Attraction

     Attraction is something that is different for everyone. For lack of a better saying, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. One person could be considered perfectly attractive in every way to someone, while another wouldn’t even take a second glance. For most people, physical beauty is very important in a short term partner, mostly because it has to be. Before you get to know someone emotionally, there has to be something else there to attract you to them. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I do not believe that I am someone who takes physical attractiveness very seriously. I have noticed through my past relationships that propinquity and reciprocity seem to be a great factor in who I have relationships with. Of course I can appreciate an attractive person, but rarely does that draw me to them. I should mention, however, just in case my boyfriend is reading over my shoulder, that I was lucky enough to find someone close to me who is extremely physically attractive!

     For a long term relationship, I do not think that physical attractiveness is really enough. There needs to be shared or similar values and goals, as well as an understanding and healthy compromise where your goals and values do not perfectly match.

     The following video is a humorous take on female attractiveness. It describes the stereotypical female ideal for physical attractiveness. I hope the coarse language isn't too much, I thought it was too funny to pass up having on my blog. Enjoy!

Masculinity vs. Femininity

     The class discussion today focussed on masculinity and femininity. We were asked to select some well-known person as representing the ideal of each femininity and masculinity. As a class, we came up with James Bond, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Will Smith as representatives for masculinity. We chose Jennifer Anniston, Michelle Obama, Betty White, and Marilyn Munroe as representatives for femininity. I really liked that Michelle Obama was considered feminine by my classmates because it seems that only recently women have been praised for being poised, intelligent, and in a position of power. This was the idea of Second Wave Feminism, but I feel as though this ideal was really only a view shared by feminists at the time rather than the general population.

     I found this activity slightly difficult, because although I was aware of the idea of ideal femininity and masculinity that was requested of me, my personal ideals do not really exist for either gender. I feel as though gender is a wide spectrum, where a person, male or female, can sit anywhere along. Neither end is ideal and neither end is flawed. Wherever an individual person sits along this spectrum is their own personal ideal, and it isn’t for any other person to judge what is ideal for another.

The Male and Female Orgasm

     We participated in an activity today where we read a description that someone had made about the human orgasm and we had had to try to decipher whether it was said by a male or a female. While filling out the short worksheet, there were a few that I thought I got right, but for the most part it seemed that all the descriptions could come from a male or a female. I ended up answering five of the eleven correctly, but to be honest I am quite sure that was due to the 50/50 chance I had to get any one of them right. I find it very interesting that the descriptions from males and females are so similar, what with the different anatomy and cycles. It made me slightly question my personal ideas about sex and gender. I have always viewed men and women’s sexual experiences as two very different things. This probably stems from my original sex education, back in grade school when my class was split into girls and boys to learn about sex. The reality is that both sexes experience sex nearly the same way, and I wonder if education should be adjusted accordingly. 

The Vagina Monologues

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     Today I class we watched a portion of the play The Vagina Monologues. My personal response to it includes a few mixed feelings. I think that it is great for women to talk frankly about their bodies and their personal experiences. Even in our modern society, it is not very socially acceptable for such topics to be discussed. I don’t see any reason for this because it is something that all women go through and many do not have an outlet to express their concerns or questions because of social expectations on them to deal with it on their own. However, I am not sure if the play directly addressed this issue. The position they took seemed to poke fun at a woman’s desire to share her feelings about her body’s changes. Though it made the play a joy to watch, the outcome was that rather than being taken seriously, women were being ridiculed for sharing. You could see this in the reaction of the audience. The more specific the actress was about her experience, the bigger the laugh received from the audience. I think the main reason for this was the shock factor, because the audience was not accustomed to hearing such things. I think that if the play had approached the subject differently, it could have had really changed the perspective that the audience had on the issue.   

Habermas' Paradigms

     In class today we participated in an activity in which we described a phenomenon within human sexuality according to one of Habermas’ Paradigms. I chose to talk about abortion from the situational interpretive paradigm. I found this activity very useful as a way to deepen my understanding of Habermas’ Paradigms, and I thought I would share my activity on this blog. This isn’t necessarily my own opinion, just an extreme example.

     Abortion should not be an individual choice. A fetus is a person as soon as sperm meets egg. It is unfair for any person to decide for a baby if it should live or die, because it cannot speak for itself. Though it may be difficult for women who become pregnant unexpectedly, they made a choice when they became pregnant that they now have a responsibility to follow through with.  

Introduction

     I am very eagerly looking forward to this class. I think that I am most looking forward to learning about views on topics within human sexuality that I have not yet considered. Though I have a general idea of where I stand on most issues, I am always open to hearing other viewpoints and relating them to my own. I like to be able to take new information and use it to confirm what I agree with, confirm what I disagree with, or even change how I feel about something. I feel as though there are many topics within the discipline of human sexuality that I have opinions on but I don’t necessarily know a lot about. Some of these topics include abortion, same sex marriage, and the general involvement of religion in a person’s sexuality. I also look forward to learning about the integration of human sexuality education in a classroom. It seems as though sexuality is affecting students at a younger and younger age, and as a future elementary teacher I think that this is something that is very important to be educated on.