Gender Paper

The reason I enrolled in this class was a realization on my own part on how little I understand about how gender should work compared to how it currently works in America. I do not believe I have firmly in held views, I tend to disagree more with others views than have my own concrete views. I disagree with patriarchy but also with the reverse of patriarchy. I understand this was not a biblical course on gender rather more sociological in nature, but I still wanted to examine and understand how to understand hard to comprehend passages in scripture concerning gender. I think you do a good job of looking at these passages although I (respectfully) disagreed with the interpretation that these passages can be understood in that they were written to a patriarchal culture thus do not have as much bearing on our current egalitarian culture (I hope that does not put words in your mouth, just summarizing basically how I understood your view). I think in the end I was left with answers but certainly lots more questions which I had not been exposed to before. I feel that is a good thing, giving me incintive to further research this matter, and truthfully, can we really ever fully understand to the fullest extent gender questions and roles? I would we think we can gain greater knowledge but obviosly not ever to fully comprehend what is the right answer.

I think one key change from the course came from my view of femenism. I had previously dated a girl who was a self proclaimed feminist and we never had any sort of problems but we really never discussed the issue much. I guess I can say I was suspucious of feminist and I know that has alot to do with my political right wing association and how I was raised. This class has challenged me to ...

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... by themselves. I relate it to steroids; athletes are born in all shapes and sizes, you can workout, eat right, and devote yourself to getting stronger but you have a ceiling as far as your testerone level you were born with. Athletes take steroids to increase their natural testoterone levels and then workout to take advantage of a higher testoterone cieling. Lance Armstrong was a great athlete before steroids. But he took them to raise his performance because workout alone would not have gotten him as far. Your body and testosterone are the nature aspect and the working out is the nurture. I believe nurture builds off and coincides with nature. I know though that I have so much still to learn, I think that perhaps thats one of the best things I have learned from this class and in my experience here at Covenant; the more I learn, the more I realize I do not know.