Boys Will Be Boys Bullshit

This article is a clear representation of what we talking about in class these past couple weeks.

This article discusses how the "boys will be boys" concept is only allowing men to be sexually aggressive towards women. They are taught at a young age that violence and aggressive behavior is okay if you're a boy.

This article also discusses how rape-prone societies also have a larger gender gap... women are less powerful and violence against them is more common.

Rape-prone societies are raising their children to be the rapists/victims, and that is where the beginning of the end should be.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_2002_June/ai_94775599

Female Sexual Coercion

For the last part of today's class, Professor Walden talked about sexual coercion. Although the categories of coercion were non-gender biased, I think the idea of female sexual coercion deserves more discussion and thought. It is socially accepted that a woman never has to "convince" a guy to engage in a sexual act, and if she does, the guy shouldn't complain or try to stop the situation. However, it does happen, and has caused profound effects on the victim.

The link describes how men are reacting to such acts and what scenarios cause the most distress.

http://www.batteredmen.com/batrsexcoer.htm

ur-486 is linked to nazis and commis

i know i just posted in here, but another topic just occured to me. when i came home from class today, my roommates were watching a tv special on a woman with 14 kids who was expecting another. i made a joke about how she obviously doenst believe in birth control and then remembered our discussion in class today about the new birth control pill. i told my roommates about it and got into a discussion with one of them. she said that she was uncomfortable with the thought of taking a pill to "kill a fetus." i told her that its the same thing as an abortion, just not as painful or harmful to the woman. i know she supports the morning after pill, so i made the argument that the morning after pill only works for 48 hours (maybe 72?). it is more than likely that the woman will not know she is pregnant in that short of time and an alternative method will be necessary. She thought that 8 weeks was too long of time frame allowed by the new pill because the fetus is too developed. she supports abortions, which are allowed up until the first trimester, but not a pill that is so much less of a risk to women? am i missing something? i dont get along too well with her and no longer felt like arguing, so i left the room after she said "theres no way that will ever get passed."
i looked for some articles on ur-486 and found an article on an online conservative newspaper entitled "Unleashing the Killer Pill" that states that even though the FDA approves the drug as safe, it will "result in more abortions and therefore more dead babies and injured women." dead babies? im sorry, but something is politically uncorrect about the phrase "dead babies." besides that fact, the introduction of the pill wont result in more abortions, but possibly more women may decide to have abortions the safe way instead of going to poorly sanitized clinics, trying to give themselves abortions, or going through childbirth only to abandon their baby in a dumpster.
the article has two following sections entitled "communist pedigree" because it may be made in "communist china" and "nazi ties." apparantly, its ok to have our clothes, computers, cars, and other daily luxaries made in china, but not a pill. the population council holds the patent rights to ur-486 and may have had ties to the nazis during wwii. we all know how relevant that is now. i think those two headlines are pretty self-explanatorily ridiculous.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2000/11-06-2000/vo16no23_ru486.htm

transamerica

A few weeks ago, I saw the movie TransAmerica. Basically, it’s about a transvestite, Bree, attempting to get a sex change. Before Bree can have the operation, her psychologist tells her that she first must find her long-lost son her wrote looking for his father. Bree journeys across America with her son, a seventeen-year old prostitute, who doesn’t know that Bree is his father. They form a strong bond that is challenged once Bree informs her son of her true identity. The movie is a good example of sex negativity, but more importantly gender identity disorder. According to chapter 5 in the course reader, this is when there are feelings of “strong and persistent cross-gender identification and persistent discomfort about one’s assigned sex.” This disorder causes a person to have or want a sex change operation, as Bree eventually does in TransAmerica. Watching this movie made me think in depth about how difficult it must be for a transvestite, or someone in the process of becoming one. Bree was shut off by her family and experienced difficulties engaging in social scenes. It made me once again wonder why so many people care and have problems with someone’s personal life. All anyone wants is to be happy, no matter what kind of procedure this involves.

http://www.transamerica-movie.com/