Kathryn McDermott Blog #4

     I realized quickly into reading August's essay "Real Men Don't" that it is very anti-male biased, all of the stories were trying to make the reader look negatively at the male gender. It was a very controversial essay and there were parts I agreed with, but also parts I did not. One statement that stuck out to me from the essay is ". . . rape is a crime committed only by males in whichonly females are victims" (August 131). I do not agree with this, for I am aware that females rape people as well. However, I will agree that society makes this statement seem true; society makes rape have a direct link to males simply because it happens more often in that case. The stories we hear about rape usually involve a female victim, for example, the email alert that we received the other day about the rape incident here at OU. A spot in the essay that contradicts my beliefs is when August quotes Paul Theroux. The phrase reads ". . .be a man means: 'Be stupid, be unfeeling, obedient and soldierly, and stop thinking'" (August 134). I don't agree with that statement at all, I think that being a man in today's culture holds a completely different meaning and I don't think that it is looked at in a negative way. Being a man today means being confident, strong, courageous, outgoing, and loyal, it is something to be proud of.
     In Deborah Tannen's essay "There Is No Unmarked Woman" she explains how women are 'marked' in society, however, she shows an opinion on both women and men. It was the second sentence when I read something that resonated with my personal beliefs, "Instead of concentrating on the discussions I found myself looking at the three other women at the table, thinking how each had a different style and how each style was coherent" (Tannen 140). This relates to my personal life because I find myself doing that all the time, I constantly get distracted in conversation or class by looking at others in the area. This is common for women to do; as a gender we tend to care about our looks, so we sit and compare our outfit to the woman's across the room, or our hairstyle to the woman's sitting in front of us. It is second nature for women to compare and judge each other and themselves based off of those around them, so for me, this quote really hit home. On the other hand, one quote that I found contradicts my personal thoughts is "Yet no makeup at all is anything but unmarked. Some men see it as a hostile refusal to please them" (Tannen 143). I have a lot of guy friends and when I hang out with them I usually don't wear makeup at all. They usually say things like "girls don't put makeup on for us, they put in on for other girls, because we don't care at all" and whenever I date guys, they always say they like it best when I don't "cake on my face" because they get to see the real me. I agreed with most of Tannen's essay, but that quote, along with a few others, did not fit into my personal beliefs.