December 6

Yesterday I met up with some friends to study for tests and finals. We talked about schoolwork a lot and I told one of my friends that my microbiology teacher constantly talks about Nobel Prize winners and how I think it’s ridiculous that they’re all male. Furthermore, in my Polish Culture class a group made a presentation about famous polish scientists that influenced science as we know it, and what do you know? They’re all male. What about Marie Curie? She left a giant footprint in chemistry, however, no one mentioned her. My friend that goes to a different school chimed in and said that her genetics teacher is a female and she only talks about other female geneticists and never about the male ones. I thought that this was quite interesting. I think it’s ridiculous that we can’t find a balance. It seems like males always choose other males when it comes to examples and females always choose other females because they feel like they have to catch up and prove something. I don’t understand why a class cannot find a balance. I think this is interesting because that’s what I chose to write my paper about, well a variation of it. I think it’s ridiculous that women cannot find the balance between work and family and instead are forced to chose one path, because if they choose both it will mean that they are sacrificing performance on both and it’s as if they are doing a poor job in both aspects. Another thing that I found that bothered me was something that I heard in church today. My priest kept talking about how women are not allowed to be priests and how many feminists now think that it’s unfair that they can’t be something that a man can. He then said something along the lines that it’s okay if women can’t do everything because not all men can do the same things as women – for example have children. Men are incapable of this job and so it’s perfectly acceptable for them not to be priests because that’s a job that only men can do. I understand his way of thinking but at the same time I found it to be a little bit ridiculous. if we apply the same logic to other things we might as well say “oh it’s okay for women not to be doctors or CEOs because they have other jobs that are specific for them that most men can’t do like stay at home, cook and clean.” I feel that logic can be spread out to accommodate that and next thing you know you once again have the jobs that are specific for women and once again high positions will be only a “man’s” job. If we apply this logic we’ll go backwards in time and undo all the progress that has been made thus far for women. However, at the same time I don’t think that an extreme feminist approach should be taken that states that women are owed more than men because of all the hardships and I don’t think that we should degrade men. I just think middle ground should be reached. Maybe I’m just being irrational and unrealistic but I’m just saying that it would be nice to see equality.