Welcome - Our first entry!

For me the most interesting topic in Gendered Lives so far has been, well obviously gender. More specifically, the difference between sex and gender is what caught my attention. Even though this difference was covered in both my PSYC 100 and PSYC 211 classes I guess I didn’t quite fully grasp the concept. I did cognitively understand the difference, but it wasn’t until reading about femininity and masculinity and how in some cultures there are more than two genders that I feel I developed a more complete and open understanding or gender.

Perhaps the most important new understanding I feel I have developed about the topic of gender is that it doesn’t have to be simply male or female with a distinct line drawn in between the two. Rather, gender seems to be best explained as being on a continuum of sorts in which the most masculine or traits is at one end and the most feminine at the other with all sorts of unique combinations and identities throughout the middle.

Of course characterizing traits as either masculine or feminine also brings about another topic, and that is how each gender is expected to be represented according to our society, our patriarchic society. What I find most unsettling and still unanswered at this point in time is, how our society and basically the majority of societies today became patriarchic. What originally happened that allowed men to claim superiority over women? Logic would suggest physical strength, accounting for strength being a masculine trait, weakness a feminine trait, and I can only guess that gender/sex specific roles followed. Perhaps, I will soon find my lingering questions answered in the days and reading to come.