As an IDP facilitator of gender, I too often find myself conforming to gender norms that I might not always want to conform to. I paint my nails, I try to smile more often, I wear heels, I squeal at baby pictures (although I might not necessarily feel like squealing). I too am having trouble ‘Breaking The Box’. Maybe, it’s too late for me to break the box completely; there are things that I have been taught that I would feel completely uncomfortable not doing ever again.

Through this event, the conversation that ensued the event, and my role as a facilitator I understand now that there are certain actions and everyday things that we all do that perpetuate the gender restrictions.

I think the event did a good job introducing gender norms and restrictively to people who might not be as exposed to these notions. First we must understand what society expects (the two boxes; man and woman) to learn how to be more inclusive of other people who identify with genders that do not fit into man and woman.

While I was glad to see students my age trying to shed light on gender and how we as a society see these genders, I felt the talk Break the Box on Monday evening to be less than stellar. I could see that the members of the Intergroup Dialogue Project put a lot of thought into their presentation and genuinely did want to discuss how gender norms affect our lives daily. Our group brought up different examples of how different occupations and toys are gendered (the first thing that came to my mind was that scene in Friends when Ross doesn’t want his son Ben to play with a Barbie and instead forces him to play with a GI Joe).

One of the more interesting exercises they introduced in this talk was an activity that was inspired by a Ted Talk. There were two physical boxes: A Womanbox and a Manbox. Inside each of those boxes were occupations and roles that were seen by society as respectively female and male. After picking up a card from each, I saw I got “supporter” as the female role and “director” as a male role. And this did make sense to me, as there is indeed an absence of female directors in Hollywood. Thinking further on the term “supporter,” this can mean not just supporting someone in their time of need (because I see that as a neutral construct; anyone can help someone out), but also in regards to Hollywood, there has been also much attention onto the fact that the number of strong female protagonists is dramatically fewer than the number of male protagonists. Oftentimes, females are supporting characters; especially in the case of comedies, female supporting characters tend to be one-dimensional and only serve to promote the plot of the male protagonist. So I agreed with this exercise.

However, one of the exercises beforehand threw me off. Before taking part in the discussion, the presenters had us all fill out a survey before coming to the event, asking us “What traits do you find attractive in a man or a woman?” For a man, I filled out strong, independent, and competitive, and for a woman, I put independent in addition to strong-willed and determined. To my surprise the next day, during the presentation, when they collected the results from the survey, all of those attributes fell under the title of “What IS a man or woman.” And these resulted in characteristics like “strong, aggressive, big dick,” for a man and “weak, compassionate, sensitive” for a woman. Having an attraction towards men or women and defining what a man or woman is serves two completely different purposes. I looked at the results they compiled (a majority of them not even from the surveys we filled out, but taken merely from the internet) and was in complete shock. I do not see women as weak at all. I look at my mother, who is independent and self-sufficient and can be aggressive at times, and don’t see someone who absolutely has to be weak. So I found fault with this.

Overall, I found this event to be very heteronormative and only addressed the gender binary. I took the term “break the box” to be a phrase indicative of attempting to break the box of the gender binary, acknowledging that there were only two genders, not more. They did address that gender and certain gender behaviors were social constructs, but didn’t do anything to address those who identify as gender neutral, are genderfluid, or any other form of gender identification. Because the advertisement for this event had the picture of a spectrum of the man and woman symbols, I figured it would address these issues – maybe additionally what other constructs biologically make someone a man or woman, or talk about intersex peoples as well, because intersex people do exist.

So when I think of “break the box,” I think of the boxes in the doctor’s office that you have to check off when filling out the forms. Are you either A. male, or B. female? Only two boxes are presented with no regard for what people may be feeling inside, just that you somehow have to shove yourself into one box or the other. Instead of trying to understand these boxes like the event had me do, we should be presented with more than 2 boxes, or rather, a spectrum of boxes. Because gender isn’t concrete. At all.

I attended the “Break the Box” event because my friend asked me to for her Intergroup Dialogue class and because it happened to be Rose Scholar event. However, I’m glad I attended because it was very informative and enlightening regardless of what was in it for me.

We started by giving our names and facts about ourselves, and we told to noticed where the girls and boys had placed themselves in the room. For the most part, there were boys on one side and girls on the other (I think it was just a coincidence, but still interesting). Next, we looked at slides that displayed adjectives under the heading “What is a Man?” or “What is a Woman?”. These slides played to obvious stereotypes, striking conversation about how under Man it said aggressive and experienced and for Woman it said weak and innocent. In my opinion, I wouldn’t necessarily agree that some of these words deserved to be on the slides and were mainly there to strike an argument. However, its hard to overlook that in some way or another, everyone has experienced bias based off gender. Personally, I don’t like to be seen as weak, and I don’t like aggressive people in general, so I had a hard time making arguments about the adjective

We also drew cards out of a Woman and Man box, each card saying a career that is either dominated by men or women. I again thought that these were pushing some sort of reaction, when women had careers like “caregiver” or “stripper” and men had cards like “lawyer”, “doctor”, or “pilot”. I found this extremely unfair, because although men may dominate the air, what about garbageman, janitor, or jobs like that. Why only show the less respectable jobs of women and only the good careers for men. Men also work jobs they might not be proud of or didn’t take years of school

All in all, I felt many good points were raised and I discussed interesting topics (like what toys did you play with as a child and how did that shape your future, or how did teachers teach you growing up differently than the other gender), but while some people might think that women are weak and men are aggressive, I hope that generations in the future can progress and men and women can reach full equality.

