gender

My tree

tells me I have got you, apple.

Now hand to branch 

to yes, take my trunk.

Yell oh,

here, like hair like feathers like leaves!

Will the rustling leaves

of the swaying tree

say, no yell, oh?

Adam’s apple, 

state the roots, stay the trunk,

and lunging branch.  

Branch

out into orchard, think of the leaves.  

Yes give us a trunk and another trunk.  

Tree

loves its apple

so yellow, yell oh!

We yell over and over oh,

before falling from the branch.  

Apple

loves the leaves.

So the tree

is asking touch my trunk.

Tough the bark of the trunk,

still it will yell oh!

Telling, poem ate tree. 

Tender it is; the branch

never leaves

apple.

Apple

is alive with trunk.  

Leaves

between orange and green and yell oh!

Growing to branch.

This is what it’s like making love with a tree.

Ah the apple.  Ah the leaves.  

Ah the trunk.  Ah the branch.  

Yell oh!  Ah, says the tree.

What felt wrong last night, was the need to explain my fear, 

to justify my fear, 

to force my fear onto you?

Into you,

I want to pour,

to open, to offer only good things.  

But sometimes the asymmetry hurts.

Bryn Mawr College's TIDES Project (Teaching to Increase Diversity and Equity in STEM initiative) is featured in the new issue of AAC&U, Diversity & Democracy on Gender Equity in Higher Education, Spring 2015, Vol. 18, No. 2.
"This issue of Diversity & Democracy extends AAC&U's longstanding commitment to addressing gender-based inequities in higher education. Article topics include gender equity among STEM students and faculty, women's leadership in areas such as higher education administration, the role of women's colleges and universities worldwide, and the importance of creating campuses that are safe and inclusive for students of all gender identities."

In Women in Computing: The Imperative of Critical Pedagogical Reform, the "Key to sustaining US global competitiveness is the country's ability to harness the kinds of diverse perspectives that not only are known to fuel better scientific outcomes, but also are associated with the inclusion of underrepresented groups, particularly women and women of color."

Kelly Mack and Melissa Soto, Association of American Colleges and Universities; Lilliam Casillas-Martinez, University of Puerto Rico–Humacao; and Elizabeth F. McCormack, Bryn Mawr College

LGBTQ has always been a topic to be avoided and not discussed open publicly from where I'm from. Unfortunately, homophobia and just the idea of it scares many Malaysians away. This is because homosexuals engaging in sex are considered illegal in Malaysia and they continuously face discrimination from government policies such as a law that makes sodomy punishable by 20 years in prison. Just recently in the news, sixty-six Muslim schoolboys in Malaysia identified by teachers as effeminate have been sent to a special camp for counselling on masculine behaviour. As I read Blackburn’s Homophobia in Schools and What Literacy Can Do About It, I try to think of the reasons to promote how schools in Malaysia would be open to discuss about this topic. Could it be part of the core-curriculum of the national exam? If so, who would teach it? Perhaps the biggest obstacle for me is to convince parents. Just to demonstrate how the society views homosexual couples. In an article published in the news two years ago, the Malaysia's Education Ministry has "endorsed guidlines" to help parents identify gay and lesbian "symptoms" in their children. The following are the list of “symptoms” that were listed. From reading this statement alone, I am embarrassed and disgusted by my government’s actions. I can’t think of possible solutions to this especially since homosexuals are being punished legally in law. What would be the first step to tackle this subject and connect it to high school education?

Symptoms of gays:

Bryn Mawr is my home.

            That one phrase is so much more than the five words it contains. Now more than ever before. To me, a home is much more than four walls or a campus. Bryn Mawr is home to me because of its people, because of its community. It is here that I have become comfortable with who I am - my sexuality, my past, my life.

            When I first began to think about this final paper, I knew I wanted it to be about this place that means so much to me. Bryn Mawr. I also wanted to incorporate in parts of my other papers. As I reflected over my work and growth in this course, I realized I left my third paper open ended without a firm direction in terms of education for Wabash. During conversations (usually over food) with my friends, I began to see that Bryn Mawr also needs a new form of education. An education in inclusion. I began to think of my second paper on the inclusiveness/discrimination of the straight community within Bryn Mawr's community. I concluded Bryn Mawr needs an intervention.

