GEN 101 BLOG

I find it really ironic, however, that in other languages, they have female and male verbs and all that kind of stuff.  For instance, the Spanish language has el or la.  Then based on if its a feminine or masculine word, you can the ending of the word to o or a.  But its not based on who's using the word or who the word is being directed to, its just based on the word and how it sounds.  I find it so interesting that even though there's masculine or feminine words in a language like Spanish that you wouldn't sit there and put a gender to it, like you would for the English language.

I personally don't find anything wrong with people who practice abstinence, as Wilkins is trying to say.  I think I just don't like people who are so extremely radical about practicing abstinence.  The student who told her that she was living in sin was so unnecessary.  The most ironic thing about people who are so extreme about abstinence are the ones who are finding ways to get around being abstinent.  In high school, people would definitely tell me how they did this with a guy and that with a guy but they were saving their virginity for marriage and I would just laugh.  That's not what abstinence is about.  Abstinence is not about just remaining a virgin.  Its about being pure in every sense of the world.  So while Wilkins writes the statistic that teens aren't having as much sex now as they 90s teens were, I think that's untrue and should be worded differently.  Yes, we're not having as much sexual intercourse but we're definitely doing other things.

Throughout the book, I got the sense that her father did not really want to be there.  Yes he was physically present with the family but mentally and emotionally, his mind was somewhere else.  A lot of the book has a lot to do with the fact that her father decorated the house so much --  almost to the point where the house was more like a museum and not an actual home.  I think decorating and things like gardening were his way of distracting himself from the unhappiness that he was feeling with himself.  We see certain instances when he talks to his family really poorly and I think those are great examples of when we see just how unhappy he really is.  We never really see him as being really attentive with the kids unless it came to their appearance, especially Alison.  I think Bechdel makes this a point in the story to show that her father saw something in her that reminded her of him.  As she got older, I think she realized this too and saw it as a vice versa sort of thing.  All in all, I really enjoyed the book.

I found Chauncey's reading of the Bowery area to be really informing. I never thought that back then gays were allowed to be as out in the open that there was a complete area in the city that was just theirs. Then again, I couldn't have expected that one day, they just claimed this spot as theirs. In the reading he states that the Bowery men were called fairies by others which I found to be offensive I guess. In my head, calling someone a fairy is basically like calling another person a fag or something. What I did find really interesting was that balls and gay clubs have been around for an extremely long time. Balls had a different concept in the 1890s though. Instead of today's balls where it's like a big fashion show, they were just a place for them to come together and dance. Though the "fairies" very much still showed out in their best outfits for these balls. The gay clubs were like some kind of exhibitionist thing. Chauncey made them sound like a freak show almost when he described them like a place where the "fairies" would basically have sex on stage with each other for the public to pay and see. Some clubs were famous for this, with one place being referred to as the "Cock Suckers Club" in the reading.

In Han's essay, he writes about how there is much discrimination within the gay community. He uses different people's experiences as a way to prove this. One Asian man's experience was when he began to frequent gay bathhouses and noticed that the other men, mostly white, would not pay attention to him. They never made passes at him or left with him. He began to notice that they mostly stuck to people like them -- gay white males. A bouncer at a gay club remembers a time in the beginning of his career where gay black men weren't allowed in the club or were frequently kicked out. The racism within the gay community may not be as spoken about but it definitely exists. I would say that there is racism in the gay community but it might not be as bad as it once was. More and more gay men of color are being portrayed in the media as more desirable. The poster child for gay men typically is a handsome, clean faced, well dressed white male. Even today, that image is still pretty prevalent when it comes to the gays. But now that society is starting to really embrace people of other races, that's not the only image that you'll see when it comes to gay men. I do wish that dating while gay wasn't so racially ambiguous, more so with the males than the females. It's so rare, to me, to see an interracial couple where both partners are male. Gay men need to open up their horizons, like us women are often told to do, because there's so much more out there to see. I feel like gay men judge other other gay males based on stereotypes

Hooks' article is a critique of the Livingston's documentary Paris is Burning. Hooks makes it a point of saying that the documentary puts forth the idea of white supremacy. I disagree with this statement. I don't think Livingston was trying to do that. I feel like she was just trying to make men of color the real focus of the documentary. America has always tried to divide blacks and whites. America has also made blacks, especially black men, seem as if they belong on the lowest pole of the ladder. I think Livingston just wanted to show that despite these men being both black and gay, they felt like they were the highest of the high. They felt even better about themselves when they were dressed in their drag attire. I really think that Livingston just wanted to put out some good vibes in her documentary. I personally really enjoyed the documentary, with this being my second time watching it. I noticed a lot of things about it this time that I didn't notice before. For example, Livingston would go back and forth between serious and playful scenes. I wish she would have given us more background about the charts, like Pepper Labeija or Willi Ninja. I wish she would have asked them things like why did they choose this route, why are some of them getting a sex change. She should have asked them more things like how do they feel about the divide between the races and why aren't there as many white gay men at their balls. So many other things could have been featured in the film. I did take notice of the fact that there weren't many white people in the documentary, which is what Hooks noticed the most. Maybe that's why she put out the idea of white supremacy. But I personally don't feel like that's what Livingston was trying to so.

I think this is an issue also because its basically leaving our identity's up to our gender, causing us to choose one or the other.  One can't claim to be "no gender."  They have to be one or the other.  If society got rid of the gender rules, regulations, and restrictions, I feel like people wold be a lot happier.  They wouldn't have to choose.  A lot of people are dealing with an inner battle with themselves because they're forced to choose something.  I find this to be one of the reasons as to why so many people may be suffering from depression or committing suicide.  They become so upset and filled with rage that they can't be who they want to be.  I think that's what was the point of this reading.  Bornstein is encouraging the people to be who/what they want.

     I think some people in society can be really stupid and not realize that the things that they believe make absolutely no sense.  Just because someone is "different" doesn't mean that they are disabled.  In no way these two examples be justified as being a disability.  Its just a stupid mislabel that people tend to use as a way to shun others.  Pregnancy and homosexuality suddenly shouldn't require another label for someone else.  I think society, as a whole, needs to just change their mindset.  Leave the people with REAL disabilities to themselves and don't try to put people who clearly don't need the title with them.  Just because they're "different" doesn't make them disabled.

This study also shows how men are willingly taking on a lot of household duties that women are usually expected to do. At one point in the study, one woman said that her husband assumed all the cooking duties in the household and she would come home from work and ask him what were they having for dinner. I found that to be drastically different from what couples used to traditionally do back in like the 1950s. Over the summer, my mom told me that I needed to learn how to cook because my future husband would come and expect to see his dinner already laid out for him. I remember responding to her like, “no Mom, when I get home my man better have MY food ready.” I think a lot of women nowadays have that same mindset and Coltrane’s study is giving some good insight into that.

Today in class we discussed how there is a difference between domesticating masculinity and masculinizing domesticity.  I believe that there is a difference between.  The difference is that one is meant to leave masculinity at home and the other is taking domestic activities and making them masculine.  In terms of domesticating masculinity, I think that this should be practiced more often.  Men feel like doing things at home, like raising the kids, cleaning, cooking, and things of that sort should be left to the woman while they go out and bring home the bacon.  By doing this, I think they're losing out on a lot of experiences.  Like the FDM's goal, I think men should spend more time at home.  This allows them to learn how to work with their children, care for them, and etc.  I think men take being masculine to a whole different level and they don't realize how much it actually hinders them.  Some men need to realize that there is nothing wrong with doing things in the home and taking on the domestic tasks that women are normally expected to do.