Code of Gender

 Assigning specific traits or behaviors exclusively to a certain gender, the cultural ideas of how a specific gender is supposed to behave based on stereotypes. Code of gender is a topic of discussion that has sat on our tongues since the break of dawn. Male, females, everything in between and outside of those codes and what that means. A classic story associated with this infamous topic is the biblical text based on the beginning of time and our creation; the story of Adam and Eve, - like many other biblical stories it describes the role of a male and female in society, but  outside of religion as humans, we have evolved from the once known and practiced stereotypes and we rebuilt  the meaning of Gender codes in society. For one being an educated female in the past was considered taboo and unacceptable but now it is considered a valuable addition to a woman's worth, but i  think at the heart of it, these changes were made because a man deemed it acceptable. During our class with Ma'am Tebogo, we highlighted some very interesting conversations such as how we live in a man's world and the male gaze and how there is a sick notion of what masculinity looks like and what it poses on women and their Femininity. A lot of back and forth was made but there was a subtle conclusion that was made as well, that without  context could seem a little far fetched. Absent fathers in households, and  this is not a recent occurrence but it dates all the way back to the apartheid regime and even back to slavery, it was a strategic notion to separate fathers from their families to create unstable households within black communities thus in some way weakening them as an alliance to the oppressors. We saw this when a point was made where ma'am asked us how many of us live in a home where there are both married parents in the same household and an unsettling amount of hands were down.