It is very hard to enter a comment on this weblog when the first person to comment is so thorough about the questions Professor Tatter asks. I agreed with the last comments made by Ashley Black about the stories. I also agreed of each of her descriptions of how the male characters externalize and the female characters internalize their feelings. While I believe that Gretchen shows outward anger through many of the things that she does (obviously), I think she internalizes her anger because of the fact that she has an Invisible Adversary. She takes all of the anger that she can't express out on him, and that, to me, is internalized anger. She is a very rude, angry, and destructive child, but there is anger that she doesn't externalize which is why she imagined her Adversary.

I thought the Forum was very interesting and informative. Like Ashley, I had never thought that there were gender reasons as to why I would vote the way I vote. I would have never thought it had something to do with the way I keep my feelings inside at least. I do agree with it now that I have had time to think it through though. My mother will be voting Democratic in November. She has democratic parents, been divorced, and been threatened violently with a weapon. She is a great example of what Professor Dalto reported. In the past, she has even mentioned to me that she does not support the war, and that is one of the reasons she will be voting Democratic.
I found the Forum today to be much more interesting than the last one we were required to attend not only because I could hear the speaker this time, but also because I felt that these facts could interest anyone male or female, voter or non.

Toward the beginning of Dr. Dalto’s forum, I was interested in his voting statistics. I knew that there was some connection between race, income, education, and religiosity and people’s voting habits; but I have never seen the actual data represented before me. I was surprised at how high the numbers were. For instance, I know most African-Americans voted Democratic; however, learning that they are ninety percent more likely to vote Democratic than Republican shocked me. Dr. Dalto’s list of variables also surprised me. I had never considered that unmarried women are more likely to vote Democratic, while married women are likely to vote Republican. I would have been interested to find if married women voted Republican because women who are married personally agreed with the party’s stances whether or not they were wives, or if married women voted Republican because of the male (who was shown to tend to vote Republican) influence from their spouses.

As for gender stereotypes concerning aggressive and passive behavior, I do think that this relates to every story our class has covered. The stories we have read have portrayed the male personality as active and violent; the stories also showed us the female need to internalize fear and to react in more passive manners. About the comment concerning Gretchen in the story “The Stalking,” I do agree that each case must be considered individually. Dr. Dalto’s connection from these personal reactions to the specific voting habits interested me. His viewpoint on gender, race, and class and how these categorizations influence another aspect of our life showed me the importance of our literature study not just for the abolition of our own preconceived judgments but also for the understanding of the motivations and reactions of the populous. I enjoyed hearing his connection between what we are studying in class to a larger issue such as voting habits.

Professor Dalto’s presentation was not the intellectual highlight of my week. In the twenty-first century, why should be listen to psychologists who associate women with the domestic world and men with the competitive, business world? It is simply not viable. If it is truly not feasible, then why would anyone even assume that hormone differences affect the voting gap?

I have always acknowledged the fact that men and women think differently. This has much to do with the fact that many of my friends are male. That being said, I believe that thought patterns are not particularly founded in sexuality. Men think differently than other men and women think differently than other women. In general, people think differently than other people. That is exactly why we are called individuals. Moreover, masculine and feminine characteristics of women and men are not the only aspects that play into voting. Yes, personal encounters with violence correlate, to some extent in a particular cross section of the population, with views on war, but what about other issues. I do not vote for candidates solely on my anti-war values. I vote based on environmental, economic, and personal concerns. I also vote based on the candidate’s personality, image, and views. Additionally, I am not anti-war because of any violence in my life. I also come from a family strong in religion and other typically Republican stereotypes.

I felt like Professor Dalto was, however unknowingly, stereotyping in order to prove a point about an almost insignificant gender gap in the voting population. Would women admit they were victims of violence? Would men admit they were victims of violence? Where are the ego lines drawn, even in an anonymous survey? What defines violence?

Professor Dalto’s hypothesis was clearly proven in “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” but it was a short story written as a social statement. The gun represented freedom and coming of age, not violence or fear, even after the horse was murdered. In “The Shoyu Kid,” the boys were not so much externalizing violence or punishment as they were externalizing confusion and misunderstanding. They did not understand the shoyu kid so they abused him. He made them question themselves and they did not like how the questioning made them feel. In A Soldier’s Play, Professor Dalto’s point was partially proven, but not entirely. C. J., the victim of the violence did not externalize his emotion. He, like the women that Professor Dalto described, internalized the violence that he felt. He used his music to handle the pain.

