Assignment 3

Reviving Ophelia

After reading Reviving Ophelia, the first topic that came to mind was how the author, Mary Pipher, seems to believe that girls an inherently insecure and are destined for failure unless they have a strong working knowledge of physiology. Pipher looks at women in a negative fashion although she does believe in hope. The hope that girls will become "strong" and will begin to appreciate the things and people around so that they feel comfortable and good about themselves. Pipher's story of June is a perfect example of the "hope" that she had talked about earlier. The cards delt to June would have been folded before the first the round of betting. June played her cards strong, sometimes having to bluff ( when June talks the trick to getting everything you want is to know what you want), but in the end June left with the metaphorical pot of happiness. At the end of the day, what's more important than that?

Inside The World of Boys

My first impressions after reading "Inside the World of Boys" was the contrast between this reading the previous story in Sound Ideas. William Pollak tells a story about a boy who I see a lot of similarities with myself. For instance just like Adam I don't like asking for help, with anything. Most of the time I really don't need help, whether it's an academic task or a mechanical task like building a desk from Ikea, but every once in a while a situation occurs where I need help. Until recently I usually gave up or studied it for a flaw because there was no way I wasn't capable of doing something it had to have been broken. A boys inabilitiy to show weakness is what makes them such good leaders without being sexest, from a biological/psychological point of view there is no wonder why men had dominated human existence for thousands of years. It wasn't until the age of technology where the playing field started to level out. After reading these last two stories, it's hard for me to feel obtomistic about ever having kids. It seems like girls are either going to become prositutes or get addicted and boys don't seem to be motivated at all. What is the world coming to?

Why Boys Don't Play with Dolls

I'm going to start off by saying I don't particularly like this essay. The author Katha Pollitt used a couple thousands words to say what I can easily sum up in one sentence. Children are easily influences by the people and things around them. Reading Katha's bio i learned that she is a femenist, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with being a femenist ( according to Mary Pipher all girls are screwed anyway...), but I believe that femenism comes from some type of trauma as a child. Perhaps Katha wasn't allowed to play football with the boys or was too good at math/science and intimidated the other girls around her. Regardless, I see this article as a medium for Pollitt to vent out her own confusions with society, clearly she doesn't want the parent reading this to allow their child to go through what she had many years ago.

The War Against Boys

THANK YOU, Christina Sommers finally is somebody I can agree with. Sommers acknowelges that guys and girls are different on a biological level. A level that we as humans don't understand yet. So it would be foolish to go around talking about things as if they are fact when quite frankly we know very little about how the human brain works. I really like the theory that girls brain develops language quicker than males as a way to explain why men were driven, from an evolutionary stand point towards being more "muscular" as a gender. It makes a lot of sense and it also gives us an explination for why woman, all of the sudden have managed to get rights in a relatively short amount of time.  All in all I love Sommers use of the physiology of psychology as way to prove her points, I look forward to reading her essays in the future.