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(I really want to take that course. I hate scheduling. I'm just venting that here, sorry.)

So Tuesday's class really got me thinking. Looking at those pictures and writing down my thoughts was interesting and useless. I reread what I wrote and not one of them was honest. I could barely remember which picture I was talking about because most of my comments were general and untrue to what I really thought. What I was writing down was what I thought I was supposed to say and think. It was all positive : "hero" "strong" "brotherhood" "talented" "wise" "powerful" "smooth."

No! That's not how I really felt or thought. I saw the muscley guy and I thought "sexist" "fake" "jerk" and "horny". I saw the man holding what I thought was a battered woman and I thought "abused" and "abuser" and I saw the army picture and thought "close-minded" "limited" "senseless".

Now I could analyze myself all day here but I think that's between me and myself. My real question for the conversation is with all these other real thoughts it my head, why did I write down the ones that weren't real? We were supposed to let our thoughts stream and our words flow. My thoughts streamed and I like dammed them up and forced my hand into ones I thought I was supposed to. Why??

I've been thinking a lot about gender and gender performance and I think that just might be it. I think in a lot of ways masculinity is a performance. But, like all performances, they are nothing without an appreciative audience. Are we in some way helping the performance? Are we performing our counter-roles to gender performance and letting the show go one? I'm not saying that masculinity is a bad thing, or that gender or the performing of it should be done away with, but I'm wondering if we are hurting ourselves. Are we playing into the stereotypes we try so hard to fight against? I don't know, maybe it's just me.