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Thursday, 16 April 2009

America’s Next Top Model

I was watching the 11^th America’s Next Top Model cycle (I’m embarrassed to say). But it had lots of issues on the topic of Gender. Specifically about trans-gendered people which is what we’ve been discussing in class recently. One the show there was a man in the process of becoming a female. It’s really interesting to me that a person that was still biologically a male was allowed in a female modeling competition. It was also really interesting to see the interactions between the models and their opinions and thoughts about this. There was one girls that stated that she was uncomfortable with it and all the other girls attacked her and spend the rest of the show gossiping about how evil and horrible she was. It was really interesting to me because this show had aired ten or 15 years ago I think there would have been the opposite reaction and all of the models would and shunned the transsexual model. It is so interesting to me how our culture can change in a few years and how different the reactions to certain topics can be with the difference of a few years.
Gender treatment in our school

Since our school is Christian, are we an exception to gender inequality? Especially in the behavioural Sciences program where there is more girls than boys, is there differences in treatment of the genders? I’ve been trying to pay attention to see if males and females get treated differently by professors. I have noticed that a lot of the time teachers call on males for the answer, but I’m really ok with that because I don’t want to be the one giving the answers. In some classes especially, males do get called on quite a bit. I am in one class that is mostly females other than two boys. One of the males hardly ever comes to class, however, when he does he gets called on the most by the professor and his name is mentioned in the class quite a bit, used for examples and usually he and the professor kind of joke throughout the class. Other than this I find that most professors are fairly equal in their attention to both gender. I kind of think that some of the male professors try too hard and only use she/her/a girl in speech all the time rather than male words, and to me it seems unnatural and forced, but I guess that at least they are trying to include girls in the lesson.
Gender , Behaviour and School marks

After reading the article I had to present on gender inequality in schools, I was really shocked because I actually thought that there was not inequality in school when I was a kid. In all honestly when I was little I also thought that girls were smarter than guys too, of course except the really smart guys, but in general I thought that girls were smarter. But I think that those idea’s came from the fact that boys were more likely to get into trouble during class, and in my mind good behaviour and good marks when hand in hand. That point was made in the article that I presented; one of the ideas of why girls better class grades then test scores was that they had better behaviour in class. At the university level I definitely do not think that behaviour has an impact on your grades (minus attendance), but maybe it does in grade school. Allot of grade school activities have to do with listening and paying attention, so a child goofing off and not paying attention would most likely have his or her grades affected. I think that in elementary behaviour has an impact on grades, but I do not think that behaviours has an impact on grades in post secondary school.

Wednesday, 15 April 2009

Gender in the Movies

This paper that I did about women in the media has officially ruined watching movies for me. All I notice now is how women are basically never the problems solvers. One thing that I keep thinking of is: what is media teaching young girls to be like? To me it seems that girls are being shown that whatever is wrong with you is fixable… but not by you, but by some wonderful prince charming that swoops in and saves the day. Do you think that it teaches girls to look for help rather than trying to solve their own problems? It makes me think back to the one article that I presented about the lack of attention for girls in school. Specifically, the part talking about science class and where teachers are more likely talk guys through the steps of working a telescope, but with girl’s teachers are more likely to step in and just do the whole thing for them. I am just wondering if society through education and media (and I’m sure a whole bunch of other things) is teaching girls to be reliant on other’s help and in a since incapable of thinking they can solve their own problems and taking control on their without help.

Wednesday, 08 April 2009

As a woman what do you think of Jesus being a Man?

One really interesting question that I recently heard that is also on the topic of gender and religion was: As a woman how do you feel about Jesus being a man? I can say that I honestly never thought about that. But I think that it is actually really interesting to think about. I personally really like that Jesus was a man, I really don’t think I would like it if He was a woman. And maybe if I had had bad experiences with men when I was growing up, maybe then I would prefer Jesus being a woman. But since Jesus is a man I think it is easy for me to see Him as a protector and a provider, someone who cares for my welfare, knows how to fix problems, helps me when I need help, and so many other things. I guess what a woman could be all these things too, but somehow it wouldn’t be quite the same a man being and doing these things. It is just a really interesting question! The one thing that this question makes me wonder is what do men think about Jesus being a man, and how does that differ from what woman thinks about it?