Week One
My name is Corrie and I am a sociology major in my last semester at the U. I also am a GWSS minor. After 4 years at this university and 2 years in Gender Studies classes, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on power, gender and their implications in everday life. Gender, in my opinion, represents a category that we have wrongly assumed to be innate, natural and unchanging throughout history. Gender, in reality, is nothing more than a performance, an act that we do to communicate to others our desired sex and is most definitely connected to sexuality and institutional structures of power. Gender and power are inextricably linked. Becacuse gender is a category, it is often used to create a binary: i.e. male, female which has been used to control social groups for years. Men as strong, logical, breadwinners and women as emotional caretakers. These binaries are enforced in everyday situations such as the clothes we wear, the bathrooms we use, and the division of labor at the workplace and at home. We further enforce or subvert these binaries in our daily interactions with eachother and institutions such as the U in which we can discuss them further. I look forward to doing that with all of you this semester!