Best of The Week: Gender Vs. Sex

Throughout last week in class, we had a very interesting and, at times, heated discussion regarding the difference between Sex and Gender, and what differentiates each one.

I think the conversation started when we were discussing Viginia's Woolf's writing in chapter 3. We were trying to understand why she turned orlando into a girl. As we were flipping through the pages, we saw the passage that discusses that Orlando hasn't changed, but her sex has. This sparked quite the discussion.

At the beginning of the discussion, I thought that sex and gender were the same things. Sex is if you're guy or a girl, that's what gender is too. After trying to fight out the discrepancy we looked the two words up in the dictionary. Sex is someones genetic makeup of XX or XY. Gender is the state of being male or female with reference to cultural or social differences rather than biological ones.

Like I said, before we looked up the definitions, I thought that Gender and sex were the same. I feel that if your genetic makeup says your a guy, then your sex or gender is male. That doesn't mean that you don't/ can't have feminine mannerisms, or be gay, it's just different from your gender or sex.

Based on the definition of gender :->

I think that it is safe to say that your environment definitely effects your gender. I think it was Nish who brought up the "letting the child pick their gender," but I think that it's really impossible to pick your gender, because the way that you are raised, and the people around you definitely effect how you act, no matter if your biologically male or female.

While we were discussing this, it made me think of how we as humans are so easily categorized. We're categorized by what activities we're envolved in, our gender, our sex, our income, our race, where we live, etc. I think that this is a product of our world today. It's naive to think that it wasn't always like this, because it most likely was. It's natural to place people in categories. It probably wasn't as bad 200 years ago, but there's always been segregation of people in one way or another.

~jordan

Captured Thought: Wizards, Vampires, and Werewolves, Oh My!

Okay I'm just going to say it flat out, and then explain myself. Try not to judge me too much though.

I sincerely believe that there is a possibility that Wizards and vampires are currently coexisting with us right now. (I only say this because I am a vampire haha just kidding ;)

Okay, Now I'm going to backtrack and explain to you why I believe this.
       In Harry Potter, Harry has no idea that there is such a thing as wizards until he finds out he is one. The entire world has no idea that there are such things as wizards, unless they are one. So in my mind, this tells me that there is possibly a whole civilization of wizards living out there that we don't know about just because we aren't wizards.

     Now on to vampires and Werewolves. In Twilight, Bella has absolutely no idea that there is such a thing as werewolves. Even when chaos starts to ensue, no one else finds out about the vampires. Also, we don't live on the olympic peninsula of Washington, so how do we know that this isn't actually happening there?

     I know i don't have very solid evidence, if any, but having these childish or even irrational thoughts kind of makes me laugh at myself. I think the thing that may have given me these ideas is how developed the civilizations are in the books. Even though they probably aren't real, the authors created a  whole other world where these things do happen.

You may still think I'm crazy, but my theory is, how can you disbelieve something that you can't prove right or wrong?

~jordan