As for the female characters that our class has encountered, they do not necessarily follow the patterns set by Professor Dalto either. In “Like That,” Sis does keep her feelings inside, to some extent. However, she spends much time crying and distancing herself from people which, to me, signifies a subtle cry for help. In “The Lesson,” Sylvia is not internalizing the violence she feels. Her comments and actions tell us that. What she does internalize is a determination to be a better person.

I am not saying that Professor Dalto did a poor job with his presentation or his research. I simply disagree with it based on the numerous hours I have spent around both males and females and their reactions to various issues. Because of my sensitivity to individual cases and stories, I will never be a statistician. I am glad that he brought to the table the fact that surveys can have skewed results. People really need to understand the extent to which facts can be altered to display any person’s stance on the issue.

During Professor Dalto's summary, I found my face contorting in awkward positions as if I had eaten a lemon beyond the sour point. The clearest message that I carried from his report was a simple, personal one: My parents and I are in the minority. I always had the sneaky feeling that my family was in the minority with our social values and representing our values with our "blue" vote, but the presentation made by Dalto transformed that feeling into a fact. I found numerous discrepancies with the data presented, and I feel the need to point out four of the most significant.
Discrepancy #1: All four of my grandparents are/were (one is dead) hard-core Republicans; therefore, my parents were raised with very conservative, southern, Republican values drilled into their heads. Yet, my parents now share more moderate, often quite liberal, open-minded values with me....so, in a sense, I do "fit" the model since I support my parents social values. #2: My family members are white. Professor Dalto stated that typically 90% of white Americans vote Republican. My parents, and I in November, will not cast ballots for the Republican candidate based on differing views for the best leadership for our country. #3: Professor Dalto commented that women are more likely than men to vote for the candidate who is against a war in progress. My father is one of the most peaceful men that I know. He avoids conflict and gallantly champions it with eloquent grace when it approaches him. The present conflict in Iraq and the manner in which it has been led that generated even more conflict have greatly upset him as well as my mother, sister, and me. I have never known him to seek revenge against anyone; he would rather forgive and forget than harbor disturbing grudges that eat away the fibers of one's soul. Obviously, he is in the minority for the male gender according to Dr. Dalto's findings. #4: My parents were educated from pre-school to college to their respected seminary education at the prestigious institutions of Duke University and Emory University; they have been married only once to each other; they are financially stable; they made their home in a very "red state"; and both are obviously very religious. Again, they will not cast a ballot for the candidate that the stereotypical person characterized by Dalto's research would vote for.
The implication that I inferred from his data is quite simplistic. "You can't judge a book by its cover." Just because one is a white, educated, religious, middle to upper class male in Alabama doesn't mean that he will vote for a Republican candidate. Gretchen in Joyce Carol Oates's "Stalking" demonstrates the fact that not all females are nurturing. The younger sister in Carson McCullers' "Like That" is another literary example of discrepancies with Dalto's findings. She used her anger as a weapon striking her sister in deeds and words instead of harboring guilty feelings for experiencing that anger.
Though Dalto's research highlights the majority of the voting public, I identify with the minority.

I agree with Professor Dalto's hypothesis about the difference between men and women. I was suprised to find that the data was not conclusive. In my experiences with the situations in Dr. Dalto's speech the men have been starting or retaliating and the women, myself included, have been the pasificts and the frightened ones. It probably does go back to basic chemicals and male and female roles in society. In the story "Like That" the older sister experienced something unusual with her boyfriend and as far as the reader can see she does not get mad or violent she just cries, shakes, and become introverted. The little sister is different however, she does get uspet at the situation she has no control over and wants "to hit" things. This is propbably not a typical female response but she was a bit of a tomboy and perhaps at that age she didn't have as much estrogen as she would later. An opposite story to that was a reaction from a young male in "The Man Who Was Almost a Man." This young boy reacts to almost all situation with anger and he really wants revenge on his co-workers, boss, and family for his life and responsibilities. He eventually runs away from his problems which possibly a typical young person reaction. Anyway I was slightly confused by the data collected by Dr. Dalto's studies because my experiences in my life and the experiences in this literature is conlusive with the typical gender roles.

