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jlustick's picture

As mentioned in class, I was

As mentioned in class, I was troubled by our search for "gendered language" in poetry. I found myself asking the "so what" question. So I will ask it again. So what if poetry contains gendered language? So what if poetry does not contain gendered langauge? What was the purpose in our employing stereotypes? Did we learn anything valuable from our discussion? I'm honestly not sure. It seems like it might have been more worthwhile to consider why/how gender was used in the poetry. To what extent do poems depend on gender? Why might some poems depend more than others? What does this tell us about gender in society? Also, if we are to argue that poetic langauge is gendered, then is verbal language also gendered? I would argue that it isn't. Language seems to be more a product of our personality and social environment than our gender. I'm starting to feel like this post, similar to Tuesday's discussion, is going in circles- does that signify a dead end or a complex, important matter that my brain isn't yet ready to decode?

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