For this reflection blog post, I’d like to reflect on how the work I’ve done in this class has aided me in learning one of the WGST learning outcomes, specifically 8: Recognize the importance of gender to social and cultural issues, past and present. Most of the works we’ve read so far have focused on women’s experiences of mental illness, or the ways in which mental illness is seen to feminize men. Before taking this class, I hadn’t realized the extent to which a lot of mental health issues are seen as “feminine” or a failure of masculinity, both in the past and present. Today, women are often seen as more emotional than men, while simultaneously those emotions are dismissed as unimportant (historically through the labelling of hysteria, and claiming women are “crazy” or having PMS in the modern day). It’s both fascinating and saddening that this treatment has been going on, in one form or another, for over 200 years. The way that men with PTSD used to be seen as feminine can also be directly connected to the way that public displays of emotion in men is seen as “unmanly” in the modern day.
Nice post, MK. It is very thoughtful, and I am glad that this course is helping to deepen your knowledge of that WGST learning outcome. It is kind of depressing, isn’t it, to contemplate just how historically embedded these issues are. We really have a long way to go!