Language.Gender.Culture.

      I am loving this unit because I have always been one to speak up about the gender differences between men and women and the expectations and limitations that are placed on women. I really feel that in nature, women got the short end of the stick; we are deemed lesser than men, yet we have more standards that we must live up to and I would love to know how it all started. Anyways, women are judged way harder than men are and they are judged in EVERY aspect of their lives. From their body image to the way they speak, there seems to be no wiggle room for girls to just be girls.

     First, girl are so heavily judged by their looks. Just the other day, I was at the gym with my friend and we were in this room where one of the employees was fixing a fan or something. Anyways, as we were stretching, I heard another one of the employees come in and start talking to the one fixing the fan. He started telling him about some girl he saw on one of the ellipticals who had thunder thighs and proceeded to lead his co worker friend out to where she was so he could see. That is a perfect example of this. Some girl who was just trying to work out and exercise was unknowingly being observed by these "men" who felt the need to then gossip like school kids about how she looked. There's a reason not very many women like gyms. They either get hit on by creepy guys or they feel they are being judged because they don't look like the girl on the advertisement for the gym. Young girls are bombarded with pictures of models from day one. We are almost brain washed into thinking that we must all be skinny with the flattest stomachs yet curvy and busty at the same time. For some girls that is not physically possible because there are just some things you're not born with. This just builds up insecurities in these young girls as they get older and become women.

     To get back on track, women also have standards on how they must talk. Deborah Tannen stated in her excerpt "His Politeness Is Her Powerlessness", that "if a linguistic strategy is used by a woman, it is seen as powerless [and] if it is done by a man, it is seen as powerful" (1). In this piece, Tannen is discussing how when women use indirectness, they are seen as sneaky and covert. She mentions that most women don't ask things directly because they feel they don't have the right to. I agree on a certain level with this. I don't think women knowingly feel they don't have the right to ask or say things directly, but most women are raised to have manners and to speak politely which in turn basically means to speak indirectly.

     I apologize for this post turned rant. Things like this really start to bother me when I get going. Anyways, I just think that we all need to recognize that there are still gender expectations that women today struggle with and it is something that needs to be fixed.

One person from each group: please complete this tonight

I am dropping this into all the documents I have

2/25/15: 4:57 pm

Dear Writers:

Thursday is an important day. There is much to be decided and figured out, and some early writing to be done.  A first (ugly) draft is DUE IN CLASS ON FRIDAY, which gives you just today and tonight to knock out a preliminary idea.

ON FRIDAY, EVERYONE in the group brings in their own paper copy of the ugly first draft:  3 people, 3 drafts.  Take ownership of the work, and be prepared to cut, paste, and change that draft.   DO NOT WALK INTO CLASS AND ASK TO USE THE PRINTER.  There is no time for that.

Collaborating is not simply a matter of throwing separate ingredients together in a pot, shaking, and seeing what comes up.  Collaboration requires communicating, negotiating, struggling together until eventually a shared product emerges.

First, decide on a topic that is relevant to our unit, Language, Gender, and Culture.  There are many tyrannies in the world.  There are those legitimate oppressors that have a face and are keeping people down.  But we are not talking about Big Brother here.  The tyrannies we would like you to address are those that require thoughtful introspection.

Let us share some examples of some topics proposed last year that missed the mark:

1. The tyranny of college tuition and the subsequent debt
2. The tyranny of marijuana laws
3. The tyranny of being expected to go to college

While these topics may be worth writing about, they fail to engage the premise of our unit’s primary focus, which are the “tyrannies [we] swallow day by day and attempt to make [our] own.” These topics may either be too vague or unrelated to the unit or both.