Gender is made up and the points don’t matter. I’ve known this to be true for a while now. So when I found out that there was an event called Break the Box about gender, I had high expectations.

These expectations were maybe a little too high. I was absolutely pleased with the event as a whole, it just wasn’t what I was expecting.

In the context of the event, “break the box” refers to the characteristics that society tells us men and women should possess. The event was focused on talking about what gender roles are and why they are not always accurate. That is absolutely a conversation that needs to be had. But I was hoping to go beyond that.

To me, “break the box” means to break free of the constraints of gender all together. Gender is a social construct, and we can all let go of it if we choose to. I hoped for an event that focused on that. Maybe an event that highlighted non binary or non conforming gender identities.

Instead, the event started a few steps behind that thought. We never quite made it to that fact that gender is made up. The event was focused on the constraints society places on all of us to fit into one gender box. Once I accepted this, I was able to enjoy the event much more.

There was one activity that I found particularly interesting. We were all given the task of thinking about things that we were proud of our gender for. One of the moderators, who was a woman, talked about the difficulty she had had with this experience. She mentioned that the ways in which she was proud of women always revolved around there ability to do traditionally masculine things. I did not find this to be true in my own thinking.

I am proud of women for being nice to one another in the bathroom. I’m proud of the ease at which we lend each other things that we need. I’m proud of the fact that when I’m walking home at night and I hear someone behind me, I’m always relieved when I realize its another woman. I’m proud of the support women show for one another in the face of adversity. I’m proud of the ways women can relax around one another.

There are a million things I’m proud of women for.

I would have to go very far down on my list to find something that I was proud of women for doing “like men.” Maybe I just prefer traditional femininity to masculinity. Or maybe I don’t think that the only way to be successful is to be successful in the ways men traditionally are.

Either way, I’m glad I went to this event. I was able to talk about some important issues in a relatively safe space with my peers. I hope these conversations extend outside of the event for many of us.

This event was particularly different for me because I was hosting it.  It was part of my IDP (Intergroup Dialogue Project) final assignment and I thought going into it that it would feel like a presentation, as most projects are.  I was entirely shocked by the outcome.  Not only had more people showed up than expected, but the people who did were open to sharing their thoughts and feelings.  

The premise of this event was to talk about the “boxes” that men and women are put into simply because of their gender.  We looked to talk about what the expectations society had for men were and what the expectations society held women to were.  Instead we opened a discussion not only about gender and its impact on our lives, but also a discussion on heteronormativity, a concept that the entire presentation played into.  The fact is that gender is on a scale and people express their gender in many different ways.

It was interesting to note that the discussion was made up predominantly of women and I could not help but wonder if this was because women were more willing to discuss gender, men felt uncomfortable with the topic, or it was a coincidence that this was just how everyone’s project worked out.

While there were many crucial moments in the discussion including many stories told and ideas brought up, the most crucial was when we asked what could be done to begin overcoming these gender stereotypes.  Everyone had different ideas and the fact that we were able to discuss those ideas and start thinking about it was one step closer to breaking the box.

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.

i just got back from this event, and i wanted to write about it now while it was still fresh on my mind. this was the second, discussion-style event i’ve gone to, and i liked this one even more than last week’s (side note: it’s funny how the weeks work with the rose scholar program. i did last week’s events on saturday and this week’s on monday. they’re two different weeks but only two days apart from one another. weird.) i’m going to start with the negatives and get them out of the way. i thought this event would’ve benefited from being longer. it seemed like the group got into its groove discussing the subject matter only to pack up and go soon afterwards. i’m not saying it needed to be four hours or anything, but maybe even another half an hour would have been beneficial. secondly, i thought the weakest part of the event was the part actually pertaining to the boxes. i liked the thought process with them, and it was fun to do something more interactive, but i think that the group had a lot of momentum going in its discussion and the the gendered boxes slowed that down a bit.

now the stuff that i did like. i was impressed with all the questions the moderators had prepared, they took the discussion to many interesting places, and it felt natural. i liked how small the group was as well. everyone had ample time to say what they thought about any particular issue brought up, and to the credit of everyone present, it didn’t feel like only a few of the people did most of the talking. i liked the subject matter of the discussion. as a white heterosexual male, i don’t face adversity very often, but that doesn’t mean that adversity doesn’t exist. i thought everyone in the group had a lot of wisdom and insight into the nature of gender inequality, and i was happy to hear all the different perspectives, as well as offer my own.

i’d give this event  a 10/10 ten times. i really liked this one.