Group 4 Discussion Questions: Becoming gendered

New York Times article:

1. Looking back on your own schooling, have you ever experienced sexism—either negative feedback for crossing gender lines or positive feedback for staying within those lines—from teachers and/or administrators? How did you respond in the moment? How do you think you would respond now?

Newkirk's "Misreading Masculinity" article:

1. Newkirk brings up the issue of violence in the media and its “unlimited scope,” from “the death of Kenny in South Park” to “violence in great literature.” Do you think there is a difference between the violence of South Park and the violence within Hamlet or other school-taught literature? If so, what is the difference? If not, why do our schools treat these mediums differently, and what are students implicitly learning through this distinction?

2. Given the increase in school shootings in recent years (in which most if not all of the shooters are male), how do you feel about Newkirk’s defense of violence in boys’ writing and their affinity for violent TV/films? Do you think it can, as he says, “strengthen the bonds between friends,” as he suggests it does for Andrew and Jon? Or do you find it disturbing and potentially “pathological,” which he claims at the end of his article is a “most serious mistake”? As educators, how do we know where to draw the line between the positive encoded in the negative and just plain negative?

Ashcraft and Thorne articles:

1. Ashcraft states, “Cinema and television are particularly important sites for the production of cultural meaning and discourses” (39). Thorne posits that perhaps the word “tomboy” is not used as frequently nowadays because of the changes in the past two decades, such as challenges of gender stereotypes” (115).

That being said, do our contemporary* tomboys in TV, film, and literature challenge gender stereotypes, or do they subtly play into them? Are these tomboys fully able to resist or do they ultimately succumb to gender roles? (In reading this article, I thought of Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, Mulan, Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. What other “tomboys” can you think of?). What are the implications for our students who are viewing these figures?

*Thorne’s article was published in 1993; therefore, I’m wondering whether more recent examples of tomboys resist to or succumb to gender roles.