Gender Project

Anna Mullen
Introduction to my Gender Project:
As I started brainstorming about topics for this project, I started applying all the different aspects or "ingredients" to my life, and thought about how all these ideas might fit into my life and have possibly molded me into the person I am today. One idea that really stuck out to me is how gender can be seen as socially constructed. This meaning that gender deasn't just exist on the individual level. My more specific topic of interest is gender identity at the interpersonal communication level. This holds the idea that persons influence each other's identities through their interactions with each other.
Growing up with both parents and my older brother, I was always treated with delicacy it seemed like, especially when it came down to how my dad treated my brother, versus how how he treated me. Being the youngest, and a girl, it seemed like i was alway handled with kid gloves, and was expected to be effectionate, sensitive, and easily offended (In my dad's eyes anyways). Looking back, this treatment actually had me in a self-fulfilling prophecy when I was around my parents, and their relatives. Interestingly though, during this same time when I would go spend time with my friends and not be around my parents for awhile, I would take on a more dominant, independent and sometimes insensitive personality. My friends would see this as normal, and would even help shape and confirm my identity when I wasn't at home with my family. To this day I notice the person I am and how I talk to my friends differs from the person I am around my dad and sometimes brother, which is why I find the topic of interpersonal communication so interesting. I'd like to see how different groups or individuals in a person's life, whether its their family, friends, co-workers or classmates, shape and redefine parts of their personality and ultimately create their gender identity through communication.

DeFrancisco, Victoria L. (Victoria Leto) and Catherine Helen Palczewski. (2007). Communicating gender diversity : a critical approach
deVito, J. A. (2004). The interpersonal communication book, 10th ed. Boston: Pearson-Allyn & Bacon