Gender, LGBT stuff and classes
Jan. 21st, 2009 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athenaltenaIn my Philosophy of Race and Gender class we seem to have designated our That Guy, by which I mean the (usually) male member of the class who Just. Doesn't. Get it.
We're still trying to define just what gender is, and That Guy said something to the effect of "Well, it's your chromosomes and your genitalia and your sexual orientation..." at which point I stood up and practically yelled "GENDER HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SEXUAL ORIENTATION!" Oy.
I also sit next to a girl who is also in my Sex and Society class, and she's admitted to having difficulty figuring out the whole concept of gender since she thinks in black and white terms. I've tried to help her out with it, but I know it's difficult given that it challenges what we've been taught since the day we were born. It was actually pretty funny when we had to put definitions of gender up on the board, since you could tell which one was mine since it used the word "norm" in it. Yeah, sociology major I am.
I also have to give a nod to Professor Lori Rosenberg, who teaches my Sex and Society class, who when we broke up into discussion groups said "be respectful and don't assume heterosexuality." Thank you Lori! That same discussion brought up something that I've thought about on occasion, which is that LGBT people don't really have the template (or "script") for romantic relationships that heterosexual people do, so a lot of it is making it up as we go along. It produces some interesting results.
We're still trying to define just what gender is, and That Guy said something to the effect of "Well, it's your chromosomes and your genitalia and your sexual orientation..." at which point I stood up and practically yelled "GENDER HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SEXUAL ORIENTATION!" Oy.
I also sit next to a girl who is also in my Sex and Society class, and she's admitted to having difficulty figuring out the whole concept of gender since she thinks in black and white terms. I've tried to help her out with it, but I know it's difficult given that it challenges what we've been taught since the day we were born. It was actually pretty funny when we had to put definitions of gender up on the board, since you could tell which one was mine since it used the word "norm" in it. Yeah, sociology major I am.
I also have to give a nod to Professor Lori Rosenberg, who teaches my Sex and Society class, who when we broke up into discussion groups said "be respectful and don't assume heterosexuality." Thank you Lori! That same discussion brought up something that I've thought about on occasion, which is that LGBT people don't really have the template (or "script") for romantic relationships that heterosexual people do, so a lot of it is making it up as we go along. It produces some interesting results.
