WEEK 9: Adrienne Rich

1.) The hints she gives for giving women more soft-skills in education is to "consider what we have to work against, as well as with, in ourselves, our students, in the context of the curriculum, in the structure of the institution, in the society at large. And that means, first of all, taking ourselves seriously: recognizing that central responsibility of a woman to herself, without which we remain always the Other, the defined, the object, the victim; believing that there is a unique quality of validation, affirmation, challenge, support, that one woman can offer another."
The ways she gives is very important because I do think that women should recognize what they are capable of and every human being should take themselves seriously. Women, especially, like to play the victim in everything, but if you expect others to take you seriously and see that you're not just an object or incapable of doing some things, you cannot act like you're the victim. I also think that this is an even more important issue today because of the media making women out to be incapable of anything really and that they're there to just look pretty for men.
2.) I don't agree that the issues with gender are the same as the issues with race and class. They are not even close because if a person is being discriminated due to their race or class, it is not something that they can help. People are born a certain race and cannot change that and you are born into a class because of your family. And even though you can change the class that you're in based on the money you make when you get older, it doesn't mean that the class you were born into just disappears. Women are being discriminated based on gender because they're made out to be stupid and incapable of doing important things. That can be changed by the woman working hard and proving that everyone is wrong about her. Even though I don't agree with the perception that people have on women, I still think that there are some things meant for a man to do and not a woman. There is no way that a woman could run the country the same way that a man could. Women are too emotional and when their emotions get in the way, things go wrong. I think a man is much more suited for that type of positon than a woman could ever be. We also need to understand the difference in biology of a man and woman. I'm not saying that women should stay home and cook and clean every day and let men to absolutely everything, but there are just certain things that a woman is suited to do as well as a man. I think the university still has a lot of work to do in this area and always will because there will always be people who have different feelings on such a touchy subject.