IF I HAD TO DO THIS PROJECT with other people -- whether familiar working partners or relative strangers -- here are the steps I would take:

• I would come to the group on Thursday with 3-4 ideas
• I would explain my ideas to the best of my ability, and I would listen to the ideas of my partners
• As they were speaking, I would be taking notes, seeking common ground
• After everyone had contributed their ideas, I would start asking my partners for ways they think we could move forward
• I would clarify which paragraphs I think I could write, and I would commit to them
• I would begin writing during class on Thursday:  “censor off” (Peter Elbow), Chromebook on
• On Thursday night, I would continue to write furiously and before bed, I’d print the whole thing for class on Friday
• Taking these steps are the only way to earn a good grade on this part of the group essay.

Why Are We Like This?

I've been thinking a lot about this new unit that we are doing in ERW. I've never really thought about the different gender and cultural norms that have been perpetuated throughout our society, but the articles we are reading in class really got me thinking about it.

Men and women are expected to act certain ways in our society. Men are supposed to be strong and protective beings while women are supposed to be docile and fragile. This probably evolved throughout our history starting back to the time of hunter-gatherers. Men did the hunting and women did the gathering simply because those tacks were more biologically fitting for either sex. However, these gender differences have been morphed into what they are now.

Women definitely have more expectations when it comes to how they act and speak. We're not supposed to act smarter or speak more eloquently than men because we're apparently subservient to them. Essentially, this is just another way of saying that women are not as smart as men and that we're inferior to them. Why will I, a well-spoken young woman, be inferior to the young men around me? Why are we still perpetuating these bigoted stereotypes? Why did woman's suffrage first happen in New Zealand in 1893, but did not happen for almost thirty years after that in the U.S. and a century after that in Saudi Arabia? Why are there still these differences between men and women? Why are we, the land of the free and the home of the brave, still so bigoted?

My Interpretation of "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" PART ONE

I really liked this poem that we read in class, so I thought I would break it down and share my interpretation of it.  I will first write the original line of poetry, followed by my response.

Nobody wants to die on the way
Caught between ghosts of whiteness
and the real water
~
I think that "the ghosts of whiteness" in this stanza, are representative of the spiritual world, where as the "real water" is representative of the physical world we experience during life.
~
None of us wanted to leave
our bones
on the way to salvation
~
To me, this line was pretty easily interpreted as "even those who believe in an afterlife don't want to leave their mortal bodies and die."
~
Three planets to the left
a century of light years ago
our spices are separate and particular
but our skins sing in complimentary keys
~
Three planets to the left means planet Earth.  The line "a century of light years ago" is tricky, but it reminds me of the final chapter of my SSR book Sophie's World, in which the long awaited character "the major" explains to his daughter that the universe is expanding, and that when we look at a planet or far away star, we are actually seeing it as it was many thousands or millions of years ago because of how long it takes light to travel.  I think Lorde means to suggest the capability of things to change dramatically and unexpectedly, just as the the universe came into existence quickly and unexpectedly. This sudden change is symbolic of how quickly and significantly her life changed when she received her cancer diagnosis.  "A century of light years ago" could also represent the joyous times she had "years ago" before she was diagnosed.  "Our spices are separate and particular but our skins sing in complimentary keys" asserts that although every human is unique, we are not so different, in fact, we often help each other.  The fact that "our skins sing in complimentary keys" exemplifies how similar we all our despite outward appearances.
~
at a quarter to eight mean time
we were telling stories
over and over and over
~
This first line really stumped me.  I looked up "mean time" which has a different meaning than "meantime" and apparently means "time that is based on the motion of the mean sun."  Lorde references the solar system yet again - obviously not accidentally.  The sun is usually not visible at the time "a quarter to eight (7:45)," which displays the somber and dark tones as Lorde contemplates her own death.  "We were telling the same stories over and over and over" was also very hard for me to figure out.  I came to the conclusion that as Lorde is contemplating her own death, she realizes how much more she wants to do with her life, and that she has been doing the same monotonous things every day.

I will analyze the next half of the poem in a future post.

"It went from worse to worser"

University Recognizes a Third Gender, by Julie Scelfo

The article we looked at in class is here.