Final Blogging
What would I do with gender and power in my everyday life? Well I’ve already started on gender. One thing I do now is not to label people by two genders only as I have learned from many writers. They have taught me the many genders that exist. I just felt to uncomfortable just labeling people by either being a female or a male, after know all this. A transgender is a transgender, a male is a male, a female is a female, etc. Before this class I had only seen two genders now I see many more. However, I still feel uncomfortable labeling people so I’ll stick to calling people, people and let them tell me what they would like me to call them.
Power, however, will always be hard to get by. A lot of people struggle with power, even men. I don’t know quite how, I’m not a man so I wouldn’t know. All I know is that men have more power than women, but that is only if they let the men have more power. I say this because in my Hmong culture, even though our gender power are very uneven, I see that when certain things happen the women does gain a lot of power over the men. I have seen older women stand up against their husband and fight back when their husbands cheat on them. Usually or back then wives would not say anything because it was not abnormal for a man to marry a second wife. I don’t know the influence, but I like it. So I want to do the same thing. I want to be able to show young girls that yes they can follow the cultural rules, but they can also bend it so it fits equally between men and women. One thing that I have tried to show men in my culture is that girls can go hunting like them and shoot something if they want to like them. I did this, but never expected for so many of them supporting me. They smiled and complimented me. That was my first step. My next step is showing men in my culture that women can live independently successfully and still have children. Some or most men in my culture, especially the older generation, believe that we depend on them for support and children. Well one of my sister has proved them wrong and some are proud, but some old men would try to hit on her thinking she is a desperate divorcée. Well I want to be a part of those independent women. I want to show them that women can do whatever they like and be happy without a husband. And if they want children they could adopt those that need them as much as they need them. I want to show them that I can follow the culture and also do what I like even if it goes against some of their beliefs.