Class Discussion 09/21/10

Today we broke up into groups to discuss a couple of questions based on our reading and on our experience. Our question was based on power distribution in a conflict and how we are impacted as men and women because of our identifications. At first all discussion in our group came down to an answer: "it just depends." We felt that our identities would be affected only by things like who we were around, their personalities, how this other person would react, etc. We were looking too much into the question at that point. We needed to look into the question in a general manner. How would society see it, not just people we knew, or hardly knew. The answers changed completely. How we react in a conflict could cause someone else with a societies point of view to question our gender. Such examples may include a woman punching a man in the face during a conflict, or a man crying. This may cause someone to question the persons gender.