Gender in Literature

In Ms. Finch’s lecture this week we talked about gender in literature. I enjoyed it more than some of the past ones because of the interactive, hands-on activities. I enjoyed hearing about how other people interpreted some gender-related topics in the books that we have read here at Govs. Personally, I am not a very good reader and have a hard time grasping deeper meanings in books, so I enjoy listening to others talk about what they think things in books mean. I had never really thought of any differences in the ways men and women are portrayed in literature or how the differences impact the way we look at different genders. “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is a book that I brought up in the discussion that talks about gender. Oscar is not considered very masculine and therefore he is portrayed as lesser in society by men and women. The book highlights gender norms mostly in men that men need to be very masculine in order to be successful and a contributor to society. It is not really the case everywhere, but it still exists in some places.


What I enjoyed most about Ms. Finch’s lecture was listening to others when we talked about what we had learned about feminism at Govs and how we view it differently now. Before coming to Govs, I would not have considered myself a feminist even though I was for equality between the genders. This started with my mom. She is the driving force in our household and she would have “mom pays” pins around or some other feminist slogan that the Women's Organisation of the Swedish People's Party in Finland would use (I googled the official name). I thought it was cool to have the “mom pays” pins because at school people would joke around and say “dad pays” when they were getting something new or were buying something. Even with all of the pins, I think why I did not call myself a feminist was more because of my lack of knowing what the term meant because the media portrayed feminists as crazy uber liberal lesbians that hate men. My view on women’s rights and the equality between genders has not changed since coming to Govs, but what has changed is that I have learned a lot more about feminism and I have started to label myself as a feminist.