I have never had any Sociology classes or thought very much about the gender gap and why it happens, so Dr. Dalto's lecture was very enlightening for me, especially since I will be voting for the first time in November. I found it intersting that Prof. Dalto's Biological hypothesis and nurturing hypothesis were found to be invalid. They both appeared to be logical reasons for the gender gap in voting. I completely believed that the two hypotheses were going to be proven valid. There I sat agreeing with the fact that all women are emotional, empathetic, non-violent, and nurturing; a stereotype that I had just argued against in my first paper for Dr. Tatter's class. How funny. Ah, but then I was soon brought back to the reality that stereotypes are often wrong. The invalidness of Dalto's first two hypotheses proved this.

Throughout Dr. Dalto's lecture I thought about if any of his hypotheses could be proven true in the way I plan to vote. I suppose I am anti-Bush because my parents are liberal democrats who are anti-Bush. But I am also a woman. Am I anti-Bush because of my estrogen? I have never been violently threatened or harmed, so that can't be it. I suppose I could explore the reasons why I am anti-Bush some more, but this is not a political science web log, and I don't want to get verbally bashed by any republicans who read this.

In "The Man Who Was Almost a Man," Dave associates having a gun (violence) with masculinity. Which, according to Dalto's study, is how most men think in America, or at least in Alabama. In the earlier part of the story, Dave throws a tantrum when his mother doesn't give him his way. (a bit like the study done with the toddler that Dalto referred to.) I found it interesting that Dave reacts like, according to Dalto, the typical male toddler. And when he is found out for shooting the mule, he begins to cry. Hmmm...according to our society, isn't that a bit "feminine" for a "man?"

The characters in "The Shoyu Kid" perfectly illustrate the male "fear factor." The boys reacted in such a violent way toward the Kid because, perhaps their testosterone, but most likely because they had been treated violently by the American military. And, as Dalto has suggested, men react to violence with more violence.

Dr. Tatter didn't suggest this story, but I noted something about "Love Problem" while listening to Dr. Dalto. While talking about the differences of men and women's reactions toward violence, Dalto stated, "If you want a life that is free of violence, have only girl friends." Maybe this is another reason the man in "Love Problem" wanted the "Utopian" lesbian lifestyle. This brought up another question for me. Do gay men and lesbian women react to violence differenty than heterosexual men and women, and how does this come into play with Dalto's study and with our analysis of gender roles in class?

I also thought of another random senario while listening to Dr. Dalto. What would the gender gap be if a woman were running for the presidency in this election? Would a republican female president take Bush's same actions in Iraq? What if this woman had been a victim of a violent crime?

I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Dalto's lecture, as well as Dr. Hubbs', and Dr. Smith's. It continues to fascinate me how so many aspects of the intellectual world (history, music, politics, the physics of flight) can be applied to stories about gender, race, and class. And also that we can read a story, discuss it, hear a lecture on something completely random, and formulate new understandings of the original story.

Even though there was a lot of incorrect accusations made by Dr. Dalto in his lecture, I don't believe they all were invalid. There is a gender gap in the United States between men and women when it comes to voting. I don't think it if fair to say that all women are one way and that all me are the other. I do believe women are more nurturing than men. But on the other hand, a lot of women were for going to Iraq. No one is going to want their child to be the one that might be killed in Iraq, but they believe in the cause.
The lecture was very interesting and I felt as if I was in my Political Science class. My favorite part of the lecture was when Dr. Dalto said, "women are full of estrogen and men are full of testosterone." The children expirament was very interesting, how the boys pushed down the wall to get to their mother. I do believe boys are more agressive than girls, there are exceptions to every sterotype though. A lot of the stereotypes that were made in the lecture would probably apply better to the 1960's rather than 2004. Women are treated a lot more equally to men, and they over lap in their behavior. Women now a days can be just as violent and agressive as men. There are women that fight in Iraq a long side men. When looking at Statistics women are less likely to spank their child, they are more likely to be loving and nurturing. Just like in "The Man who was Almost a Man", there was a young man trying so hard to break away from his youth. It is so important for guys to become "A Man", just like it is for a woman. In the story "Like That" Marlin became an adult by having to deal with Adult problems. If you compare these stories to "The Shouyu Kid" you will see how authors protray boys to more agressive than girls. While Dave was firing a gun, Marlin is crying, and the shouyu kids are about to beat someone up. In the stories that we read, the authors show the readers that boys are more aggressive than women.
I have babysat a lot of different children throughout the past couple of years and the boys have always been a lot more abusive than the girls. Girls are more likely to come up and hung you, the boys hit. This isn't always the case, but it is just more likely. I agree with a lot of the stereotypes made by Dr. Dalto, but that is probably because I fall in most of the catagories that he described for women. There are a lot of different points you can argue, like the ones above in the other students comments.

