Gioia7′s Weblog

Ok, my question is from a few weeks back and more of a hypothetical question.

How would the world be be if only the ‘straight’ people were homosexuals and the and the non straight were bisexual. (basically people were switching sexual orientations and homosexuality was no longer the minority) Would the world be better or worse? Would there be more fights and wars? Would bisexuals be discriminated against?

I really have to agree with the working mom and double household labors from the PowerPoint and discussion yesterday. I see it all the time with my parents, which I wouldn’t expect because they’re both European and I thought they would have a different mindset.

I should probably add some background information to make a little more sense in what I’m trying to say. My parents are both Dutch and moved to the Netherlands after they got married when they were 27 something years old. They’re the first people in the family to move to the United States against the wishes of both their parents. They started a bakery in Austin which they ran for a good number or years until a year or so after I was born and then they sold it to Whole Foods.

Ever since then, my dad has been working at home managing our stocks and makes a hobby of buying old cars, fixing them up, and reselling them. My dad can’t work for anybody, he has to be his own boss, so he’s never held a job for very long. My mom can work for others, but she gets bored with some jobs, so she doesn’t stay at a job very long either. She’s finally found one that is flexible enough where she can choose to come into work or not. She works for the school district in Austin as a teacher’s aid, substitutes helper, or a substitute herself, or working in the library; it’s a fantastic job for her because she loves kids and libraries.

But she still has to get up early to wake my brother up for his middle school, make him breakfast and run off to whichever school the district assigned her to. She usually comes home after 5 a little worn out depending on the day, make dinner and bring my brother to diving lessons.

My dad usually helps out, but not enough in my opinion. He’ll start to make dinner- which is pretty limited to a rice, chicken and cauliflower dish, potatoes, and spaghetti. He cannot do laundry and hasn’t even tried to learn it, he’ll just ask me or my mom to iron or wash something for him. He also has issues in cleaning; he throws anything away that isn’t his uses dirty rags to clean up any dust or wipe the floors.

I love and like my dad a lot, but there are times when there’s too much maleness about him that will get on the last of my nerves; he expects to be head of the household and expects everyone to follow his rules and obey him. My mom doesn’t stand up much to him, mainly because it’s never the biggest issue (keep in mind, I’ve only written about the things I don’t like about him-there are plenty good things about him), but I’ve gotten in some huge arguments with him about the way he acts sometimes and how he sometimes is more aggressive than my mom (my parents never fight, or the only ‘fighting’ they have are debates and discussions about difference of interests, but my dad is more pushier and aggressive in arguments and cuts anyone off to put every cent in that he can)

I guess my dad has a lot of stress about ‘having to protect’ the family and probably feels guilty for not having a real job and living so far away from his mom- both my grandparents pester my mom and dad about leaving them and moving here. He probably feels responsible for anything bad that happens and gets defensive anytime we blame him for little things. It’s an odd situation about gender roles, but he is teaching my brother to clean his room and help out around the house, which is good; a house should be run by all members of the family, not just be a haven for one and a hell for another, because that just isn’t fair.

I just wanted to go back to talking about ads for a bit because I’ve noticed now more and more on tv that they are creating a huge division of genders for kids. On one commercial, I saw a miniature play house for girls with a small dish washer, washing machine, baby crib, and many kitchen supplies. I’m probably looking far too much into the commercial, but a part of me still thinks that doesn’t seem completely right; to already teach seven year old girls that they’re going to be mothers and doing all the chores and cleaning.

In the world we live in today, it seems like there are more stay at home dads who will have to learn to clean and cook and do more chores than the mother, so why don’t people put more focus on making that more accepted? I know girls like dolls and houses and they see their mom as an idol, and that’s how they want to act, but there should be more alternatives broadcasts so girls and boys can choose what they want to play with.

That’s why I like that story about the child named X. There were both gender roles mixed up together to make a wonderful child and it’s a shame a lot of parents will push their kids to do gender things, for example boys play sports, girls play dress up. Hopefully one day parents can be open to let his or her child choose to play with or do any sort of activity of their choosing.

My post for today is about again, Wednesday discussions.

Pretty sad that class had ended so soon because it was really going into a good discussion about the rights or wrongs of advertisements and its viewers.

One person had said that she thinks parents should prevent or rather “protect” their kids and block their viewing of certain ads. That doesn’t really make sense because you can’t be with your kid every minute watching what they see. I mean you could, but that wouldn’t make much sense and be a little insane. You can’t always control what your kids watch because they might be watching a show that is suitable for some kids but once break time hits, those commercials are going to be complete opposites of what the show is about. Parents won’t know when those commercials will be on or for how long, so it would be hard to ‘prevent’ their kids from seeing ads unless you’re with them for every minute that they’re home. These kids are going to find out about a lot of things one way or another, and if they don’t get some good guidance or discussion about it they might end up buying a lot of crap believing they aren’t pretty or have the ‘right’ body.

People do see ads most times in the day without realizing it so parents shouldn’t ‘shelter’ what their kids see, I don’t think they should even have that right to choose what their kid sees or doesn’t. (And I mean everything that is around them physically). You can’t drive down the street and tell your children to shield their eyes because of the billboard of a half naked woman on it promoting shoes. A parent should let his or her child see what’s around them and then explain what some ads mean and the idea behind it but not to the point of brainwashing them to only follow that parent’s opinion.

I’m of course not a parent, so I don’t have much experience or I don’t have a right to tell parents how to be around their kids, it’s just my opinions and reaction to what I’ve seen.

One of many wonderful discussions we had on Wednesday had caught my attention because one of the students had hit it right on the nose when he said that people were complaining to friends about his or her significant other not doing anything but never said anything to that S.O. Personally that’s never happened to me because I was raised by a very open European family. My mom and dad have been married for over twenty-five years and they will talk about anything they can think of and if they ever get in an argument, they both say what’s on their mind, but my dad is more inclined to say what’s bothering him more so than my mom. I still have some troubles saying if anything is bothering me, but in the second semester of my junior year in high school I started dating this guy, Keenan, (I’ll probably talk about him a lot) for one and half years and he helped me with talking to him and others and vice versa. He always had things bottled up when I first met him and it was even more difficult for him to tell me what was bothering me in the beginning. We broke up last December but we’ve remained best friends and still can always talk about anything to one another. It’s truly amazing to have one person you can say anything to and not be judged and get the amount of feedback and understanding from.

Where I was going with this was that it is frustrating to see two people have problems with one another and just never say anything about it but to just sit there quietly. I can understand that it is difficult to do so, but it makes the relationship a whole lot harder to deal with if two people can’t even talk to each other about things that bother them. A relationship shouldn’t have to be such hard work; yes, it does require work and effort, but not to the point where a person is unhappy and feels uncomfortable around the S.O. The only solution then is to either come out with whatever that person is feeling or just give up and call it quits and they should only call it quits when they have talked to his or her S.O. and that significant other doesn’t respond.