Post for 03/04: Panel discussion

On the first day of the panel discussion with historical characters, it was noticeable that most of the figures are women and they come from 19 to 21st century. It is understandable that people have more knowledge about the recent figures that they chose to be them. Even though, all the students were advised to select a figure that could represent gender, science, and technology, I feel like most of them decided to represent a figure that is more focused on gender. The figures represented by some of the students are the ones who have tried intentionally or unintentionally break the gender binary and the stereotypes of women.

Interestingly, on the second day of the panel discussion with imaginary characters, I realized that imaginary characters tend to exaggerate or inverse the gender stereotypes. For example, Wolverine is a good example that is an exaggeration of male gender stereotype; example of Mokoto is an example that is an inverse of gender stereotype, but still with a glamorous body figure that exaggerates female gender. It is puzzling that such pattern occurs and I wonder why one group of students decided to become historical figures that have tried to minimize stereotypes of women and the other group decided to become imaginary figures that somewhat emphasize the gender stereotypes.

My interpretation is that humans get to fulfill their desire to experience extreme gender roles by creating or applying themselves into imaginary characters. However, we have learned from history that emphasizing gender roles just create stereotypes and harms people in terms of creating gender equality society. Therefore, I think it is reasonable to assume that the actual historical figures have tried to minimize the extreme gender stereotypes while imaginary characters show emphasis on gender stereotypes.