Difference that makes a difference

In the conclusion of chapter 8 of Tong's Feminist Thought, she shares a qoute from Christine di Stephano.  I love this quote pertaining to gender.

"Gender is basic in ways we have yet to fully understand,...it functions as a 'difference that makes a difference,' even as it can no longer claim the legitimating mantle of the difference..."

I think this is the best way I will understand and remember about gender from this course.

Care-Focused Feminism

Chapter 5 of Tong's Feminist Thought is about care-focused feminism.  The first few sections are about the morals of women.  Nodding's and Gilligan's theory was that men and women think differently about moral decisions.  Woman tend to think about others wants and men think about justice and fairness.  Then there are the critics who say that men and women approach moral decisions simalarly.  This is like the question of biology determining gender roles.  One side says that we are a little different biologically, but thats ok; the other side says we are the same until culture influences us.  There seem to be two be many approaches to feminism and that they fight each other more often than for the same thing.

different and equal vs. the same and equal

"Better than I am"

Someone that I sometimes think about is a person named Holly Mangold.  She is a girl from Ohio who's loves football.  She plays and her dream is to go pro.  She has the strength and size but many people say she is too slow.  Do you think a woman should be allowed to play in the NFL?  Here is the link from the today show.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/20583116/

thoughts?

I think this really relates to the point Hubbard was trying to make in that reading.  She argued that men and women are mostly the same athletically.  This is a good exapmle: Holly can squat more than I ever could as a football player and my best bench press was about the same.  She is stronger than I am and the article says she could be attracting college scouts.

Dependency

What do women feel about spousal dependency?  I am sure there are different opinions but a wife's dependency on a husband, is it a thing of the past?  In her book, Tong has a quotation section where a woman is describing her dependency on her husband as painful.  I think an independant woman is great but will this create a new type of marriage?

Catfight!

In class today I got a funny image when we talked about physical fights between two women.  If that happens it becomes like a spectator sport.  No one really intervines when there might be a serious injury.  I remember seeing a video of two girls in a nasty fight and being like wow this is enertaining.  I also said in class that if that fight happened between two men, I would have attempeted to seperate them because I took the probability of injury seriously.

Social Change

Today in class we talked about social change. One thing that I thought was interesting is the statement that to make a social change, men just take action.  For women to get social change, they have to start a movement and in the end it will most likely be a man who decides to make the change.

Valenti

I think Valenti, in chapter 1, wrote a nice argumentative piece by explaining that any woman can be a feminist and it is more about being for equality than dominance or being an extremist.  Feminism has seemingly become a bad thing and to be honest I have viewed it as a bad thing in the past.  I not sure that every woman is a feminist, but if it wasn't for the stereotype then there would be more self-proclaimed feminists.

Criticism

After that stimulating discussion on Thursday there is one thing that I thought of after looking at the boxes and participating in discussion.  The one thing is that women seem to be much more scrutinized and criticized in our culture.  Women seem to be held to a higher standard of physical appearance among other things.  I know to not be critical of anyone (although I really need to be better at it) and I really appreciate constructive criticism but looking at the media's view of an ideal woman, it is not constructive at all.