What is Language?? Male Generic Language??

Have you ever thought about how exactly language was made?? What about how you learned language?? Do you think it was all from your family??  I think that we learn everything first and for most from our families at home.  I believe that our families are the number one agents of the socialization process; which means that they are the first agents to instill their/ our soon beliefs upon us.  This in return forces us to think, act, comprehend, speak, and even imagine in a curtain way. In the book it talks about Male Generic Language and how we as a society seem to think “Men are the Standard while Women are the Exception” (118). In the book it brings up an important fact, a fact that was brought up in class on Tuesday when we did the group assignments. My group spoke of this whole theory of women being the exception and really didn’t think twice when we realized just how left out women are. The book brought up examples when dealing with this theory and said that Us as a society use words like Mailman, businessman, spokesman, and even mankind; and it’s just horrible because this belief that goes noticed but miss-understood, diminishes the thought of us women being known as intelligent, strong, successful, impactful, helping, , and unique individuals.  This notion that the book talks about under appreciates women as a whole. I personally feel that if we as a society were brought up in a different way, we would have a different understanding, standard and new focused accomplishment as a whole.  I remember growing up and being raised by such a sexes family and I know that my focus on trying to be so different and unique all at the same attempt in proving everyone wrong shed light on my beliefs that everyone is human, and everyone is equal, and if we all work together this society would be so much more different.

HERE and NOW

Do you think that things have changed??

I think things have changed a little for some and a lot for some. I think that it all depends on the ways you were raised and the things you were taught, along with your own beliefs on top of all of that.   This week we are talking about the men’s movements.  I think that their are a lot of people that still feel that women and men should not have equal rights because a women is only good for so much or whatever their reason may be.  However there are also a lot of men that feel the opposite.  In the book it spoke of traitorous identity and how men in particular feel more ashamed when other men criticize them rather than when women criticize their beliefs. (97) This statement made by Larry May (97) really intrigued me and gave me comfort because it just made sense when I thought of different experiences that I faced and saw in my life.  For example I’ll use myself.  Growing up as a child I saw my father tell my mother and all of his girls (as in children) that they were suppose to be a housewives that take care of his children/ their husbands children and that was all. He would tell us that this is all we had as individuals and women in our nature. My dad told us that we as women were suppose to nurture. However we as women and as individuals felt totally different. Now my mom agreed with my dad a little because of the ways she was raised. This was something my mother was use too. Now me on the other hand felt completely different and began to rebel, which places me where I am today.   In opinion my dad felt that he could say such things because he felt he held the power in our family dynamics; in which he did, but not that much.  Another example is when you’re in a line at store and someone cuts you in the line; you only will say something when you feel that you have more power. In fact this is something that one of my other classes talked about. Now this example only shows a little when going up against men and women because it proves that people in general will speak up if they feel they can.  In my opinion this whole theory of traitorous identity only happens because it’s easier to dismiss someone’s criticism upon us when we feel they don’t matter and we hold the power; this invisible power we know of;  This power that a lot of White men and women have and were given at birth.

Everyone is different

I felt like the conversation with Shark Fu was interesting because it took on the light of a black female feminist in today’s society. She seemed to speak of only the black perspective and looking back into what we learned in the book it is easy to see why. Feminism isn’t only for women but in the second wave of feminism and throughout most of the waves there were only the views of white middle class women. So it is easy to see why shark Fu wants to explain feminism from a colored person’s point of view. In liberal feminism it shows that middle class white women fought for the equality of women in general. This highlighted the book called The Feminine Mystique by Friedan, which states the problem those middle class white women felt by not being able to peruse personal development because of political reasons (81). Shark Fu is basically doing the same thing but from the perspective of a black woman, she is fighting for the personal development of black women in America. When asked if her voice is for everyone she stated no, but at the same time she respects and fights for people in other countries, like Syria and Egypt. This seems a little bit hypocritical because of the fact that she isn’t looking toward using her voice for everyone just black women. It is understandable though, in this class we have learned that feminism isn’t just for women but for the fight of equality for everyone. This must be something that has spun out of the third wave because listening to ted talk’s feminist speaker and Shark Fu it seems like everyone has their own individual opinion on what feminism means. Before this class I thought the same thing that many people think, feminism is for women that hate men. Now I feel like feminism is made as an outlet for people to describe and speak about what they feel is equality for whomever they feel needs equality at the time.