Did we evolve?

For centuries now, men and woman have been stereotyped, cast into roles and expected to act a certain way to be ‘normal’ in society. Thankfully, it seems to have gotten easier and easier on both genders with the passing years, but there are still stereotypes and ‘rules’ that genders have to follow.

Today, I’m going to say the movie we watched in class was made in the seventies. Just because not much has changed from the 1990s to now. Since the seventies, I don’t think much has really changed in the dominance factor for men and women. Sure, now a days woman can be much more independent and treated equally in the workplace and in schooling, but most people still see woman as the stay at home mothers or the men as the one who make all the decisions and go off to make the money. If a man stayed at home and took care of the kids, most men would call him a wimp, or that he doesn’t wear the pants in the relationship. If a woman goes out to become a dominate person, she could be seen as a jerk, or too demanding.

Even though we have blurred the lines, the line is still there. It takes years for a society to accept changes. There are still expectations for men and woman. Lets take dating for example. Most of the time, it is expected of a male to ask the girl out, to make the decision, to instigate the first kiss and to propose. It is expected the men be dominant in the relationship. Now, I know many woman ask men out, and start the first kiss, even propose. But because society sees it as a male thing, a female who may ask a male out might be seen as a slut, or too dominant.

This dominance issue is still going on today, and I see it everywhere. My mother mostly makes the decisions in my house, and because of it my dad gets made fun of by his friends., even though theres no reason for the teasing.  Men are more dominant in movies and tv shows, as the movie explained, while woman are still seen as the brides.

The only thing society has changed from the time the movie was made until now is the technical terms. Men and woman get treated equally in voting, work, school, government, etc. Woman and men are allowed to go out and get the same job and get the same pay. In work and school there is no gender dominance, because women have proved they could do just as much as men. But socially, the ‘rule’ still shows that people expect men to be more dominant, the bread winners, the decision makers. As I have said before, it takes years for a society to accept equality as a social norm. I still see racial discrimination socially, even though everyone of every race is completely equal and has equal rights. So there is still gender discrimination socially, meaning we still have the gender standards of men being dominant and woman submissive.

Gender Stereotypes

‘Written On The Body’ is a book I normally wouldn’t read, and personally, I didn’t find it all that interesting. The only thing I enjoyed was the fact the narrator’s sex was undetermined through the entire thing. The narrator took very careful thought into what they described the narrator to keep it hard to determine. And, as curious humans in need of answers, most would have a hard time not placing a gender to such a narrator. 

But how can you place a gender to something when there is no real evidence?

I agree with Rubison on how the only evidence people can come up with about the narrator being female are stereotypical traits that we would expect a woman to have. For example, one author writes how the narrator is a female because she likes Louise’s leg stubble. Now, I haven’t met anyone who likes that, but I highly doubt that only a woman could like leg stubble. It is stereotypical, because we have set the stereotypical man character to like smooth, shaved legs. And a man, in a story, who may not mind if his sexual partner has shaved or not may be a strange idea to some readers. But it is a stereotype for a reason. Men can like stubble on legs just as much as a woman could. 

There are two other reason mentioned that the narrator may be female because of the stereotypical traits.  One reason was because the narrator ‘sits down to urinate.’ Now, I won’t go into too much detail with this one, but I’m pretty sure both men and woman (if a man tried hard enough) could sit do urinate. It is stereotypical to believe only woman do this, and therefore it isn’t a valid argument. The last argument is that the author normally doesn’t pick a male main character, and mostly writes lesbian literature. As a writer myself, I understand how tiring it can to continue to write the same thing over and over, whether it be the same genre, same character types etc. People can’t be locked into doing the same thing over and over again, or it becomes like an office job. We get tired of doing the same thing over and over. So what do most people do? They try to spice it up a little, or do something different. Winterson, I believe, was just trying out a different idea from what she usually writes.

Stereotyping is something most people do every single day, and I know we’ve already blogged about this once, but it is a hard habit to break. I couldn’t help myself as I read the book, placing different things the narrator did into stereotypes of male and female. But I believe that this is why Winterson gave us a genderless narrator, to show us that the story can be just as good even if we don’t know the gender of a character. Placing the narrator as a woman or a man would have changed the experience of how we read the book, and would have given us expectations and limits for the narrator.  Without a gender, we can’t place them in the restrictions of stereotypes, and therefore we get an entirely new character and reading experience.

Written On The Body

The narrator of ‘Written On The Body’ talks about a physical ‘secret code’ that can be found on someone’s physical being; A code that can describe to someone the person’s life and what they’ve been through. I like to think of this ‘secret code’ as sort of a first impression we get from people. How others dress and present themselves in public gives off an impression of how that person is like. Such as a man who wears leather jackets and big silver rings on his fingers with ripped up jeans and large muscles. We may see this person as a tough guy, someone who’s imposing and someone we may not want to talk to for fear that he may be rude or mean.

One’s own body can write that person’s identity. I believe this to be half true, but we will get to why later. I’ve never understood why people were so worried about their hair or how they dressed in public until a few years ago. But how a person dresses or does their hair call tell a few things about that person. If their hair is a total rats nest and looks like they haven’t taken a shower in a while, we may assume that person doesn’t care about hygiene or may be just too lazy to fret over this kind of stuff. Does that mean they really don’t care about hygiene? No. But we can’t tell specifically why their hair is a mess, we can only assume.

