“We need to consider theoretical frameworks and methodologies that can examine the differential effects of discourses around gender, bullying and violence for girls and boys in schools and thus the social, cultural and subjective dimensions of how such discourses constitute, regulate, discipline and pathologize particular sets of institutional behaviors” (J. Ringrose and E. Renold, 2010, p. 592)
Questioning personal molds and phrases you’ve been hearing your entire life, from people you love and even from people who raised you, has to be the hardest thing about realizing the effects of discourses mentioned in this MVP. Why am I expected to replicate behaviors that clearly perpetuate oppression of women? Does being born in a traditional city in the heart of a Latin American country excuse the fact that I’m too tired to do everything that is expected from me? Why am I putting myself through expectations hell, just for being my mother’s daughter? Just for being my grandmother’s granddaughter? Why do I keep smiling at the nasty mysoginist comments of my uncle, who was clearly raised by his mother? Why does his wife put up with them being the woman she is in public? What is their agreement? What is THE agreement? What type of woman did my father in law expect his son to marry, that he cannot accept me for being me? What about my baby girl? what am I doing for her? Am I saying too much? How much is too much for a woman like me? What does “woman like me” mean?
Just keep questioning. It makes it real and eventually
change
.
Diana, I LOVE these questions!! They are overwhelming, to be perfectly honest, and I think it’s really easy to get lost in all of them. That said, I think they’re important to ask, especially as women, but I wish they weren’t. I know we talked about this a little bit after class this week, but now that I’ve read your questions, I get your point…like WTF. It’s great to question everything, but what do you do once you start questioning everything? It’s one thing to acknowledge a mold, but how do you adjust and cope as you attempt to “remold” the mold, or even break the mold? When do we say, “whoa, this is too much”? And what is too much? Is too much even a bad thing? Haha, I can see how the questions you pose elicit even more questions and the whole thing is never-ending, but I feel you. It’s overwhelming to question the “performance” of our identified gender and the “appropriate” expression of that gender…and then there seems to be a million and one other identities on the spectrum and nuances to each, so at a certain point, I think it’s all good just to say it’s all good. Let’s keep questioning everything.