Gender All Around

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2008

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Living on a college campus 9months out of the year you are abruptly reminded of how the "real world" is on your short visits home. This weekend I went back home for the first time sense I started taking this women's studies class, and while reading the assign articles the truth was apparent. It seem like a lesson in you might have in an after school special. Almost everything that I read, I was confronted with heads on. Maybe this is always the case and I never realized the constant "doing gender" reading 18 spoke of. First I'm reminded of my friend I visited who recently had a baby. After telling my mother the news of my old school friend's recent delivery, I couldn't end fast enough before she ask "what is it" in mono-tone. Not until she knew it was a boy could she put emotion into her words.

The baby X story rang aloud in my head, what if I challenged my mother by saying why? She would probably think the sex is mandatory knowledge, and what my problem. While at my friends home I realized I myself had become a gender constructer, bad thing is I had read the manipulating effects this has on a child. I said hey "buddy" and when he began to cry change my voice to a deeper tone suggesting be tough. Me, I had a sexist practices with a baby 2 weeks old. Has I stared down at his blue snowsuit I at that very moment decided to make a conscious effort to treat a baby like a baby. So may be my child won't have the photo copied story beginning as did "Your life as a Girl", they'll be "Life as Taylor". (Hint: name unisex)