Reference no: EM133305337

Assignment:

1. Education is a gendered institution governed by norms and policies and that the salience of gender often ebbs and flows across different contexts, activities, and spaces. Consider the particular organization in which you are now embedded: college. Brainstorm the ways in which your college or university-both the formal process of education and residence life and the social life both on and off campus-is governed by gendered norms and policies. How is your college experience gendered, if at all? Brainstorm both norms and policies. Where is gender more salient? Less? How so? And why do you think that is? How does this shape your experiences?

2. How comfortable would you be if everyone used the same multi-stall public bathroom? Brainstorm a list of all the concerns people might have. What assumptions about men or women make segregated bathrooms seem necessary or preferable? What gendered activities and assumptions do gender binary facilities protect? What realities make integrated bathrooms seem like a bad idea? Have you ever used the "wrong" bathroom? How did people react? What accounts do you think work well? Where does the discomfort come from? What would need to happen for this discomfort to ease? Or would this be impossible?

3. The text book suggests that "traditional marriage" is a loaded phrase. Discuss: What do people usually mean when they use the phrase? Is that type of marriage, in fact, traditional? By what measure? Did marriages at the time of the idealized "traditional marriage," in fact, live up to the ideal? Could you argue that other marital practices are more or equally traditional? Which ones and how so? What makes a marriage "traditional" versus "modern"? What is at stake in the public conversation about "traditional marriage"?

4. Scholars have argued that the historical pressure to say no to sex has been replaced by a new pressure to say yes. In your experience, is this true? At what age does it begin? How does this imperative manifest itself? Does it apply to everyone equally? What does it feel like? How do students navigate this new imperative? Is it better or worse than the pressure to say no? If this isn't sexual liberation, what would liberation look like?

5. This unit introduces many now common ideas or practices: separate spheres, homosexuality as an identity, the gendered love/sex binary, the sexual double standard and the good girl/bad girl dichotomy, men's treating of women, the importance of female beauty, the breadwinner/housewife marriage, partnership marriage, the norm of premarital sex, and the idea of the marriage-averse playboy. Choose at least two of these common ideas or pratices and answer each of the following questions for each idea/practice. What was life like before this was a common idea or practice? What changed to allow this idea or practice to emerge? What were the ideological shifts that enabled it? What were the economic changes, technological innovations, medical advances, political changes, and/or other types of shifts that allowed it? Is this idea or practice still common in your social circles? Why or why not?

6. What examples of rape culture have you seen in your lifetime? Provide at least one example. How can we transform rape culture into a culture of consent? Why is this important?