TE+250+Engaging+masculine+and+feminine

I plan a wide variety of activities that ask students to draw on readings, to reflect, to bring their lives into the classroom, to interact with each other, listen, and think critically. This clip includes two of many activities I use to interactively engage students in thinking about the content in relation to their lives. The first few clips illustrate students in small groups, recalling their socialization around gender and gender roles. As often as possible, I ask students to reflect on their own socialization around the identities we discuss in class (i.e. race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc.). Here, I ask them to think about what they have been taught about how boys and girls/men and women are different. I talk with each group once or twice during the activity—mostly to listen, sometimes to ask questions. In the second set of clips, students have all been given a post-it note (or two) with words (i.e. CEO, cheerleader, nurture, rape, emotion, hairy, etc.). Students are asked to place their word on a continuum labeled “feminine” at one and “masculine” at the other. I then ask students to share why they choose to place the word where they did, and give students an opportunity to respond. It is usually humorous AND sobering as students discover that their classmates hold very different perspectives. For example, one student placed the word “rape” under “masculine” because when he hears that word, he thinks of men raping women. Many of the students strongly disagreed and thought it should be placed under “feminine” because typically, women experience rape. We conclude with discussing what ideas, perceptions, stereotypes, lessons this activity brings about regarding gender.

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