blog 2

I interviewed my mother about her experience with gender. She spoke of title 9 and how she remembered when she was in college it was implemented to try and finally make education and sports equal for men and women. My mother believed this was a good step in the right direction to discourage discrimination against women when it came to athletics. She had always been very athletic and played various sports during high school including volleyball, basketball, tennis and softball. Still an avid tennis player, she said she was always pleased to see me playing sports in high school because it “shows that women are slowly progressing in society”. She said she still believes there are many problems with title nine because if you look at any college, the men’s sports still get more money and have more fans than women because our society still values male dominated sports such as football.
She talked about how hard it was to find my father because most men are into “girly girls” who dance and cheer. It is annoying to her how just because a women plays sports doesn’t mean that see is homosexual or unfeminine. When I asked her what feminism meant to her, she said it is simply the idea that women should have equal rights as men and should be valued more in society both inside and outside the home. She was born in the late 1950’s and grew up through the 1960’s seeing all the protests and bra burners!
I have never actually had an experience where I felt extremely conscious of my gender but I do find myself in little everyday situations where I feel conscious of being a girl. I notice when I go to parties and all of the guys talk about sports and things I feel like I don’t really fit in. Every morning I find it annoying that I have to put on makeup and dress cute because if I don’t then guys won’t notice me. As a girl, we spend all of our time at parties waiting on a guy to come up and talk to us.
As far as the reading in the book The F Word, I think they are pretty interesting. I find the philosophy behind the third wave of feminism intriguing because it doesn’t deal with radically changing laws and taking political action but rather changing the culture and how people view women. I agree that women should not feel obligated to be in the home or in the workplace but rather wherever they feel happiest. Each women finds different things the be empowering and satisfying and the new wave is about harnessing that passion for whatever the individual feels is best for themselves. Feminism is now defined by the individual. I think men are now more open minded to discussing feminist issues and help change how culture views a woman’s role in society. The issues have shifted from equality within law to concerns about child care, sex education, reproductive rights, and gender inequality.