Gender Roles... Can't live with em' can't live without em'.

Their are a lot of people who are very disturbed about our societys role on what we do with our lives based on our gender. I definetely would not say my family is old fashioned. In fact, my mother "wears the pants" in our family. She is a very successful businesswoman and she works very hard at her job, making more money and having a higher position, than most of the men that she works with. My father on the other hand does not have a job. He stays at home and does laundry, gets the cars washed, pays the bills and other details that just need to get done. My dad is actually a really slendid baker. He made a Boston creme pie the other night... BUT ANYWAY. My family is in no way, shape or form tied down by societies expectations. My mother grew up in rural Pembroke, Georgia. She went to Georgia Southern college because that was the only place she knew to go to and that is what her family could afford. She worked her way through college and had the chance to do research at Emory Hospital and is a very important employee at Merck. My mother has never in her life complained about being discriminated against or held down because of her gender. I believe that if more people just put their heads down and worked, this would not be a problem in our society. I also believe that if you have 5 children, you probably do need to stay home. I believe that what happens in our society all depends on the people. If you are a lazy woman, than yes, you're going to fail and that could be failure at being a mother or failure at being a good employee. In America I believe you can do anything you want to do. Women play football. Men are ballerinas. In America we believe that if your the best, YOUR THE BEST. Basketball teams are owned primarily by white people, but the teams are almost always dominated by African Americans. THIS PROVES IT. IF YOU ARE GOOD AT WHAT YOU DO, YOU WILL NOT BE DSICRIMINATED AGAINST. As women, we have to prove ourselves. No one will respect you until you show reasons to be respected. I also believe that women are more affected by the choices of their own mothers. My mother has a good job, and throughout my life I have always been motivated and known that I would work hard and being a working woman as well. I have a friend whose mother is a stay at home mom and surprise, surprise, that is what she wants to be as well. It is not a mystery here people! Be who you want to be and you will be accepted (eventually). I once had a dream of being a Formula 1 race car driver. Do you think my gender ever deffered me? Of course not. Being scared deferred me! I was brought up in a genderless home. My house is a tranny. If you want the roles of gender to stop dictating your life, start in your own home.

I feel sorry for the men...

To all the guys that picked The Red Tent as their novel... I feel for you. As a woman, from time to time this novel makes me want to gag. The imagery, the explanations and the choices of wording make me want to barf. I wouldn't just say this novel is explicit, I would say it is A. graphic and B. you need a strong stomach to enjoy it. As a read I was excited for the more "interesting" parts of the novel but the longer I read it the more I just kind of felt sick and tired of hearing about all the absolutely SICK stuff that happens concerning birth and "other stuff." I do not even want to begin on the "OTHER" stuff. Lets just have a little chat about birth. Thanks to this novel I no longer want to have children. I am going to start having reoccuring dreams about being Bilhah, Leah, Rachel or Zilpah and having to pass some HUGE baby with no drugs on a pile of hay (Yes, that is now the image when I think of birth). I am trying to sort out the meaning of all this nasty talk. The main conclusion I have come to is that the author is trying to say that back then, all that people ever cared about was getting pregnant and making sure to keep the world good and inhabited. I am HOPING that the author is trying to make a little joke about how life all changed with the El came into play. When everyone was polytheistic they only had ONE thing on their mind and it was not anything I would enjoy discussing in a blog that my teacher reads :) This is either the case or Anita Diament is a total freak and I really hope this is her last novel. The GREAT part abou this novel is in essense, it is a total copy of a Bible story BUT it is also very original because of that fact. You cannot read this novel and be trying to pull out Biblical allusions because the entire novel is a Biblical allusion. This makes you have to use even more of your brain to analyze the piece of literature. More than the Bible, more than a Fairy Tale, it makes you have to analyze humans as a whole. The beginning of humans is presented (polytheistic) along with where humans are going (monotheistic). I think this would be the perfect novel to read through a psychological lense. Psychoanalyzing this novel would be incredibly intense as well as analyzation through symbolic archytypes, especially physical ones; Diament gives all the characters their own little special "traits" that definetely hold a lot of weight in their personality and the novel as a whole. I also think that the fact that the beginning of the novel is the most grotesque because it is discussing the lives of the women before Dinah and when Dinah comes along there is more "forward" thinking and everything is not centered around "the" thing :) THANK GOD FOR DINAH.

Chaucer is an absolute gas!

I'll tell you something I enjoy: CHAUCER. After reading one story (Wife of Bath) I've decided it is kind of like Greek myth or the Bible (just not as overall intense). I read the Wife of Bath story and as I read it about a thousand Kiddie tales came popping into my head. For instance, the princess and frog. But kind of in reverse. And also not a frog. BUT THE SAME GENERAL IDEA. You have this dude, the knight. He goes out to find the truth. He comes back and he has to marry this nasty old lady who I found to be pretty darn creepy. But then she lays down the law and that whole reverse psychology thing comes in and she becomes a beautiful young girl (No witch involved). SO FREAKING princess and the frog. Did a little research and Chaucer definetely thought this up first. WAY TO GO. And I pretty much have decided he is the Jesus of Kiddie Lit. You read his little stories although they are sometimes a bit explicit and, you get that wholesome moral in the end. Que brillante! At the same time I found it a bit boring and confusing but the facts are still there. I also have an idea of why the Wife of Bath was telling the story. And isn't it ironic that she is called the "wife of Bath" when A. She's a dirty girl and B. She's not married. FUNNY KID THAT CHAUCER. So anyway, I believe she was telling the story because she is an independent woman but the wrong kind. You have women that have full time jobs and kids, and then you have women that cheat on their husbands and spend too much money. Both independent. One socially acceptable. But how acceptable? How sad is it that in Chaucer's time we still wanted the same things we yearn for now :(. It still is not socially acceptable to have a woman money maker and a stay at home dad. To me it seems rational because that is what my family has. But still society makes me think it's not right. It's all very odd how society controls us. At least we have chaucer to bring it out into the open. I think chaucer loves women. And when I say women, I mean REAL women. Women that are virtuous, loyal, and caring. So he loves the Queen and hates the Wife of Bath. The queen becomes young and beautiful, and Wife of Bath is a chatterbox. Characterization at its finest. These things do not just happen! Talking gender roles, Chaucer hits the nail on the head for sure.He gives everybody what they do and do not deserve. His novel displays gender roles for what they are: depends on the person or persons involved. Chaucer's stories are a cornacopia of moral stories with a little satire, explicit material, and saucy characterization. Like the Bible, but not. That is why Chaucer will always be remembered.