Padd Solutions

This video clip from the MTV show, Jersey Shore shows one of the women on the show being punched in the face by a man at a bar. While this clip has become an internet sensation, it raises the question about how today's youth are learning about healthy, longlasting relationships? Who are the current role models for youth?

When our parents were young, they watched shows like Degrassi Junior high or Family Ties, where every story had a moral. Most of these shows modeled good relationship building skills such as communication, trust, respect and understanding. For example, in the show Who's the Boss, when Tony tries to teach the kids to fight he says "You never fight unless you have to" and Angela tries to tell the kids to walk away when a fight occurs. The entire episode is a lesson in conflict resolution.



Where are the moral lessons in today's media? One Tree Hill? Cheating, lies, physical violence? How are we supposed to learn to build long lasting relationships, when drama and broken hearts are so glorified in the media?

Pedagogies and Life Histories of Non-Heterosexual Physical Educators.

Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Seattle, WA, April 10-14, 2001). This research was supported by the Virginia Horne Henry Fund for Issues in Women's Physical Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This paper draws on recent poststructural, psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer theorizing to analyze progressive pedagogies described by homosexual physical educators and professors. It is based on two life history projects conducted with physical educators. The overall purpose of the research was to examine the social construction of female sexualities within the physical education profession. The teachers' personal narratives described how their identities (whether they were racial, gendered, or sexual) shaped their pedagogies. One teacher came out as a lesbian to her students each year in a planned manner, then formally used her lesbian identity to illustrate the classroom management principle of pride as an element of respect. Another teacher made explicit the link between her lesbian desire and her ethical response as a teacher, though that link was only articulated in non-teaching conversations and was not part of a formal anti-homophobic pedagogy. Two other teachers' narratives made overt ties between racial identity and pedagogy. They outlined direct links between their teaching and different forms of racism. The links between lesbian identity and anti-racist responses were less explicit. (Contains 46 references.)

I just watched this funny little video about gender roles. Sure, it's making light of the subject, but it makes me think of the difference in gender role stereotypes between my life and my sister's lives. My sister married a man who believes in all the stereotypes shown in this video. She does all the cooking and cleaning, he takes out the garbage and drinks beer with his buddies. To me, that is so outdated and not really acceptable. My partner and I are equals in our relationship, and if anything he does more cooking and cleaning because he works from home. Some feminists would argue that my relationship is "healthier" than my sisters.

However, when I talk to my sister about it, she says that even though she's very busy (she's a Phys. Ed. teacher), she she doesn't mind doing all the housework and being in a very stereotypical relationship. She said that she knew what she was getting into when she got married and that her and her husband have an agreement -- she does the housework and he does the yard work (although she loves chopping wood - they live on a farm). I think that as long as her and her hubby are upfront with each other than that works for them. Their relationship is still grounded in respect, and therefore it's just as healthy as any relationship that attempts to challenge stereotypical gender roles.

What are some stereotypica gender roles? This video is a fun overview that generates many questions:

For many people, gender is an easy thing to define. I am a girl, I am not a boy. We have been raised since we were babies to identify with being one and not the other? But what about those who do not easily accept the labels or norms that have been placed on them?