Episode 4: Shame Bell Your Gender Norms & Pumpkin Spice Yogurt

Our essential question is: what is gender and why does it matter?

Hope & Annie continue their conversation about gender norms. What happens when we reject them? How do we work on making our relationships more equitable? The IWLs hit on double standards for girls in school dress codes, how LGBT folks disrupt gender norms by sharing household chores, and the disproportionate amount of emotional labor female-identified folks tend to do in the workplace.

Today’s pop critical theory is deviance.  Deviance is behavior that violates social norms.  Deviance actually serves a really important purpose - if you deviate from the norm, it's often because you're figuring out your identity and finding a sub-group to belong to, which can be really empowering.  It can also be alienating, since you're separated from the group that sets the norms.  How are we rewarded when we deviate? How are we punished? How many people need to be deviant before it becomes the norm? Deep thoughts!

References:

• Judy Brady “I Want a Wife”

• Fa’afafine

• Samoan Third Gender Beauty Pageant

• This School Just Adopted A Body-Positive Dress Code

• Why Women Are Tired: The Price of Unpaid Emotional Labor

• Audre Lorde’s essay The Master’s Tools will Never Dismantle the Master’s House

This episode we forgo our usual timeless or terrible conversation and opt for a Pumpkin Spiced themed segment where we actually taste PS themed foods from our favorite white lady store, Target. From poptarts to gum, listen to our lip-smacking reviews.

Spoiler: This is nasty

Do Your Fudging Homework:

• Hope: Samoan Third Gender--Read about it! Samoan Boys Raised As Girls The Feed/SBS Viceland
• Annie: “Environmental Racism is the New Jim Crow” published by the Atlantic on June 5, 2017.