When I Was Growing Up By Nellie Wong

I found this reading selection pretty alarming. It was sad that the writer Nellie Wong wanted to be white so badly and seemed to view white people as superior to herself and her culture. The writer seemed embarrassed by her dark skin color when compared to the white version of beauty that she aspires to. The apparent self-loathing of the narrator is disturbing as she perceives herself in the piece as dirty, feels ashamed of her own cultural heritage and foreign within her own skin. The writer also seemed to be lost and frustrated by the lack of any role models or prominent people in the popular culture that looked like her. In the end, this reading leaves you feeling sad for the author who evidently grew up feeling very uncomfortable with who she was.

Multicultural and Global Feminism

When reading the book Feminist Though by Rosemary Putnam Tong , it was interesting to hear about all the different types of feminism that exist. When you think feminist you don't necessarily think of all the different categories of feminism that may exist. The section on Multicultural feminism was superficial. It did not go into enough detail in my opinion. It did not talk at all about Hispanic/Latina feminism which I found to be a significant omission being that Hispanics are the largest minority group in the U.S. Based on this fact, it would have been good to have at least a page or two on the subject. The book also did not address the issues faced by bi-racial or bi-cultural feminists, which may be different than the issues faced by people of only one culture or race.

One section of the Global feminism chapter that I found interesting was the quote by Nawal el Saadawi "Western women often go to countries such as Sudan and 'see' only clitoridectomy, but never notice the role of multinational corporations and their exploited labor." Basically, the author talks about how we recognize other people's oppression of women, bot not how indirectly we oppress omen by support for certain multinational corporations. This made me think of how much damage we can do to the world through our shopping.

"Men as Gendered Beings"

I strongly agree with Michael S. Kimmel's and Michael A. Messner's theory in "Men as Gendered Beings", that people are not conscious of those things or circumstances that give them an edge, place them at an advantage, compared to the rest of the group. The example that they give is of two women having a discussion about sex and gender, in which the caucasian women says that when she looks at herself in a mirror she sees a woman, while the African American woman says that when she looks at herself in a mirror she sees a black women. This example shows the hierachy of societal and personal factors affecting our values and perspectives.

In the example the race- "black" comes before gender- "woman"(female). So for a female that is poor and black the hierarchy may be, in my opinion, first-Class,second-Race, and third-Gender. This may explain why African Americans are voting in such large numbers for Barack Obama and why it has been easier for Obama to make inroads in the group of caucasian voters. The caucasian voters are less likely to add into their hierarchy a race category because for most of them (except white racists) race is invisible, so they have no loyalties to weigh in the decision with regards to voting for a caucasian women and African American male.

With regards to class I put it first, although I do not believe it will be first in all circumstances. The closer you are to middle class, the more likely that the of class will become invisible in your hierarchy of issues affecting your perspective of things.

"The Five Sexes" by Anne Fausto-Sterling

I found the article "The Five Sexes" by Anne Fausto-Sterling very interesting. I only knew about male, female and hermaphrodites, and not about the two other categories mentioned in the article. It seems that the author is uncomfortable with parents or guardians making a choice early on in the hermaphrodites' lives to seek treatment for them to fit them into the two gender category established by society, but at the end of the article the author recognizes the difficulties that the hermaphrodite may face growing up in a society dominated by the perspective of two genders, the sense of isolation and perhaps the ridicule and suspicion these people will have to face. This reminds me of people that have to go through life having a mental condition. Although some people need to be medicated, if we medicate everyone who is different we will have a very boring society. There is no acceptance of "neurological diversity" in this society, and although parents could decide to medicate the person early in life and change his/her personality for the future, they may decide to let the person face society as he/she is. But the truth is that society is not ready to deal with people that are significantly different. For society the concept of freaks is alive and well. There is no easy choice, change the person early on, or let them decide after facing harsh treatment by society ? The author favors the alternative of letting the subject face society as the subject was born, but recognizes the pain and courage the subject and the parents will have to have if pursuing this alternative.

Meaning of Peace

After reading the selection "Women and Peace: The Meaning of Peace for Women" by Brigit Brock, I was left kind of confused with all the definitions and categories for classification of peace definitions. It was almost like reading a Math book on matrix. The reading was hard because it was a lot of information in just a few pages. I had to read it three times but by the last reading I realized that the real meaning of peace is at the individual level. The author divides the peace definitions into macro level- society or groups, and micro level- at the personal individual level. I believe that to achieve peace you have to make peace at at the personal level. Individuals are the basic elements of society. The societal structures, the "organized" actions or reactions are decided and executed by individuals, acting alone or collectively, but it is at the individual level- the basic unit of the macro, where the changes in beliefs and behavior have to occur.

Biology Does Not Determine Gender Roles

I agree with Ruth Hubbard that biology does not determine gender roles, as the author indicates "... our biological and social attributes are related dialectically ( that is, they act on one another in producing an outcome.)" The part that I was very interested in, and very surprised about the statistics, was the paragraph in which the author talks about physical strength and gives the example about the Boston marathon, and how in twenty years women have improved their performance by running the same distance about one hour faster than when they initially started running the marathon, but that men's performance has improved only 15 minutes since 1908.

That segment made me think about the recent scandals in which athletes have lost their medals and records because they have been using anabolic steroids to artificially improve their performance. I wonder if the statistics that some scientists have been relying on to prove that men are better performers than women in some sports have been biased because of men using these types of substances. I know some high performance female athletes have been using them too, but based on the news coverage it seems that it is more prevalent in men. An aspect that she did not cover in the "Physical Strength" section is the fact that in sports women and men do not play together in the same leagues or play together on the same teams. The biological and social rationale behind this could have been explored by the author as an example of the biological and social interaction that creates gender roles.