Change in a Click
The internet has a variety of information on it: true, false, facts, opinions, theories, etc. I recently Googled “descriptive words for a woman” and “descriptive words for a man.” And the results are thought-provoking. There are some similarities that will appear but as we all know there is a difference between women and men- which help us communicate within society.
On “Words to Use” a tab for adjatives, negative adjectives, nouns, verbs, phrases, quotes, and similies will appear for both genders. I decided to click on the “phrase” tab because it caught my attention to know what most people say about both genders. For females phrases like, “She looks so luscious, no man could resist”, “A woman’s work is never done.” For males, “The strong, silent type”, “Large and in charge.” From my understanding it seems ok to call a woman “luscious” which can be communicating with them in a more sexual or romantic way because it is common. For the other phrase for women I am able to relate this phrase to the fact that women are known for being nurturing and responsible so our job is never ending either looking out for others or simply getting our work done. Nevertheless, these phrases have caught my attention for the fact that all though most of us can agree that women are more likely to be objectified -men are also being objectified in a way that we have different “types” and different positions: “being in charge”. However, in my WGSS class it was mentioned several times how -as women- most of us feel threatened or disgusted when we get cat-called or when someone says “you are irresistable”. Which arises my questions as to why? Why do we have the need to get defensive when we get cat-called? Why can’t we just take control of the situation? Why is it that when we are objectified we belittle ourselves more instead of un-objectifying ourselves? Is it that we are not confident enough of who we are and what we have? Astonishingly, unlike “descriptive words for a _______” these questions are not simply answered by the power of the internet .
It’s mentally disturbing the fact that as adults,teens,and children we can easily go online and see what is expected from us and how based on our gender it’s easy to predict how others will treat us. Technology has become so advanced that by a click of a button we can learn what adjectives,nouns, verbs,etc. are “acceptable” to call a man or a woman. We believe that now separation between genders is less visible and that we are equal in some ways. In my opinion this is not true. Now gender equality is a battle that we are going to be fighting against each other and the internet for trying to separate us into different tabs.
Say you had an assignment where you had to write about how women and men should be described as or treated. Would you still go online to do your research? Or would you try to better understand or finally realize that there is no real difference between both?
