draft #2

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Wj-X5DnqZIeJXSNckfiGtI-s9MyMSc1gHDMvvGj_WnY/edit?authkey=CJqAzfEL#

Blog #4 = Black Men & Black Women

Has anyone heard the quote “behind a good man there is a wonderful woman” I did, many times. In life, for men is so easy to say “I did this, I did that” kind of always excluding [women] “we”.  But throughout history women always has been the men’s right hand and a lot of times the entire body. The women had always played the role of a big pillar, supportive and indestructible monument.
In the essay “The black Male; Searching Beyond Stereotype” by Manning Marable I could extract a big example when the author refers to black women as “Black Matriarchy” because they [black women] took care not only of their own family but the master’s one too, even though this “master” (like if they [black people] were animals) punished them for no legal reason and the black male were not husband or father type. The author statement “We have seen her love of her children, her commitment to the church, her beauty and dignity in her face of political and economic exploitation” shows how proud men are about women. But women are proud of men? Why would they [women] be? Because men were racist with women and didn’t even think that women needed rights; women fought for their rights like slaves fought for their freedom.  Are men really that evil like Paul Theroux argued in his article “The Male Myth?” or is just that men’s masculinity is so strong that is impossible to describe our emotions towards women like Marable argued in his essay “The black Male; Searching Beyond Stereotype” so instead of that, men showed only resentment?. Black women were there to support black men against the unfair racist treatment they received, but black men didn’t respond to that action.
I agree with the author about black men and women should work together in order to accomplish their goals. If they want to conquest the future, they have to use their history as guidance.

Now,  black, white, male or female joke about our own behavior. For example there is a joke saying “Women always worry about the things that men forget; men always worry about the things women remember” or “A woman never forgets the man she could have had; a man, the woman he couldn’t”

Blog #3.a "Prove me wrong"

In my Blog #3, I used Paul Theroux’s style to explain my disagreement about the way he presented his article “The Male Myth”. His argument is not entirely supported by evidence, but just personal opinion.

In the beginning of my blog #3 I called out that I sensed anger and confusedness about masculinity in Paul Theroux’s article “The Male Myth”.  I referred to his anger because he stated “even the expression “be a man!” strike me as an insult”. According to the dictionary anger is a strong feeling of displeasure aroused by wrong wrath, so it is said that anger is also related to resentment. Resentment is the feeling of displeasure or indignation at some act, remark, person, etc., regarded as causing injury, insult or emotional damage. Speaking in psychological terms resentment is a sense of hostility towards the person who we know is the cause of our frustration. This terminology was introduced by the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard in the 1840’s. Due to the resentment of Theroux towards men I could conclude that in his childhood he suffered a traumatic event so strong that built his behavior, something so strong such as a rape. The MaleSurvivor 2007 website stated “A male rape victim usually feels that he has totally lost control over even the insides of his own body, resulting in feelings of utter vulnerability and powerlessness. Control and power become key psychological issues for rape survivors. These issues are heightened for men who are brought up to expect to be able to defend themselves against attacks and who consider total helplessness incompatible with masculinity (and thus intolerable)”,this was brought up after investigations and treatment of raped prisoners; in shorter words raped males start feeling  less masculine with time. Paul Theroux felt less masculine when he stated “I found it impossible to admit to myself that I wanted to be writer…because being a writer was incompatible with being a man” which it enforced my point that he maybe suffered a traumatic event such as a rape that made him feel less masculine, but also reinforce my view of his confusedness about his masculinity and masculinity itself.  He seems masculinity very cruel like if masculinity means conquest; He proclaims “Money is masculinity”. It is true that men make more money than women but it is not because men are cruel and very “machos” to let women get higher positions in work environments but is just that women have other priorities in life not just money like a man does. In the article “Are women earning more than men?” by Warren Farrell explained “A 2001 survey of business owners with M.B.A.s conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology found that money was the primary motivator for only 29% of women, versus 76% of men. Women prioritized flexibility, fulfillment, autonomy and safety”. Paul Theroux statement was right, but wrong proven. His immatureness in writing statements that doesn’t have any fundament, just personal opinions reflected his anxiety to open his chest out. He could prove his personal opinions but he just throws random sophisticated words around expecting that everyone else agree with his thoughts. Also his confusedness about his sexuality turned out to be dragged by maybe a lack of masculinity,resentment towards men and his burden insecurity.

Blog #3 = Destroying Paul Theroux moral !!

