Gender 2000 Paper #2: Introspective Analysis and Self-Assessment
"Society [is] a house with rooms and corridors in which passage from one to another is dangerous. Danger lies in transitional states, simply because transition is neither one state nor the next[;] it is undefinable. The person who must pass from one to another is herself [or himself] in danger and emanates danger to others." -Mary Douglas, from Purity and Danger
"One could mention . . . all those social controls, cropping up at the end of the last century, which screened the sexuality of couples, parents and children, dangerous and endangered adolescents-undertaking to protect, separate, and forewarn, signaling perils everywhere, awakening people's attention, calling for diagnoses, piling up reports, organizing therapies. These sites radiated discourses aimed at sex, intensifying people's awareness of it as a constant danger, and this in turn created a further incentive to talk about it." -Michel Foucault, from 1987:30-31
With these words Douglas and Foucault alert us to the possibility that talk about sex and gender may signal not simply the liberation of modern man and woman from Victorian repression and hypocrisy but an expansion and diffusion of gender/sexual social controls. The devastating political consequences that now follow from journalistic revelations of gender/sexual "misconduct"-revelations that a few years ago would have been considered not only taboo, but even irrelevant to the evaluation of competence for political office-are only the most obvious examples of the power, as well as the pervasiveness, of gender/sexual discourse in contemporary industrialized society. As another example, for the past twenty years in the United States, single adolescent women have been a principal target of sexual knowledge and intervention. Teenage pregnancy emerged, publicly funded contraceptive services, and abortion was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Virtually every moral, social, and medical philosophy of and cure for gender/sex relations
has been incorporated into organized programs for prevention or amelioration. You have
been studying the history of gender relations and our question for you is what do
you think about all of this? We have read the thoughts of others, yet we want to
know yours.
Writing prompt: Using an introspective approach (looking inside yourself) to understanding gender and gender relations, write a full and complete essay persuading us that you have learned something in this course. How has what you have learned in this course changed the way you think? You may cite passages from your journal writings, readings, notes, or textbooks to support this change of your opinion. How will you be different and behave differently, having had this course? You may address issues or events that we covered in class, but remember that we are most interested in what you feel and believe, and why.
In this essay, please demonstrate and offer proof in some form that, having had this course, you are now able to:
1. Understand the development of gender norms, identities, and roles as they are shaped by historical, political and social factors, such as the representation of men and women in film, literature, music, popular media, and visual art.
2. Communicate knowledge concerning the history, contributions, and achievements of women throughout Western civilization and the world.
3. Understand the impact that gender--and to a lesser extent, race, social class, and age--has had, has, and will continue to have on women's (and men's) experiences.
4. Show, via an interdisciplinary approach, relationships of theories and research in fields such as (but not limited to) the arts, biology, business, communication (and language) studies, literature, psychology, and sociology.
5. Consider your own life, as either male or female, in light of these perspectives and to think critically on topics such as cultural and political values and norms.
Please turn this in to me at A-314 or e-mail it to me by 9 December 2002.