For this week’s journal entry, choose one of the questions/directives below and write your own answer/response in at least 250 words:
1. Mark the places in the essay “Between the Sexes, a Great Divide” where Quindlen, after describing “the first boy-girl party we attended” (paragraph 1), returns to it. How does she turn an event into a symbol of male-female differences?
2. Consider Quindlen’s statement, “I’ve spent a lot of time telling myself that men and women are fundamentally alike, mainly in the service of arguing that women should not only be permitted but be welcomed into a variety of positions and roles that only men occupied” (paragraph 4). Does her admission that they are not fundamentally alike mean that women should not be welcomed into male positions and roles? Why?
3. In the essay “The Male Myth,” Theroux makes many negative statements about being a man—or worse, being manly. Do you agree with his assessment of what it means to be a man or to be “manly”? Why or why not?
4. In paragraph 2, Theroux uses similes to describe his feelings about masculinity and femininity, claiming that masculinity is “like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one’s entire life” and imagining “femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness.” Write two similes, one describing your sense of what it is to be masculine, the other describing your sense of what it is to be feminine. How do your similes supplement, or differ from, Theroux’s?
5. In his essay, Theroux says he regards high school sports as a drug far worse than marijuana. Consider his attitude toward sports throughout the essay. How does his sense of sports compare to yours? Explain the differences and similarities in a brief essay. The story “X: A Fabulous Child’s Story” plays off of the premise that one’s environment is the defining factor in shaping one’s identity. Essentially, a baby is seen as a blank canvas on which environmental factors paint an identity. What does the story have to say about identity and its link to socialization, how parents raise their child and peer interaction?
Story 1: https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/27/magazine/the-male-myth.html
Story 2: Attached
