Nemo, 12/6

I really enjoyed the class discussion on the Cixous article. We started out the class like every other and then we came to this quote: "Organization by hierarchy makes all conceptual organization subject to man”, at that point Dr. Rog made all of the women in the class talk and all of the men in the class be silent. It was interesting to hear what all of the women in the class had to say on the subject. We discussed how in Legally Blonde one of the characters wanted to petition the change of the term "semester" to "ovester" because she believed that it would help to equalize the power that women have with the power men have. Some of the other things we talked about in class were how men reject everything womanly for example: I was having a conversation over the phone with my guy friend about the Twilight Saga. It wasn't in detail because he had only seen part of the movie but when I continued to discuss it he told me that he would have to watch porn in order to "offset the gayness of this conversation". I found that interesting because he was using sex - in a media form where men usually dominate a woman - to become more masculine. I think its interesting how men think that sex, alcohol, and muscles defines masculinity. Where as feelings, and a sense of style are considered gay or homosexual. Guys that I know often use the phrase "no homo" in conversations where they are saying that a guy they know is a really good friend and understand certain things they are going through. The want to emphasize the fact that they are masculine and are not in any way womanly. We also discussed how women who are driven to succeed and who can stand up for themselves are either considered feminists or independent women and how we want to change that perception.
The men in this class had to write their thoughts down and hand it to a female. The girl could then choose to ignore what they wrote or read it out loud. The majority of the class was held this way but towards the end the girls in the class decided to allow the men to talk the majority of the time but if a female member of the class wanted to say something they could without writing it out loud. At the end of the class one of the men asked "What do you think men could do in order to change how women are treated or regarded as in society". It seemed as though when the men weren't allowed to talk they did not really listen to what the women had to say. This exercise, I believe, was to swap roles and have the women at the top of the hierarchy instead of the men but instead I think that because Dr. Rog told us we had to it wasn't actually a successful exercise simply because the man in power told us we had to.