Category: Gender & Sex
Non-binary Isn’t a Funny Word: Success and Failure in a Contemporary Children’s Health Text
Even as a wider variety of sexual identities and practices are accepted in contemporary American society, the updating of sex education to reflect this new normal remains a controversial subject. While the American Academy of Pediatrics (2018) now advocates for transgender and intersex children to not be forced into gender and sex conformity, warning of the alarmingly high health risks associated with such practices, gender diverse people continue to be ignored in sex education. When public school sex education is recognized as insufficient and detrimentally binary, some parents turn to children’s books considered progressive as a tool to aid in sex education at home. However, even award-winning children’s books on the subject still impose a gender binary as normal. Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg (2015) is one such highly praised contemporary text (American Library Continue reading “Non-binary Isn’t a Funny Word: Success and Failure in a Contemporary Children’s Health Text”
Insight: McKinnon (2016) “Gender Violence as Global Phenomenon”
Sara L. McKinnon’s (2016) work on the deployment of female genital mutilation rhetoric to enshrine American paternalistic interventionist practices abroad by otherizing foreign governments and continents was fascinating. It was another reminder that we must look inward when attempting to redress human rights violations (McKinnon, 2016). Through the strategic employment of spatializing language, American foreign policy gains a knight in shining armor mythos (McKinnon, 2016). This halo exempts the US government Continue reading “Insight: McKinnon (2016) “Gender Violence as Global Phenomenon””
Insight: Karin Martin (1998) “Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools”
The ethnographic research of Karin Martin (1998) shows how children are molded into gender roles in subtle and overt ways by the school system. I thought these were such interesting theories. If one wanted to ensure a person was subservient, one might make this person feel her body was inherently weaker, in a word, inferior. This applied to an entire class of people could explain the social control imposed on women by way of the encouragement to act “ladylike” and rewarding behavior that is “gender appropriate” in schools. As Martin puts it, “Bodies that clearly delineate gender status facilitate the Continue reading “Insight: Karin Martin (1998) “Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools” “
Gender & Communication: My Model Behavior
I don’t have memories of my mom telling me to act ladylike, but I do have such memories of my grandmother (my abuela). I often went to visit my abuela during Summer breaks in Puerto Rico when I was too young to be on my own the whole Summer. She is a traditional 1950s housewife. She only lets Estée Lauder products touch her body. She lived on an island near the beach her whole life and doesn’t know how to swim. All three of her daughters had curly hair and she forced them to get it chemically straightened, which ruined their curl pattern. She’s practically bald now from having this done to herself. Once when I lamented, after seeing a photo of Continue reading “Gender & Communication: My Model Behavior”
Can Misogynists and Feminists Ever Be Friends?
I wasn’t familiar with the concept of “incels” and incels as a political body until a recent piece (Lanchester, 2018) in The New Yorker mentioned the term in explaining why a particular economist was positing an irresponsible economic theory in describing a terrorist attack by a self-described incel in Toronto.
Continue reading “Can Misogynists and Feminists Ever Be Friends?”
#Fitspo: Health, Privacy, and Instagram
Fitness as a publicly discussed facet of identity is a relatively new phenomenon in pop culture. I attempt to explore the disruption of health and fitness privacy norms by the social media technology Instagram and its role in promoting negative social comparison. I will explain why we should be mindful of the impact of this technology on social comparison, define what social comparison is and the context-relative information norms for this practice, and then show how those norms are affected by Instagram use. I will conclude by exploring the normative value of those effects, and how the technology could be used to motivate better health outcomes for users. Continue reading “#Fitspo: Health, Privacy, and Instagram”
For A Healthier Health Class
I saw an excellent TEDx talk about the nature of feminity and its use as means to safety by Hari Nef, a model, actor, and trans activist. She is a lovely person whose insight is only matched by the grace of its delivery. It made me think about what can be done to evolve our society’s thinking on such subjects. Debates over restroom use by gender non-conforming people in our public schools are especially jarring because such rights are so basic, so essential. If the general public, especially teachers and students, were better informed on basic health education there would be more support for everyone’s rights to bodily autonomy and respect. Here is an exercise in putting my money where my mouth is: a curriculum outline for a healthier health class.
Sad Girls Club
In the age of Trump, an age of unabashed sexism and robust rape culture, doesn’t it behoove us all to try to view the world through a feminist lens? I’ve found that in doing so new light is brought to the disparities in health between men and women. From a view of gender as a social construction, it became clear to me that the discussion of mental illness prevalence among women in the “Report of the Task Force on Women and Depression in Wisconsin” (RTFWDW, 2006/2016) left out an important potential cause: the burden on women of living in a patriarchal society. While I love #sadgirl culture because it’s a kind of acknowledgment and to some extent protest over the continued subjugation of women even in elite, modern American society (one of my favorites is, Melissa Broder‘s writing and tweets @sosadtoday). However, it’s not enough to admit that a lot of women are sad: we must situate it within the patriarchy to legitimize the claim that women are oppressed. It’s obnoxious because the history of women’s health is Continue reading “Sad Girls Club”
Cristina Forever 