Ron Burgundy, 12/3

I found our final class to be extremely interesting and also somewhat frustrating. The exercise where only the women were able to talk demonstrating the dominance of masculine qualities of speech, proved to reveal several concerns of our feminist generation. Foremost, the women of the class seemed to be concerned with equality, specifically in the work and academic atmosphere. Several girls in the class felt that women were still often believed to be out of place in a successful business atmosphere, only able to "play with the big boys" but not supersede them. Many girls also thought that independent women were still frowned upon and considered to often be less feminine solely because of their career oriented focus. I found it interesting that as these concerns were brought up none of the men in the class had anything to say about them. Even though it was a bit more difficult for them to "voice" their opinions because they had to write them, I still felt that if they felt compelled at all to speak they would have done so. Therefore, it seems as though these issues that women are raising still may not be getting the attention and recognition that they deserve as represented in this experiment. I'm also concerned though at the effect that these types of exercises are having on women as a whole. I feel that in several of my classes similar types of experiments have taken place where women were the only ones allowed to speak and share their views. This leads to discussion of issues that are concerning them and often reveals alot about what are the leading concerns for females and often can be very helpful and insightful. However, because of the framing of these types of situations I wonder if these exercises are also perpetuating a sort of idea that women are only able to voice these types of concerns in these particular types of environments. Do these exercises discourage women to speak freely all the time? Just a thought.