[Ian]

Michael Kimmel’s talk on gender was very enlightening in many ways. When he discusses the issues of sexual assault in college and the efforts made to stop these actions, I was struck by what he said because I have had similar thoughts. The main push to help limit sexual assaults has mainly been on the side of women, as Kimmel discusses. These efforts have always perplexed me and seemed as if they were dancing around the true problems and causes of these awful actions. The focus must be switched to the perpetrators instead of the victims. This is the one true way in which we can limit assaults. By making an effort to teach men how to properly act and showing them how wrong this is we can effect real change. I believe that in this case as well as other issues involving gender, we are unwilling to work together to solve problems and drive the genders further apart. Such is the case in some extreme instances of feminism in which the movement has been seen as anti-male or that men are the problem and must be defeated instead of convinced. We must work together in order to create the world we are envisioning. Instead of working toward a separate but equal society and more of an entirely equal society that can coexist. I believe that Kimmel does an amazing job of presenting this by showing the similarities between the genders. The study he presented about marriage and the relationship needed was truly fascinating and I believe that we more often need to look at interactions between genders as peer relationships between two humans instead of rare discussions between people who cannot relate to one another. When we are able to fully incorporate both genders into the conversation and work together to expose the inequality in a productive manner true change can be achieved and gender equality will be a reality instead of a distant dream.

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