Blog #18-I totally agree with you": gender interactions in educational online discussion groups

I found that this statement was interesting, "female-to-female interaction tended to be more positive than female-to-male interactions, suggesting that females were engaging in negative interactional strategies to a greater extent when in response to males, as opposed to females." I feel as though we do disagree with what males have to say some of the time and it is easier to hear what a female is saying...this being that I am female. We are more likely to agree and put positive comments on a discussion between women then on males. I am not sure why this is but I noticed it a lot just with our posts. I also noticed how the males would not agree with what the female was saying but all the females were agreeing with eachother.... Obviously this doesn't happen all the time but I think that it does the majority of the time.

Blog #17-A Sociolinguistics perspective of gender differences in Virtual Communities...

After reading this article, it states that, "women tend to bring up more personal issues." I use facebook to reunite with family and friends and to share my day with others and see how other people live their life. It is definitely a social aspect for me. I get to see pictures, videos, and the thoughts of whoever is in my network of friends. It is quite addicting.... I find myself wanting to check the status box just to see who has said what and so on.... I do have some male friends on there and I feel as though some of the males communicate more personally, where some of the others are just on there. They don't really do the "social networking" aspect of it...

I also have another male friend who often gives challenges to people about life and waits to see who will do these challenges. A quick example of this....On Friday he put as his status update to give something back that you borrowed from someone else regardless how long it has been...
So I guess there is some people who do the informative thing and some who just do the social thing....

Blog #20-Killing Us Softly

Like I said in blog #19, we become immune to these sexist ads, but on the other hand we still do try to be like the women in the ads. I feel as though we still see women as property which means that we can sell the image this way. Sure, not everyone sees this or will admit that they see women as objects but the image does sell.

The major issue for myself is the way they portray young girls and the messages that these girls are getting from the media. If you talked to a room full of adolescent girls, you would hear them talking about diets, working out, what type of hair style they want, what type of clothing that they want, and so on. Almost every young girl wants to be model-like because the model looks like she has everything... I know that as a teenager I wanted to be a model but I am only 5'3, so the chances of that was out for me, but I wanted to have what they had. I grew out of wanting that image and realized that I am, who am, and that is all I want to be!

Blog #19-Stale Roles and Tight Buns

First off, I found this much more interesting then just watching a program and then seeing the commercials or seeing ads in magazines, because you got to actually see what the ads are saying. I often do not pay enough attention to the things that are being portrayed and that is probably because I am so use to seeing these sexist ads.

We are so use to seeing these things that I don't take a second glance because it is normal to see an underwear ad with a guy who is wearing nothing but his underpants but has this muscle body. The image is telling every boy that he should look like this and telling every girl that she should be looking for someone like this. It is wrong that our media shouts this from their rooftops but I'm not sure what we can do to change this. We do not have sufficient regulations for monitoring these types of ads, so people use become immune to them, like I have.

Blog #16-Gender Issues in Advertising Language

While reading through the article I am constantly thinking about what type of commericals I see when watching T.V. I found this part of the article interesting, I guess because I usually don't think twice about what the commerical is talking about or trying to sell... "one interpretation is since day-time television audiences are predominatley female, advertisers are more careful with their language than in the evening when audiences are mixed." --This is soo true, you see most soap opera commericals during the day only versus the night, you see more women talk show hosts commericals and actual shows during the day...

Another part that the article talks about is "both gender-specific language and gender biased language were more prevalent in ads for household cleaning products..." This makes me think about commericals for Windex.. The one that seems to pop up in my head is when the wife asks her husband to clean the windows and she will clean the pool and the husbands doesn't go for it because he thinks that the pool will not take as long; so she go aheads and cleans the windows and she finishes before he is done with the pool. I feel as though this is completely gender-specific because women are known for cleaning the inside of the house and the man is known for cleaning the outside.

Blog #15-Gendered Voices in Children's Ads

"First, ads for kids serve as training for consumer culture.....through ads, kids learn that products for sale offer life style enchancements, fun, peer group status, and up-to-date coolness..." This quote taken from the article is so right on...My little cousin for example thinks that he has to have every new toy that comes out and he sees this from the commericals that are aimed at training to want new and bigger and better things....I feel as though it is shameful to even think that we need to have "toys or fill in the blank" just to fit into a group. Our peer status shouldn't have to revolve around what "new" thing that we got at the store, but we are suckers for spending our money and buying things that we do not need.

Blog #14-Beyond the "He/Man" Approach: The case for nonsexist language

To change the way we use language seems like it can be an easy thing to do, but for so many people is not or they chose to not change their sexist language. I feel as though we are approaching 2010 and times do change along with language. People seem to be so afraid of change and oppose anything that goes along with it. I found a part of the article that stated, "..when the female pronoun has been used to refer to both sexes, as in the teaching profession, males have lobbied for use of the male pronoun. They argue that use of "she" is responsible, in part, for their poor public image and low salaries."

After reading this passage I totally feel soo frustrated with this statement. Women should not have to be known for poor public images and low salaries. (Granted this was written a while ago, but common on people!) We still do have to deal with types of sexist bias. Are salaries are still lower than males and we are in a completely different era..