, 2010, or even 2050?

How would they change? Would there be anything that remained the same throughout those periods? Moreover, what would a socially constructed box of a man look like in those periods, would his profile change drastically over time or would it hold more constant theme?

I would argue that the "box" of a female has made more drastic leaps - for better and worse- than the male. However, that could just be my own constructed version of gender taking over.

Our 2 families

Class on the 9th was one that kind of filled me with a lot of different thoughts. The notion of agency or our capacity to act/ our own free will struck me as something that should be a human right. However, so many women (and men) struggle with what they can do, who has the power, and who makes the decisions. Is this all based on society and what society tells us/ is our agency as people depicted through the media? Frankly, I think that's what it all comes down to. Our values are instilled in us through the airwaves and sound bytes we hear from the television/radio/and even video games. While our families and our environment play a part in who we are, our value systems, etc. it is still Hannah Montana, Mary-kate and Ashley, Fresh Prince of Bel Air that children and adolescents are emulating (random assortment, yes but all have different aspects). One becomes so invested in the lives of these television characters - that more often than not gender stereotype perfectly- that they adopt the values of the fictional characters. I would argue that the agency we have or don't have is determined by what we see or hear in the media. Gender roles become more and more enforced through television like this.

The media is also shaping the way we view families. Very rarely do we see a new television series with a nuclear family. Just the other day I saw a preview for a new series called, Raising Hope, a show about a 23 year-old boy who is now in custody of raising a baby with the help of his family while the child's mother is is prison. While the concept is strange and is definitely challenging the "norm" it is also paving the way for new roles. Yes, the show may succeed due to it's shock value, but like all other television people will become invested in the lives and rituals of the family it is depicting. Therefore, creating, or at least sparking the fire for new kinds of gender roles.

thinkin' of class

The other day when we were talking about gender the question/ statement was raised about women's constant yearning to be like men. We said that women feel the need to be more aggressive and act according to the "male" standard but why are women trying to be like men? What is instilled in us that makes it our values? Why are women not accepted why do they have to be aggressive in the work place but then social settings being aggressive is not acceptable?

Also, when we were making the male and female boxes no one actually knew people that fit those examples, and if they did they were frowned upon. So where do these ideas come from? Aside from the media are these ideals instilled in us in the family or from the television? If a child would not watch TV would he or she still have these same visions of the female or male form?