Rose Perkins: Gender Reading (Outside Reading)

     This semester I am also taking the Intro to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies class. Earlier in the semester we had a reading from the book titled Gender and Women's Studies edited by Margaret Hobbs and Carla Rice. Our reading was specifically Chapter 10: The Question of Gender, written by Raewyn Connell and Rebecca Pearse. This article discusses gender and gender codes in society and talks about the way gender is developed, both internally and externally. 

    There is one statement from the article that stuck out to me as relating to this class. It states, "Being a man or a women, then, is not a pre-determined state. It is a becoming, a condition actively under construction." A little while back we were having a class discussion where this same term was used, a "becoming." We as humans are always in a state of becoming, especially within our interior and exterior journeys. On interior journeys and hero's journeys, an individual is transformed. They grow. They are becoming, and they become. In this way, forming a gender identity and gender expression is its own journey. As I have previously discussed in another post, since identity is a form of interior journey, gender is the same way. Though our society has formed its own gender standards and norms, gender is still unique for everyone. Every person can decide how they identify, how masculine or feminine they would like to be, and how they express themselves and their gender. In turn, this creates and changes the societal norms, transforming them to fit with the standard of the people. This is why society as a whole is constantly on a transformative journey surrounding gender, and society is constantly becoming. This also goes for each individual who forms their own unique perception of gender. They are becoming and constructing it as well. 

    I thought it was interesting to be able to relate a class on completely different subject matter to our class on this deep a level. The wording being the exact same formed a connection within my mind and I thought it was interesting and wanted to discuss it. It shows that the ideas that we discuss in this class can be connected to many forms of outside media and reading. 

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