            The phrase "feminism unbound" is strange to me. I thought at first I understood it, but when we began to discuss this phrase in class, I got even more confused. So I sat down to think about it on my own. I thought about the rigors of society, the boundaries have set for ourselves and others, the world we have been told should exist. As someone who has chosen to go to an all-women's college I know I follow certain boundaries within the walls of Bryn Mawr College, regulations the college sets for me. I began to think of similar institutions. A friend of mine also goes to a single-sex institution, Wabash College, an all-men's college in Indiana. Wabash sets regulations for its students as well. A potential new regulation is a gender studies graduation requirement. This debate struck a chord with me, especially when I discovered the contorted view of gender studies some members of the institution had created around this issue . . .

            "[The] wimpy, neutralized guys that gender feminists are trying to create:  men who are not committed to constructive struggle and conflict and fighting for a cause and coming out the winner." (Michaloski and Allman) This statement was made by Dr. David P. Kubiak, a Classics professor at Wabash College in relation to the debate at Wabash over the proposition of a gender studies graduation requirement.

Well, Thanksgiving is over, time to bring out the Christmas tree, snowflake lights, and the Christmas music Pandora station. Even of you don't celebrate, I'm sure you get swept up in this time of the year. The moment Thanksgiving is over, the Christmas music comes out. The usual "Jingle Bells" and "Silent Night" that we hear every year. Among these annual favorites are a few that caught my eye - ones that enforce the media's view on women. For example "All I Want for Christmas is You" by Mariah Carrey, a contemporary song embedded with the message that all women need is a man and their Christmas (life in general) will be perfect. Or how about "It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas" which continues to reinforce gendered stereotypes in children's toys - "A pair of hop along boots and a pistol that shoots, Is the wish of Barney and Ben. Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk, Is the hope of Janice and Jen.” Or "Baby it's Cold Outside" in which the traditionally male part of the song pressures the traditionally female part of the song into staying for the night even when she has said "I really can’t stay, I’ve must go away, my mother will worry” yet the man persists “I simply must go / but Baby, it’s cold outside. The answer is no / but baby, it’s cold outside” She says the first part of each of those sentences, she says no, but he pressures her to stay. Songs like this one normalize the problematic male behavior, which contributes to and perpetuates rape culture in our society.

Original question: Is it wrong to feel unangered by the exploitation of your gender?

As a gender collective, is every single person in that identity group required to react or defend the group from being marginalized?

Is it a bad thing if you have not questioned your gender?

Can we become activists for the gender fluid and want there to be no gender in society if we have never questioned our own gender?

Why does it seem like we are simultaneously praising gender identity and claiming your own gender AND pushing for a no-gender society? If we take pride in our genders, how can we also be asked to give them up? 

Group Members: vhiggins, pialamode, sschurtz, Amanda and Christina (not sure of their usernames) 

Link to Radiolab Podcast "Words":  http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/

In our discussion on Thursday, Anne pulled some lines from "Seeing Gender" that talked about "imagining language as a place of possibility, as opposed to a simple scripted repersentation;" we talked about signs and signifiers, repersentations and mimicry and related it all back to gender. This conversation reminded me of a podcast I listened to a while back called "Words". (I have conveniently linked the podcast above and I highly suggest you listen to it right now!). I relistened to it and thought about it in the context of gender. The general theme of the piece is, what do words do for us? are they neccasary? can you think without them? It's fitting that in each of these questions the word "words" could be replaced with the word "gender" and you could have an equally revolutionary conversation. Both socially constructed things seem so essential to life in our ability relate to ourselves and others. I'm currently struggling to articulate many of the thoughts I have and I'm hesitant to come to conclusions before others (I hope) have a chance to engage with the podcast but here are a couple preliminary reactions:

Until class on Thursday, I had never been asked what gender I identify as. I had never thought about gender as something that comes from within myself. I thought of the gender binary as a social construct that was passed down to children from the moment they are born. Once a sex is assigned, parents dress their baby in "appropriate" clothes and colors, and give them gendered toys, like dolls or trucks.

I automatically answered "female" but then wondered if that was even the right word. "Female" and "male" sound more like sexes than genders.I didn't know what language to use for gender. "Woman" and "girl" both have strong connotations for me, and I don't feel like either is appropriate. When I hear "woman," I always think of a specific image, a female older than me. She is wearing a dress. "Girl," on the other hand, is too young. My age is suspended between the two, perhaps because I am in the inbetween age, the teenager still discovering herself.