about how the world treats gender today, and how I might like it to change. The last question on the final asked, “Having taken this course, how would you like to change your process of doing gender in the future?” To clarify, “doing gender” is taking actions which are in some way conforming to the social construct of your given gender.
I’ve been trying to be less about doing gender than doing Tyler. I would like not to have to worry about whether an action is gender appropriate, whether its socially acceptable. I’d rather just be able to live, act, breathe, and do who I am, not who society or gender stereotypes say I ought to be. That’s not to say that I feel overly constricted in my life, but I’d like to be able to admire a flower, write a poem, and be appreciated rather than scoffed. It wasn’t so long ago that poetry was the realm of men, you know. Now, poetry is considered an effeminate thing. In my future of “doing gender” I’d rather not worry so much about it at all. I’d rather just be.
I’ll make it a point to not be so quick to make gender stereotypes myself. It’s tough, having been conditioned for the past 21 years, and continuing to be conditioned every day for the rest of my life. If I’m to expect freedom to act in ways that are not explicitly masculine, I should allow for the same before making judgment calls, either for men doing “women’s” roles or women doing “men’s.” In doing so, I’ll have to become increasingly aware of how I “do gender” and apply gender toward others.
I was really thinking about how this plays out in the blogging world, and as I look down through my Google Reader subscriptions, and out of 34 subscriptions, 8 are males. One of those is my own feed. (No, it’s not narcissism, I just like to know that my feed is working properly.) So, 7 out of 33, roughly 21 percent. That could largely be due to the fact that Rachelskirts is the one who really got me going with this whole blogging gig and introduced me to several of her favorite blogs, but the fact still remains, the majority of my online socialization happens with women. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that my socialization outside of the net also happens to be with women. Most of my really good friends are female, my mentor is female, and while I have lots of guy friends, there are relatively few who I’d consider to be “close.”
How about you? Do you read more blogs by people of the same gender or of the opposite? What would you have be different about social perceptions of gender?
just viewing the latest 20 entries on my livejournal friends page shows that its about 75/25 male/female.
also, I’m not sure how this applies to the rest of the world but it seems that it is much more socially acceptable at anime cons for a female to dress as a male character than it is for a male to dress as a female character. being someone who has 4 costumes and enjoys dressing up when I go to cons, I’d like to be more comfortable with possibly being a female character for once. maybe it’ll never be very ok, even at one of the strangest gatherings of people that anyone will ever attend. maybe too much of the idea from the rest of the country (cross dressing is for homosexuals) seeps into the anime community. I’m sort of rambling here. but my main irk with it all is that it seems ok for females to crossplay but not for males to crossplay.
I find that most of mine are women. I have about 3 or 4 guys on my reader. There just seems to be an abundance of girls. I would love more guys to read!
Well, in the real world, I don’t really do much of any socializing at all. All my friends are in Minneapolis two hours away, and without a car, I don’t get to see them very often. I’ve got maybe three people in this area that I see once or twice every couple of weeks. Two are girls, one’s male. Mostly, though, it’s just me, many books, my Wii, Guitar Hero, and the internet. Which is fine by me.
Online, I think it’s pretty balanced. I spend a lot of time online gathering information, reading news, and watching stuff; actually not a whole lot of time reading many blogs, but those I do read seems an even mix and male and female.
Jake: I see your point, but I have to wonder how many guys I’d really want to see walking around as Faye Valentine or something, you know? Zee Gogglez, zey do nozink! Why don’t you go for it next time? I, for one, think it’d be freaking awesome if you were Kuchiki Rukia or something.
Jamie from Oh! How lovely!: I’d like to have more guy’s blogs, too. Most of the ones that I’ve found are generally focused on one or to main ideas, though, and not really centering around their thoughts, etc. Any suggestions?
Tez: In all honesty, I don’t spent a lot of time socializing with other people outside of time I spend in class. The one thing I do regularly is lunch on Sunday afternoons at one of my professor’s house with a few other students, and we’ve all become pretty good friends, but the rest of my weeks are spent doing homework and frittering away hours online. I talk to a lot of people online, and I read blogs, and I twitter, which is pretty virtually social, I guess.
In the “offline” world, I obviously hang out with mostly guys. An entire dorm floor of them. This is partly because all girls annoy me and partly because LeTourneau girls are (mostly) crazy. Online, however, I read a lot of blogs by women, possibly because I went to the BlogHer Conference and was showered with URLs to mommy blogs. Actually, the truth is that I have a hard time finding well-written blogs by guys. Even if I do come across one that has decent grammar, the content is usually boring (and often political or tech-related). I’m about 50/50 when it comes to Twitter.
I think women have been writing journals and diaries for ages, even before blogging, and they seem to be better and more comfortable talking about emotion — so they are usually more interesting as bloggers. I agree with rachelskirts… most male bloggers don’t reveal too much about themselves and are too jokey, or just talk about issues. I mostly read women because of that, although I am very excited when I come across a good writer who is a male.
Best of luck!
I would like to be able to be a paramedic or a fire fighter without having people scoff at me for wanting to do a “mans” job. (They could just be laughing though because I’m extremely petite and rather weak).
Most of the blogs that I read are females. I don’t know why…it’s strange, really. I suppose this is because most male blogs I stumble across contain lots of posts on sports. It’s rare that I find a good blog written by a male only because of what I like to read. I’m not into sports, but I love posts that make you think about anything from life to love to friends. When I do find a male blogger that I like though, he instantly goes into my feeds :D
Hey- it’s great to hear that you’re doing so well post surgery. It’s a bear of a recovery, that whole, making the neck work again business, but that’s awesome that it’s given you such good results. Mine was amazing until I went back to work. And the theory is that I’ve been overdoing it because I have a new kind of headache (kind of like paying a kid to stop punching you in the face and a few minutes later someone starts kicking you in the ass), but even still, to have that chiari pain gone is huuuuuge a relief.
I hope things continue to go well for you and I’ll certainly continue reading. Best of luck!