In the article "The Male Myth" by Paul Theroux I could sense the anger and confusedness of the author about man’s masculinity and his own masculinity, but in my personal opinion the author had a wrong view of man. To be honest I think that the author was raped by a man or something related to that make him think about the brutality of man and left him with all the hate. Also maybe when he was a child he was very feminine and he couldn’t be accepted by the other kids, for example in sports. He said “the manly attitude toward sports seems to be little more than a recipe for bad marriages, social misfits, moral degenerates, sadist, latent rapists and just plain louts”. I completely disagree with his statement, for personal experience I could say that sports are the best way to create a real man, not by teaching toughness but teaching him responsibility and values. I was a soccer player in high school and our coach was very tough with us when it comes to be polite, responsible, team player and gentleman. The author might experience something very cruel in his childhood about sports that affirmed with authority that sports are the cause of man’s bad behavior. Bad marriages? Social misfit? Latent rapist? In what he based such statement ? because any of those examples fits in my behavior just because I played soccer. Is he saying if you play sports you will become a rapist?
Other confusedness he showed is when stated “I found it impossible to admit to myself that I want to be a writer …because being a writer was incompatible with being a man…you have to demonstrate your manhood to be a writer” . What a douche! writing is one of the most wonderful things to do in order to express your opinion, feelings or stories, but to him it was something about “be or not be” thing. I highly doubt it that Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nicholas Sparks, Stephen King, Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe, etc worried about people thinking they were feminine. An individual that is very sure or confident about his sexually will never even think about people saying something different about it. The author also affirmed “money is masculinity. So is drinking” Is he saying that women can’t be wealthy? To my opinion, his comment was very immature; women could have the same desire to be rich as a man but not in (Mr.?) Theroux’s ideology…and drinking… I am 22 years old and I don’t drink, that doesn’t make me more feminine, I have seen girls drinking worst that an Irish Viking and that doesn’t make them less feminine. To the author’s erroneous way to point out man’s masculinity view I just have to say that the author is a bad informed, very feminine and very traumatic writer.
Due to two of his novels name “My secret life” and “My Other Life” Theroux has been accused of belaboring themes, structural conceits, and displaying a base preoccupation with his sexual perversity that in this article we view. Theroux could be one of the best writers in today’s literature but to me is another antipathic pitiful incoherent amateur writer.

Draft #1

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nrDQ1k49yNexGtHQ2u_26hXafmrDN7O6oIC7OYrqzTw/edit?hl=en&authkey=CJGGq84P#

Blog#2 = Sex, Gender & our Society

In chapter 1 "Night to his day" of the book “Paradoxes of Gender” by Judith Lorber I could recall how she emphasizes how society determines gender. According to her research, societies from the past had recognized only 2 types of genders, male and female, but with time now society recognizes 4 types of genders, male, female, transsexual and transvestite. These last 2 new genders are actually created not by nature, but by society. Transsexuals change their sex using surgery to be recognized by society as the opposite gender and transvestites only change their clothing to look like the opposite gender. The author also recalled a story where she confused a baby girl for a baby boy just for the fact of her clothing, but later on realized because of the earrings, that the baby actually was a girl. To her story, she asked herself “Why the earrings?” and to answer her question, I could say that for personal experience earrings look better on baby girls than baby boys. My daughter got her ears pierced when she was 2 months old and I did it to make her look cute and “girly” and I was tired of people confusing her for a baby boy.
The author said “The process of gendering and its outcome are legitimated by religion, law, science and society’s entire set of values” and then she explained about western culture. I have a connection to point out between her saying and the western culture; in my last deployment to Afghanistan I observed a rare cultural way to express the power of society and religion over gender and sexuality. “According to an unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns — though they seem to be in complete denial about it. Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys— yet they completely reject the label of “homosexual.” By Fox News. I personally saw  how Afghan soldier and civilians were kissing each other, walking holding hands and touched each other in a homosexual manner. I asked a Afghan Pashtun, my interpreter in Afghanistan, why men were having sex with other men, Is not that against your religion? He said that “is a social mentality that men satisfy their sexual necessities with other man because women are USE only to procreate and not to involve with them in an emotional relation”. “To our God, the action between men (having sex) is known as bounding, not homosexual, that “gender-label” does not exist in our religion or social point of view”. It could be view that genders varies between cultures, religions and laws. To my anecdote, I could link Lorber’s saying “morals and religions cannot be equated with the fears of ecstasies of the brain”. Anne Fausto-Sterling “How to build a man” and Judith Lorber “Night to his day” emphasized with researches that sex and gender are actually create by our social predomination of life.

Blog1 = Boys are made or born ?

In the essay "how do you build a man" by Anne Fausto-Sterling, stressed out that there are many books, research papers or articles about masculinity and male development, all representing scientific findings, but always written in neutral or abstract language. The author agued whether nature, science or society makes a man and to express  her ideas used John Money's theory of construction of masculinity  and his 10 road signs directioning a person to the paths of male or female. The author also explained the studies about SDY-gene and how XX gene individuals are born female and XY gene individuals are born males and how physicians  fear that a male born with a 0.6 in. of penis and below will not develop their way into masculinity to accomplish male’s main object in our society, reproduction. These 3 points of ways that could affect a male’s personality are actually in 1 same category “contradiction”. To explain my point of view I could use Mao Tse Tung’s theory “The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist”. In other words the interdependence of Nature, Science and Society form, made, build or create a man. For example a male baby could have perfect male testosterones, but it’s actually in the childhood part of life where a male is push by Society either to be a male or a female according to the Nature gender of how he/she was born or the fact of how the Science transformed the individual because Nature played a wrong part and it will not be accepted by Society. Many researches tried to decide whether Nature, Science or Society made a man, but if they actually see the big map that Nature is nature and that it’s why we have Science, to fix our nature in order to be acceptable by Society. It’s a circle of contradiction.
I just discussed the fact of how men are made, and when I say made I mean masculinity. As a reality of life humans just born with two types of gender "Male (man) and Female (woman)" but masculinity is the actual behavior of a male. But a male is born male because of the penis and a female is a female because has a vagina and the only thing we can argue about is masculinity (male behavior) or feminine (female behavior) and how the interdependence of nature, science and society could make it. Man not necessarily means masculinity. Male behavior is called masculinity by definition of the toughness in every possible way in coparrison of a female. But this complex word had been misinterpreted by our own society with the word virility which by definition means the masculinity property of being capable of copulation and procreation.
Man, masculinity and virility derivates from one and only word PENIS according to our society but is actually more complex than that. In the end of the road,man and masculinity are entirely different. Males are born, but the masculinity of that male is made.