#gender stratification

[thecrashcourse]

Gender influences how we organize society and how we distribute power. Nicole explains in this week's Sociology!

[gender-division]

First day of school.

Today I dropped off my child for the first time at kindergarten. They experience separation anxiety every time they start something new where I am not a participant. It was that way with swim class and soccer camp, but not with dinosaur camp. So, I was not surprised that kindergarten would be difficult for them. The education assist was very helpful in encouraging them by explaining all the fun things that was going to happen. However, the first thing the EA spoke of in regards to my child’s experience of fear/anxiety/nervousness, was “you are a strong boy.”

[mal-normality]

“It’s cool that girls can play video games just like boys do!”

No. It’s not cool. It’s not cool that girls get catcalls on online games unlike the boys. It’s not cool that girls try to form a raid or take on a level while trying to deal with “hey baby you sound cute” at the same time. It’s not cool we can’t compete at a professional gaming level without being sexualized, not taken seriously, or used as eye candy to attract more male gamers. It’s not cool that we are expected to take this kind of treatment because “gaming is a mans thing”.

However, shoutout to the small group of gamer guys who do treat us as equals.

[onetrekmind]

All of my sociology classes make me think too hard about things that perplex me.

In class the professor was discussing how we transitioned from a hunter and gathering (mechanical solidarity) to a post-industrial society (organic solidarity.) Obviously in H&G society there is essentially little to no inequality and they have a strong collective because all of them undergo the same stimuli at the same time. Nowadays we are glued together in this loose collective due to our differences and specialized fields. It may sound great that we have progressed so far but have we actually?  We rely on complete bullshit customs that allow us to feel okay and normal. What even is normalcy? Our society defines normal as lying to everyone you meet and being the perfect cog in the machine. This machine doesn't depend on you, it doesn't care about you. The machine will never fail, it is the parts (YOU) that will break down. When you ask someone "How are you?" you know that 99.9% of the time they will have the same generic response "Good, how are you?" These rituals are meaningless but they are the rituals that give us the comfort of being in this "normal society" We have no clue what is normal and that leads me to my next point. In a world where young women have more freedom and options than ever before why are we astronomically more depressed than our grandmothers who were given little to no respect and had essentially one option for their life. Caucasian females aged 14-24 attempt suicide more than any other group. We mutilate ourselves and see no hope for tomorrow. Are we simply the product of the system we have grown up in? We after all are just bred to be miniscule parts and nothing more, now think about why we feel hopeless. We are bombarded with images of what we are supposed to be, how we are to supposed to think and act and if we don't fit perfectly into the image of what normal is we are then a broken part in the machine and need to be fixed. This is why we put on the smiling face and lie outright to the public because we are terrified of becoming more alone and worthless than we already feel. Honestly without trying to sound like an anarchist or a radical, it's time that we redefine our society and the system because it doesn't work. The machine is bullshit and we deserve to be more than just a piece of it.