Victoria Boynton

Gender and Relationships: Some link exercises

Heterosexual relationships are, for many students, rich sources of discussion about gender construction. By exploring how men and women interact, students can come to a clearer understanding about the cultural forces that shape gender identities. For instance, students could investigate the Irwin Shaw story "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" as it questions heterosexual monogamy. A site that explores marriage and explains non-monogamous tendencies in couples is the site, Freedom and the Tie that Binds: Marriage as an Ethical Institution: http://www.mun.ca/animus/2001vol6/jackson6.htm. By critically reviewing the story and the site, students will be able to formulate important questions for themselves about heterosexual monogamy.

Another powerful relationship that has defined gender is parent and child. Listing the differences between cultural expectation of mothers on one side of a page and father's on the other and then sharing this seemingly obvious information helps students begin to understand the forces of culture as defining. Then students can explore alternatives through such sites as
http://www.now.org/; http://www.workingmother.com/; http://www.msmagazine.com. These sites offer advice for mothers on how to parent well, while maintaining their identities.

Women's relationship with their own bodies is another fruitful area through which to discover how gender is constructed. One site that treats this relationship between a subject and her body is The Real Women Project. As the website mission says, this project "is an innovative and multi-sensory approach to women's health issues as they relate to a narrow definition of beauty. Using sculpture, poetry, music, video and storytelling as springboards for dialogue and education, the Real Women Project promotes self-acceptance as the foundation for mind, body and spirit health." http://www.realwomenproject.com/. For more of the same mission, look at http://www.bodycelebration.com/pages/therapy.html. Other sites about the relationship between a woman and her body emphasize not an individualist perspective, but instead look at larger social forces as powerful determiners. For instance, http://www.about-face.org/ looks at women's bodies as there are (mis)used in advertizing and then suggests ways of combating these images. Also see such activist sites as http://www.girlsinc.org/. A careful and critical look at these sites shows the difference between an individualist and a constructivist prospective.

Also see http://www.rockrgrl.com/. This site is an e-zine for women "with no beauty tips or guilt trips" that most magazines contain.