This week I attended an event entitled “Break the Box” which was a discussion about gender norms led by students in the Intergroup Dialogue Project. The event was interesting, and one of the facilitators asked if we noticed anything particular about the demographics of the room. Majority of the people in attendance were female, and I noted that the event might be biased as it self-selects for students who are already interested and knowledgeable about the significance of gender norms. Thus, it felt like for the sake of discussion, most of the people in the room were already aware of the issues and agreed with each other. For example, when the facilitators put up a word cloud about “what is a man?” and “what is a woman?” many of the submissions included adjectives such as “nice, smart, compassionate” and the facilitators had to add words to portray what the rest of society thinks about men and women: “aggressive, experienced, strong” for men and “innocent, weak, and sensitive” for women. Thus, at a renowned university like Cornell, it’s more difficult to get a diverse array of opinions because many of us, especially those who attend these kinds of events, are already aware of gender norm issues.

I found some issues with how some of the questions were phrased. In the initial survey, the questions asked “what are desirable traits in men/women?” and the facilitators hoped to get responses that reflected ideal stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. However, the question could be misinterpreted as “what do you prefer in desirable mate?” and the question does not take account into people of different sexual orientations and non gender binary. Additionally, there was another question “what are you most proud of your gender” which was extremely difficult and problematic to answer until it was rephrased into a question about privilege.

Overall, I felt that the event was a quick and nice taste into the Intergroup Dialogue Project.  I applaud the facilitators for having this as their project and I love any opportunity to talk about social awareness issues. I really appreciated hearing some of the stories the participants shared, such as when a father was concerned his 1 month old baby would be a “overweight daughter”.     I also liked that in the end, we discussed possible ways we could “break the box” such as being more vocal and not being afraid to speak up when we see instances of social injustice. However, the issues regarding gender norms and societal boxes are complicated than “women get less renowned jobs” and “slut-shaming double standards exist” and require much more than an hour to dissect. It felt like the issues were oversimplified (although I can’t blame them due to the time constraints) and didn’t take into issues of intersectionality. I was hoping the discussion would focus more on understanding why these gender boxes exist in the first place and how to overcome them, rather than just what they are. Overall, I hope to attend more similar events about social awareness at Rose House.