I found Professor Dalto's lecture to be quite interesting. Although I knew that there was a gender gap, I don't guess I had ever looked at the reasons why. Along with his hypotheses, I made a few of my own throughout his speech. First, religious people (esp. women) are more likely to vote republican. I believe this is because democrats are liberal and tend to favor abortion and those kinds of things. Most religious people are taught to see this as murder and will vote the other way. Second, married women tend to vote republican. I see this all the time in my hometown. Because males in Alabama tend to be republican, they can sway the vote of their wife. She asks who he is voting for and he says Bush, and she will go along. That tends to be very popular today.

Most women are anti-war so this war today will influence some voters. One can look at it either way in this case though. Bush invaded Iraq because of the threat of WMD, but in every speech Kerry gives, he flaunts that he is a Vietmam vet. As all should know, Vietnam was not the most popular war either.

Dr. Dalto's topic of Security Moms was interesting but brought a point to mind. Women don't want to be there because they want to care for them and use diplomacy instead of force. Dr. Dalto said basically treat them like children. Folks, terrorists are different than children. Remember 9/11...children don't do that.

I found Professor Dalto's results from his study to be very puzzling, making me wonder about the validity of his study in the first place. There seemed to be quite a few shortcomings and limitations to his results which made me question the effectiveness of his tests. Without delving into the possible statistical errors, I'll say that I too was slightly puzzled by Dalto's results showing that factors of nature and nurture were shown not to valid predictors for voting behavior between the genders. The gender gap is also apparently extremely small anyway, which makes me skeptical of the concepts of nature and nurture, since they did not seem to affect voting.

Since the results do only show the conclusions gathered from a study on voting behavior, this new nature/nurture gap could be explained away in theoretical discussion on why voting habits are different and are not valid factors in the tiny gender gap. Voting seems to me like such an individual choice that gender might not have that significant of an effect on, but I do not want to focus too much on voting since that is not my goal.

What this new gap does seem to imply is that a person might be in more control of themselves, having more personal, moral responsibility than we used to think. If nature and nurture are not valid for determining this kind of behavior in men and women, then apparently a person does not seem to be as subject to various external influences as once thought. However, this is still difficult to prove or even use to disprove our beliefs about nature/nurture. While I might claim this new theory, I still doubt the complete validity of it and its potential discrediting of the alternative nature/nurture.

If this new theory is favored over the alternative, we are forced to redraw our lines around the definitions of masculinity and femininity. They become what the individual makes of them. They are no longer a social norm but an individual choice or identity. Even with gender today, the lines are already beginning to blur as we question what makes something masculine or feminine, and where the border can be drawn on gender. This brings us back to what still defines the two, and at least one uniting factor that seemed effective in determining male/female opinions was the fear factor.

The fear factor, apparent use of violence, intimidation, etc, still showed a slightly significant difference between genders. According to the results gathered, men were obviously more likely to externalize their aggression through physical punishment and retaliation, which I nod my head in agreement to because that seems to be the way things are. Women, on the other hand, were identified as being more likely to internalize their aggression, sympathizing with victims, etc. which also makes clear sense to me. However, I am reluctant to accept such generalizations, since there are always exceptions to each side of the argument, but it seems that these sorts of perceptions of the differences between men and women are commonplace in much of the literature we read.

In the example of male's aggressive tendencies, even the young Japanese boys in "The Shoyu Kid" support this notion of masculinity. The whole idea of these young boys experiencing war through the barriers of an internment camp and how they interact with others is very interesting. Jackson (Hiroshi) could be the epitome of a Japanese bully: overly aggressive, tough, and very authoritative. His ideas of masculinity apparently stem from his older brothers, and allusions to John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart are references to the influence of American popular culture on the young boys. The boys did not seem to feel that guilty about bullying the Shoyu Kid at first, though when the real confrontation comes, Jackson really is the only one who cannot seem to relent with this aggression and violence against the Shoyu Kid. This case would definitely the support of male aggression, even in boys of such a young age, and their externalization of their anger creates a startling account of male violence.

