For some people, the hardest part about this post assignment may have been trying to figure out what exactly they want to take a picture of, for me it was this and figuring out how to get the darn picture onto the this blog page. After thinking long and hard, I decided to use a picture of my pet Shih Tzu, Brownie, that I snapped a while back. As we have been discussing gender roles and gender typing in class, I would like the readers to guess the gender of my dog and why you think the dog is a he or she.
Although deciding which picture to use was difficult, taking the picture was easy. I came home from my 8:00pm class a few weeks ago and there the dog was, running around, with a cute little bow on it’s forehead to hold up the bangs that was blocking it’s eyes. It was just so cute that I had to take a picture, who would have known that it would come into use. However, loading the picture from the camera into my laptop so I can upload it onto this page was a difficult and frustrating task. I felt very technologically ignorant during this process. For some reason I thought that I had to eject the memory card and stick it into a computer outlet. So I ejected the memory card, but could not find a place on my laptop to put it into! I seriously looked like a cave woman trying to figure out what the heck this metal and plastic device of a thing was while I was looking in every corner of my laptop for a outlet to fit the memory card, especially since it was about 6am in the morning and my hair had been ruffled and tangled by sleep. And then it hit me, that’s right, it took almost a whole 5 minutes for me to figure out that I needed a USB wire, that came with the camera, to connect the camera to the computer so I can load the pictures onto my computer in order for me to upload it onto this blog. So now, after my long frustrating work, there is a picture or my dog on the top of this blog entry.
As I have mentioned in the first paragraph, our class has been discussing gender roles and gender stereotypes and various other types of grouping in class. Looking at the picture, many of people, including myself, would conclude that the dog is a she because of the bow. This bow has been socially constructed to symbolize “female” or “girl” accessories, generally used by “girls”. The fact that the bow is blue may suggest that the owner likes blue or that the owner of the dog does not want the dog to be too feminine, thus, it has a bow, but in a slightly more masculine color, so it’s not a sissy dog. According to stereotyping and generalization, then, one would assume that the dog is a girl. This would not be a wrong assumption if all stereotype and generalizations were true, however since we know that stereotypes and generalizations can be wrong, this can also be false. How then can you distinguish the sex of the dog? Another type of grouping the dog into the binary gender system people has created is by the name. Well, the dog’s name is Brownie. This is a fairly gender neutral name, like Bailey, Kelly and Gene. Thus, what does one do when all the characteristics in which society as constructed as “female” or “male” seems neutral or is ambiguous?
As negative and isolating it may be for us, socially driven creatures, to distinguish and group people, does it not make life more convenient to do so. For example, you would not have to wonder whether Brownie is a boy or girl.Sometimes grouping people can be dangerous, especially in cases which grouping is done with the intention of victimizing people, as Rick as mentioned in class. However, grouping also organizes life and helps society advance, generalizing and assigning certain characteristics to certain gender helps people interact with other because in reality, we don’t have time to go around asking people, what is your gender or are you boy or girl. But then, if we don’t have a system of genderdizing or grouping people, we would not have to ask such questions. Would this be a better life style? Would such world be more “equal”? Or are conflict, tension, difference and hierarchy inevitable elements among social creatures? I am not sure what the world be like if there were no set or shared symbols and grouping. I would imagine life would be very difficult, how would traffic be?! Would we even progress this far? For those who are still reading this post, Brownie is a boy.
2 comments:
When I was reading your post it reminded me of the movie Legally Blonde and how the main character, Elle Woods had a Chihuahua named Bruiser. Initially, when I first saw pictures from the movie I thought the dog was a girl because it was dressed up in pink and sitting in a pink purse. When I found out that the dog was named Bruiser, I thought that it was an unusual name for a girl; but it made sense once I realized that the dog was really a boy. A lot of people, including myself will automatically assign gender roles without even noticing. I don’t mean to offend anyone by assuming, it has just become a habit.
Polly raises a good point: gender roles are really no more than rigid "habits"—and habits that we've come to believe have some quality of 'truth' or ease. We don't need to see stereotypes as 'right' or 'wrong', but just to see them as stereotypes: limited ways of interacting with the world. It's not that generalizing necessarily victimizes people, but just that it tends to *limit* our ability to think about specific cases (rather than generalities). Sure, it may seem 'easier' and 'time saving' to make generalities—but this may be a symptom of broader cultural trends to accelerate and speed through situations rather than taking the time to meet people on what are *truly* their own terms. It is strange to me that in the society of the 'individual' we so often prefer to see people as inextricable from inflexible groups.
I like your second paragraph on the labor of uploading the digital image; your description is lively and humorous, but with a good point: fumbling with technologies exposes us as cave people!
Post a Comment