I thought Monday's lecture on native gender roles was really interesting. I think gender is really important in that roles differ not only across cultures, but within them- especially in terms of women and homosexuality or cross gender. I especially found myself trying to imagine a strong group of women who are used to hard labor, raising children, and having extreme sexual freedom react to the patriarchal (dare I say archaic) Europeans and their thoughts on the role of women.
I just imagine how I would react if a group of smelly, infested men came up to me and tried to tell me what I could and could not do. Especially if they told me I was basically worthless without a male figure in my life. This is probably coming across as extremely feminist, which is not my meaning, but the more lectures I hear, the more disgusted I become about how our "free" nation was "founded".
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I thought the aspect of that lecture that was especially interesting was how tolerant Native Americans was toward homosexuality. Even the ancient Greeks and Romans did not have a problems with this and yet in modern times there is so much homophobia going around. It makes me wonder if we are really as advanced a society as we would like to believe or if we are just as backward in our thinking as some of the societies thought of as "primitive" and "uncivilized." It was also nice to see women given more responsibility than cooking and changing diapers. I was very interested in the women's role in politics and decision making. It would be nice if some of that respect for a woman's competency and abilities would translate to certain modern Americans.
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