Gender and such… random ramblings and semi-reading response

This is going to be an ecclectic mish-mash of words, so bear with me… please

I think that by giving women and men specific gender roles influences our way of thinking so that it is almost impossible to judge these kinds of readings without bringing something to the table so to speak. I think I agree (if I understand DeLaurentis’ point) with the fact that we are a a culture of dichotomy where we MUST separate things into parts for ease of comprehension. The gender duality where there is only MALE or FEMALE but nothing in between (for goodness sake, even Kinsey has a scale of sexuality!) is particularly interesting in that it confines to two genders only. Even the ancient Egyptians had “neter”, there are the Romans who have a special “neutral” form built in to Latin, and the Hijra of India (not sure I spelled that right). So, I guess what the readings were saying is that in order to understand the technology, one must first address the issue of defining gender. We assume that we know, because of our experiences what gender is, but it isn’t nearly as obvious as it could be.

I would also like to mention that being feminist seems to be a “dirty word” now. Why do you think that is? I was reading these articles, and felt vaguely guilty about it. I know I used to say “I’m a feminist not a feminazi”, but now I kind of cut all ties and associations with the word “feminist”. Has anyone else found this to be the case for them? Also, my father always says that he’s a feminist, do you think men can be feminists too? I always have, but it also made me feel that it was “more appropriate” for a man to be a feminist because it was a more confrontational attitude.

Also, I had a few questions to ask if anyone felt like answering…

first: does anyone else think that technology (as marketed to women) is all about communication and housework, whereas for men it seems to be all “anti-social behaviour” and first-person shooter games? I was looking at commercials for HALO (a video game that I admit I play when I’m home with my brothers quite often) which are very… “you are more elite than a marine, you are master chief!” with a sidekick bit of tech with enormous boobs called Cortana guiding you around places (because you’re master chief and don’t ask for directions…). Technically in the side stories there is a female marine (but there’s only one, and she has red armor, everyone else is a man).

anyway, I found this bit of media about World of Warcraft (WOW) which makes fun of the DeBeers diamond commercial…

http://media.worldofwarcraft.com/movies/video_loader/wow_video.htm?vid=dabiris-en&dir=movies/valentines-trailer&img=dabiris&rating=wow

I think the above movie says everything about the male/female courting ritual that it needs to. In the original commercial it has the man buying the diamond for the woman, where in this spoof commercial the man slays a huge mythological beast and gives the girl a gem for her sword socket as little hearts fly out of her shadow. Exaggerated gender roles much?

and this one with dances:

I found it especially fascinating that all the “skinny” and “pretty” females were sinuous dancers, whereas the unconventional or horde characters were more solid.

Also I mentioned this commercial in class, which has several variants: