we have brains

Just Imagine....

September 21, 2003 08:15 AM posted by alison : track it (0)

In two of my classes this week, I taught the play 'Trifles', about a womyn in 1916 who killed her husband. Considering it's for the grade seven level, it didn't get too much into gender issues, but at the end of studying it, it was agreed that the womyn would not have convicted, but the men would have. From this exercise, I gave them a journal entry taken from Peggy Orenstein’s 'Schoolgirls'. I asked it to those two classes and to a third, older class. Their comments were interesting. I'm going to ask the same question of you.

Imagine back through your life. Major events, major learnings. Imagine back to being 12, to being 8, to being 4. Think about what you liked to do then. Imagine back to birth. Now, imagine you were born a different gender - instead of female, male, and instead of male, female. How would your life be different? What would be the good points of being a different gender? What would be the bad? How would you feel?

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I think that I wouldn't have had as many emotional and self esteem issues as I have. I probably would be trading them for a different set, but I don't think my body image would have suffered the same way.

I would definately maintain my personality traits like shyness, which would mean a similarly tumultuous childhood. But right now I'd have a better job. I really feel that part is true. I also feel like I might be living a more adventurous life, being free of the fears that I now have of things like going outside after dark.

Really interesting question!

Posted by: Lisa on September 21, 2003 09:48 PM |

I think I'd be in jail or dead. Seriously, my family-o'-origin is quite screwed up. Out of my three male sibs, only one isn't nuts. The other two are extremely violent; one's in jail and the other should be. One of the great ironies is that being the youngest and only female kid (i.e. waaaay at the bottom of the pecking order) is one of the things that helped me realize very early on that something was rotten in Denmark, and therefore literally helped save my life. (Yes, this does make for some interesting middle of the night meditations.)

Posted by: Kell on September 21, 2003 09:57 PM |

Full, but unfinished response is here. If I were a boy…
I would have been told to make sure I didn’t do anything to get a girl knocked up, because then I would have to put in more than the 40 hour work-week expected of me. (etc)

Posted by: kerri on September 21, 2003 10:47 PM |

This was a pretty famous experiment a while back on a 4th(?) grade class, and the results were generally that the girls thought they'd be happier and the boys thought they'd be more miserable.
My response is up.
Hey, it all boils down to lovin' my feminine self.

Posted by: megan on September 22, 2003 09:57 PM |

great question! my response is here.

Posted by: the absent student on September 26, 2003 08:32 AM |

Great question! If I imagine myself with the same personality (though realistically I guess it wouldn't be much the same at all), I have to say I'm better off female.

As expressive and emotional as I am, it's hard to imagine being schooled againts that expressivity. Yes, boys may have certain freedoms that girls feel they lack (like not being expected to be docile, for instance), but emotion is one thing men are really taught not to appreciate. And shoes. So if I'd been subject to the expectations of boys, either I'd lack that expressivity I value or I'd be tortured for it. Neither really sounds good to me.

I think kids' answers to this question tend to focus on the way boys are expected to rebel in the classroom and girls aren't. Girls seem constrained and boys freer when you're a kid - but I think that becomes less true as you age.

Posted by: april on September 26, 2003 03:41 PM |

Mine is up. I loved having time to answer a topic again!!!

Posted by: Alison on September 28, 2003 08:03 AM |