So what now

So what do I do now. Now that I've learned all about women repression, now that I have learned that the small gestures, the worlds we use, the work place, our media, my day to day interaction are all chock full of gender. In an article by Frye she writes that even a man opening a door for a woman is a symbol of oppression. She really gets at the heart of it when she writes that elderly or weak men will open a door for a perfectly able bodied woman. This is not chivalry or courtesy it is the show that women are so weak that men have to do this small task for them. But in the end when it comes to helping women in the laundry, the dishes, or more important things such as rights to equal pay they will not. I feel for the boys in our class because we always genderalize. Yes that was on purpose. Genderalize. Men are......Women are......  I feel like this class is about realizing that we cant say that. Well, we can say that but it is not correct to. We are people, even if we are male or if we are female we should not have such specific niches that we fit into. This takes me back to the discussion on transgender. In the perfect world we would not about people as male or female, we would use their names. Characteristics other than gender would identify a person. But the truth is, is that gender is an easy to way to identify someone. A clean fifty-fifty swipe of people to choose from. We know that this fifty-fifty is not clear cut because it includes transgender people as well. Just from writing this last blog I can see that gender and conflict class has got me to think about what I have assumed to be "just how things are". thank goodness.