And that’s where I get to my opinion of it. Sure, we may be able to tell a few things just based on looking at someone, but humans are such complex individuals that we have to realize what we assume about others based off their looks may not be true. Take the ‘tough guy’ I had explained earlier. If you saw this man on the street, most wouldn’t go and talk to him because he’s quite imposing. But what if HE walked up to you, holding a kitten in his arms asking where the nearest veterinary clinic was? Just because someone dresses one way, doesn’t mean that what we assume is true about them. A body can only tell so much about someone.

In a way, our bodies do write our own identities, because how we dress has a big impact on how others see us. They are writing the impression for that person, and causing that person to think if we may be a friendly individual or maybe someone they don’t want to associate with. This is why most people can be self conscious. If someone wanted to show people that they are an athlete, they might wear jerseys and team sweatshirts. Or if they want to dress professionally to give off a professional look, they may dress in a suit or a skirt.

But people like me really don’t tend to care in our day to day lives what we dress like, because we don’t care how people may view us. I don’t wear a dress because I want my body to write me off as a girl who likes to dress up, I wear one because I just feel like it that day.  And even though my body is writing an identity for me, it doesn’t mean it’s correct. 

So in a way, yes. Our bodies write identities for us. But are most of the assumptions people get from the ‘secret code ‘ true? In my opinion no. Its judging a book by its cover, and nothing more.

A Day In The Life Of...

I do believe that a single day is all you need to understand where a person is coming from. And although I have recently found out that I don’t like books that use this method to tell a story, it was definitely an interesting way to get into the characters head.

Using only one day, writers can only focus on the character, and how they carry out the tasks of their day. How they wake up, how they get themselves ready, if they go to work or not. You can tell a lot from a person just by what they do every day as a routine, or what they get from a store. Allowing a reader to follow a character throughout a normal day gives you more insight that you may not get in a normal book that takes place over the course of a few days or so. How characters carry out their days, the little things they do, is completely different from what another person may do. I may wake up and eat breakfast right away, because I’m hungry when I get up while someone else may not eat breakfast at all. 

It also shows you a side of a character you may never get to see. Many mainstream books rarely focus for long on how a character may react. There’s problems to be solved, plots to continue, battles to be won! We can’t sit around and learn how the main character takes his coffee when the villain of the story is raging terror. If you have the book set in the course of a day, there is more time to sit down, and explain how the character reacts to things, why they do what they do. It just doesn’t show that she’s going to the flower shop just to buy flowers for the party. It shows that she doesn’t go there too often, because the conversation she has with the clerk it’s as friends but as consumer to clerk. 

Giving characters a reason on why they do, and giving the reader a closer look on how they react to things can make the reader feel more connected. How we react externally is completely different from how we act in our own heads. We don’t say everything that’s on our mind. By following a character, and seeing both reactions to a situation, we can really grasp what the character is all about, and start to see them as a real person. Some thoughts the characters may have, some experiences they may go through can relate to us, and there for show the character as a true person we can visualize.

I truly  believe that the phrase ‘A day in my shoes’ comes into play with these types of books. Because the reader isn’t just a bystander, watching as the hero goes off to defeat the dragon. They’re actually following in the hero’s normal life, understand who he is and why he does what he does. We may only get a glimpse of that from another book. But with a book that only shows you one day? That’s where we see most of the psychology of the character, And that’s when we can really feel like we know who they are.

What the bible says to me.

Now heres a topic I rarely like to talk about. Not because I’m not comfortable with it or anything, but just because I always feel like I’m walking on ice with others if I say what I feel, or the wrong thing. Homosexuality is up for a huge debate right now, and both sides can be very passionate about it. And, although I have yet to read the bible and decide for myself what the passages mean, from what I’ve heard I have already started to form an opinion about it.

To me, homosexuality is no big deal. Who am I to stand there and say ‘sorry, you two don’t really love each other’ or ‘Men can’t love men, that’s between women and men only.’ I don’t have someone coming up to me and saying ‘Sorry, you can’t do this because you’re a girl’ So why do I have the right to do that to someone else? True, gender and love are different things, but it’s the same concept. Why are people discriminating against homosexuals? Just because they’re different? Just because they listen to a preacher who says that they’re an abomination?

News flash, its 2010. Times have changed. I’m a Christian, and I believe that the bible is an amazing book. But there are passages that wouldn’t make sense in today’s world. Like how we shouldn’t eat crustation or pork. No one follows this anymore.

It really kills me to see the bible being used in ways to prosecute people and cause violent acts of hate. It has been used this way many times before, and I’m afraid this isn’t the end. People use the bible to make their opinions look like a message from Go. I don’t know about you, but when I think ‘god’ I think love and acceptance. I can’t even fathom why the bible says to love everyone, no matter what, but then turn around and say ‘Oh! Except for these people. You can hate them.’ They’re still people aren’t they? They haven’t done anything wrong. They’re just trying to live their normal lives, and love like the rest of us.

And if all these scientific studies are right, and its not a choice, then why discriminate against something they can’t help? I highly doubt people look at homosexuals, and all the pain they go through and say ‘Hey, that’s a good idea. I want to be part of that.’. If it was as simple as choosing, we wouldn’t have so many people dying, committing suicide, etc. If it was a choice, they wouldn’t last through the pain, and would have chosen to go back to being heterosexual. There is no choice.

I don’t think that the bible is against gays. I think it’s all in how you perceive it. People really need to stop following what higher powers say, and actually research this information themselves. Its when they do this, that they form their true opinion on the matter, and not just take it blindly from someone else.

I believe that god loves everyone. I also believe that love has no bounds, and that includes gender. God wouldn’t hate on someone just because they are spreading love around. People just need to learn to be more accepting of each other. 

Happy October everyone =)