Section Two
Before this class I had already had a fairly large background in feminism, but taking a women’s and gender studies class has only enhanced my knowledge of the struggles that women in America (and around the globe) face. Gender as a socially-constructed phenomenon is present throughout our society and reinforced by countless institutions like electoral politics, education, the criminal justice system, and the military. If we look at how gender discrimination presents itself in everyday life we can see that women are often subjected to many sexist microaggressions including, but not limited to, sexist language, “tone policing,” “mansplaining,” and objectification. While isolated these might not seem like a big deal, however if we …show more content…
184), occupational gender segregation (Aulette and Wittner, p. 193), and lack of women in corporate leadership (Aulette and Wittner, p. 187). While women’s lower economic status cannot be simply explained by one factor, we can see how early influences of differential treatment in institutions like education can affect outcomes later in life (Aulette and Wittner, pgs. 142-144). If women are not receiving achieving equal treatment in education compared to men, we cannot expect women to challenge power structures in the …show more content…
411-431). These mages create more portrayals of women that only serve to further display what it means to properly perform gender. Conversely, men’s portrayals in media are becoming more violent. If we examine how these images affect the people watching them we would see that for women, sexualized types of representations can affect their self-esteem (APA). The sexualization of women and girls creates another problem as well. If women become mere sexual objects it begins to normalize other forms of coercive sexual power like harassment or rape. For men, however, we see that as images become more and more violent, men respond according by displaying more physically aggressive characteristics. When violent masculinity is constructed as norm in our society, there a few positive outcomes to see from this. 85% of murders are committed by men; 90% of physical assaults, 95% of domestic assaults; 99% of rapes are committed by men; and 76% of victims of male violence are other men (Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis of Masculinity). We can see that socially-constructed ideas about gender are not only constrictive, they can often be
Before this class I had already had a fairly large background in feminism, but taking a women’s and gender studies class has only enhanced my knowledge of the struggles that women in America (and around the globe) face. Gender as a socially-constructed phenomenon is present throughout our society and reinforced by countless institutions like electoral politics, education, the criminal justice system, and the military. If we look at how gender discrimination presents itself in everyday life we can see that women are often subjected to many sexist microaggressions including, but not limited to, sexist language, “tone policing,” “mansplaining,” and objectification. While isolated these might not seem like a big deal, however if we …show more content…
184), occupational gender segregation (Aulette and Wittner, p. 193), and lack of women in corporate leadership (Aulette and Wittner, p. 187). While women’s lower economic status cannot be simply explained by one factor, we can see how early influences of differential treatment in institutions like education can affect outcomes later in life (Aulette and Wittner, pgs. 142-144). If women are not receiving achieving equal treatment in education compared to men, we cannot expect women to challenge power structures in the …show more content…
411-431). These mages create more portrayals of women that only serve to further display what it means to properly perform gender. Conversely, men’s portrayals in media are becoming more violent. If we examine how these images affect the people watching them we would see that for women, sexualized types of representations can affect their self-esteem (APA). The sexualization of women and girls creates another problem as well. If women become mere sexual objects it begins to normalize other forms of coercive sexual power like harassment or rape. For men, however, we see that as images become more and more violent, men respond according by displaying more physically aggressive characteristics. When violent masculinity is constructed as norm in our society, there a few positive outcomes to see from this. 85% of murders are committed by men; 90% of physical assaults, 95% of domestic assaults; 99% of rapes are committed by men; and 76% of victims of male violence are other men (Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis of Masculinity). We can see that socially-constructed ideas about gender are not only constrictive, they can often be