Blog 6

When talking about Charlotte Perkins Gilman in class, the idea that stood out to me the most was the origins of gender stratification. I found it very true of our culture today, that we live in an androcentric culture. I was not surprised that Gilman found that to be true back when she did her studies, but I thought that it would have changed from then to now. I never realized that our culture really is dominated by men until I actually thought about it. Politics are hugely run by men; professional men’s sports teams are given way more air time than women’s sports teams and so on. It is interesting to me that, largely, society is okay with men dominating many things. Certainty not everyone is on board with this idea of an androcentric culture, but not many things have been done to change or “fix” this fact.

Gilman also discusses private and public spheres in her writings. She says that males dominate the public sphere mostly because it is a man’s job to go out of the house to work and bring home the money. Females are seen to dominate the private sphere, in Gilman’s eyes, because their job is to stay home and do house work type jobs all day. These typical types of roles for men and women are starting to change now and I think that is something that is notable. I personally think it is so cool if a dad stays at home and raises the kids while the mom goes out in the world to work. It is a “new” and unique trend in our culture/society and I think that it’s something that could be looked at as honorable for the father to take on the role of raising the children.

I found it different that one part of Gilman’s origins of gender stratification still holds true today (androcentric culture) and the other part is tending to evolve and change (role of genders in public and private spheres). For most of the other social thinkers that we have analyzed in class, either their theory still exists in our society or does not exist so it was nice to see this idea that Gilman’s is (in some ways) only half “true”.

The video that I selected for this blog is one that I think fits perfectly for dads staying at home and moms going to work. It’s a music video that someone put together to go along with scenes from the movie Despicable Me while a song called Mr. Mom by Lonestar plays along in the background. I hope you enjoy it!