Contrasted to this notion of males externalizing their aggression, females are thought to internalize more, and Sylvia in "The Lesson" could be seen. Her resentment of Miss Moore and her "lessons" seemed to have been internalized to a higher degree. She was often described as brooding over her situation and just hating those around her more than she actually was using violence to show her discontent. There were indeed several instances where she did engage in physical violence against the other kids, though it seemed to be fairly mild in nature, being more a sign of her own anger at the situation than at the person themselves. Towards the end, there are more references of her feeling hurt, even betrayed, by her friend who showed interest in Miss Moore, and many of these feelings were clearly internal. This better understanding of Sylvia was due in part by her role as narrator, but the notion that girls internalize more of their feelings is clearly seen throughout the story and certainly does not discredit the generalization earlier stated.

This whole concept of male and female behavior being determined by this "fear factor" is obviously not enough to stand alone as a valid theory. It will not always explain characters, and not every character will reflect this concept either. Exceptions are widespread, but it does give another insight into better explaining and analyzing the characters read about in class.

There aren't often absolutes when it comes to dealing with people. One cannot really say that a certain race, gender, type of person will always respond or act like this, but there are tendencies and past experience that can be used to judge how, in general, a person will react. I think some good evidences of that are in the first three stories Dr. Tatter mentioned. In "The Man Who Was Almost a Man", the boy takes action against the things that he believes to be an injustice to him. He ends up shooting the mule as a result of his strong desire to shoot the gun. A girl who had been in the same situation might have just let the injustice boil inside of her and never actually done anything about it. The main character in the story, being a boy, took action in the story especially at the end when he runs away. "The Shoyu Kid" is also an example of the way males tend to respond to things. The boys in the story were appalled at the actions of the other boy, and they reacted externally by bullying and beating up the other boy. In "A Soldier's Play", the reaction is also external in the form of a murder. Woman tend to internalize things, as shown in the story "Like That." The older sister has obviously gone through something traumatic but instead of letting it out on someone or taking action she primarily internalized it. She become quiet and aloof to her family and her little sister. Even the little, who was more the "angry hard-boiled" type, internalized most of her reaction to the events. Most of her turmoil was in the form of thoughts and mental arguments and resolutions.

Ok, my responses are basically going to sound like everyone else's. I was actually pretty surprised to learn from Dr. Dalto's lecture that hormones have nothing to do with the biological hypothesis. At first I agree with the whole nurturance hypothesis about women being peacekeepers at home and overseas, but now that I think about it it doesn't correspond with what we have read or actually at my house.

I'm a peacekeeper at heart, however that has nothing to do with how I was raised. My mom was not the peacekeeper at home, if anything she was the instiagtor. She's really combative and not really empathetic at all. The females in the stories we have read in class are prime examples of why having more estrogen does not mean that one is empathetic or nurturing. For example, Sylvia in "The Lesson" seems sort of like a hard ass. People associate aggressiveness with men and she is an example of how that is not true, like when Syliva stomps on Sugar's foot in order to stop her from expressing her opinion. Similar to Sylvia (but definitely more extreme) is Gretchen in "Stalking." Because of how society views women, does that mean that we're not supposed to be aggressive? It is strange reading a character like Gretchen because of her anger towards the Invisible Adversary. Women aren't usually seen like that.

However, "Like That" portrays the older sister as the victim and she does interalize her feelings, and that could be why I identified with her. I associate women with being sympathetic towards victims, constantly internalizing emotions, and really being the peacekeepers. Now I realize that not all women are like that.

And men...I just always thought that they were aggressive and insensitive. For instance, Dave in "The Man Who Was Almost A Man." He associated becoming a man with getting a gun. To me, guns suggest aggressive behavior and proves my belief just a little more.

Through Dr. Dalto's lecture I found that women are still stereotyped as the more sensitive and passive of the two genders. On many occasions, he brought up the issue of women were not willing to retaliate when abuse or attacked. He said that men were more likely to plot revenge on an attacker. As a woman, I feel quite the contrary. If some one hits me, I know that the last thing on my mind is running away crying. I feel that it has nothing to do with how much testosterone or estrogene a person has; it has more to do with how a person is reared or what he or she is accustomed. There is a very thin line between being a bully and standing up for yourself.

As we discussed in class, not every man is thinking about killing someone or fighting, in general, like in the story "Love Problems". This man really sensitive , caring, and emotional, everything Dr. Dalto's report says most women are. So in my opinion, the gaps in the election have nothing to do with just men and women, it has to do with the person's mind set.