Topic: Gender and Communication
Source: My observations took place during the week my family visited Arcata.
Relation: Dana lectured on gender and communication this week and we discussed jokes in class that had to do with gender policing and communication.
I observed examples of:
1) gender policing- occurs when we fail to represent the assigned gender.
2) essentialism- defying someone by a set of characteristics.
Description:
My cousin and her two children came to visit me from Reno Nevada. My cousin's daughter, Rogue, is four years old and her son, Axel, is one year old. I spent a week with them, showing them around arcata and Humboldt State University. While watching rogue through out the week, I realized that she was learning to take on and think according to gender roles. I heard Rogue tell her mother "Look mom, Axel's a girl now" as she put her pink sunglasses on her little brother's head. Rogue often would say things like: "I get the one with flowers because I am a girl" that demonstrated how she was beginning to view material objects as associated with gender. I found it very interesting how often Rogue's decisions were made based on the gender roles she felt she should fit into.
Commentary:
Rogue said that Axel was a girl, because of the color of the sunglasses. The color pink has been assigned to females. Rogue was raised in a culture that assigned pink to females, and so she now follows those assignments. This was an example of Rogue defining essentialism. She was defining Axel due to a characteristic; such as the color pink.
No comments:
Post a Comment