David Castellano
Ms. Stump
English Comp II ; 1pm
10-24-17
Fiction Essay: When it Changed by Joanna Russ
Our society is governed by an immeasurable amount of silent rules. These rules regulate our lives, our interactions, our expectations, and even our own outlook on life itself. The thing is, we tend to not see it, many people don’t even realize its there. But its prominent in everything we interact with, cheery commercials vs loud serious ones, thin cursive lettering vs bold letterman font, bright colors focused on purples and pinks vs darker colors focused on blue and grey. These are all extremely subtle examples of the silent rules which regulate us on a day to day basis, those rules are called Gender Roles. Now, what if there was a society …show more content…
Usually described as white, heterosexual, cisgender, and male; this seems to become the assumption people make when it comes to characters in the media. Be it from videogame characters, to the main character in nearly every Hollywood movie, and the main focus on various TV shows; this idea of the ‘default man’ has become relevant within not only our culture, but many others as well. Russ makes use of our assumption of the ‘default man’, making the reader typically believe in the beginning that the main character is a man. This is due to us subconsciously seeing male as the obligatory main standard for many aspects in life (Morayati). Coming from things as basic as our language usage or diction with certain titles, many people needing to specify the difference of someone being a women rather than a man when it comes to various forms of identification and status (Morayati). Things such as ‘Doctor’ vs ‘Female Doctor’or ‘Author’ vs ‘Female Author’ tends to reveal this sense of male becoming the automatic default without needing to specify ‘Male Doctor’ for example. This also becomes apparent with characters who appear to have no gender, usually expressed and received in a masculine way by the public, unless some over exaggerated feminine features showed otherwise (Morayati). This shows you how we have become socially conditioned to perceive things a certain way that isn’t limited to the concepts of simply masculinity and
Ms. Stump
English Comp II ; 1pm
10-24-17
Fiction Essay: When it Changed by Joanna Russ
Our society is governed by an immeasurable amount of silent rules. These rules regulate our lives, our interactions, our expectations, and even our own outlook on life itself. The thing is, we tend to not see it, many people don’t even realize its there. But its prominent in everything we interact with, cheery commercials vs loud serious ones, thin cursive lettering vs bold letterman font, bright colors focused on purples and pinks vs darker colors focused on blue and grey. These are all extremely subtle examples of the silent rules which regulate us on a day to day basis, those rules are called Gender Roles. Now, what if there was a society …show more content…
Usually described as white, heterosexual, cisgender, and male; this seems to become the assumption people make when it comes to characters in the media. Be it from videogame characters, to the main character in nearly every Hollywood movie, and the main focus on various TV shows; this idea of the ‘default man’ has become relevant within not only our culture, but many others as well. Russ makes use of our assumption of the ‘default man’, making the reader typically believe in the beginning that the main character is a man. This is due to us subconsciously seeing male as the obligatory main standard for many aspects in life (Morayati). Coming from things as basic as our language usage or diction with certain titles, many people needing to specify the difference of someone being a women rather than a man when it comes to various forms of identification and status (Morayati). Things such as ‘Doctor’ vs ‘Female Doctor’or ‘Author’ vs ‘Female Author’ tends to reveal this sense of male becoming the automatic default without needing to specify ‘Male Doctor’ for example. This also becomes apparent with characters who appear to have no gender, usually expressed and received in a masculine way by the public, unless some over exaggerated feminine features showed otherwise (Morayati). This shows you how we have become socially conditioned to perceive things a certain way that isn’t limited to the concepts of simply masculinity and