The third party love affair

It was the impressive moment that we enjoyed the presentation of gender studies last week. I still remember there was a interesting topic-The third party love affair.

Should we accept the third party love affair? In traditional China, there was quite different view of love affair which is far from what we think nowadays. Male is regarded as the most powerful character in the traditional family and them can have more than one wife. We call it "three wives and four concubines. Since the main role of female in the traditional China is to procreate so male prefer they have more son to provide the labor force. It seems quite reasonable for male in old china to have the third party affair.

In the these day, the third party love affair occur because people are curious for love relationship and people have the voracious desire for new girl friends and boy friends. Some people may feel annoying and boring to the current partners. In my view, I think the most romantic thing in love is that we can be with each other forever and we can see the lover become older. It is definitely unacceptable we should not have the third party love affair because it equals to the betraying the lover and forsaking the current love relationship. It sounds very immoral.

Having an affair

(Naomi Cheung)

People’s views of love are different between ancient periods and modern times. People in the past believe that love will never change until death, most of them have promises of being together for ever. Although some of their marriages are arranged by their parents, they are loyal to their couples. The mutual respect between husband and wife makes their marriages stable, so the problems of divorce are rare in the past.

However, people nowadays advocate free love and care a lot about instantaneous feelings rather than lifetime commitment. Also, their minds are less conservative nowadays, they easily fall in love with someone, even have sex with their lovers before get married. Some of them may get marry because of being pregnant. Their bases of love are not developed completely, so they do not fully understand each other. It easily result in the consequences of having an affair. There are some celebrities in Hong Kong who was exposed their bad news about having an affair, such as Roy Chow (周永恆) and Joe Nieh (倪震).

In my opinion, I think that having an affair is incomprehensible. I think that marriage is not just a paper, it is a promise which means the loyalty to their partners that will not abandon each other. Having an affair not only negatively affect the relationship between the couple, but also break the hearts of each other. Some families torn to pieces because the husband or wife have an affair, some of them may have children. Broken marriage will also affect the children’s life, none of them want their parents to divorce. Therefore, I think the most innocent one who suffer from the tragedy is the children.

Who should be stay-at-home nowadays, Dad or Mum?

(Cyril Lee)

"Man are breadwinners and women are homemakers," many elders always mention, "man should earn money from outside and women take care of the children and serve the husband well." In my opinion, this statement should have a discretion as every families have their own division of different responsibilities.

Working mum work a "second shift" housekeeping and taking care of the children after the first shift of paid work outside home. Although there is little evidence of this change, there is also a lot of talk and hope of this changing. With the busy lives, the mum starts to complain about the husband lack of participation in domestic work which they think the men are domestic marginalized.

Women have maternal instinct and they "protect" the home as their sphere of dominance. Besides, women were trained to do domestic work during their growths. Not like the women, men were not trained to do domestic work. Since this, in some working mum's eyes, the men are assumed as incompetent.

Men are unwilling to be underestimated by women so some of them both work and do domestic work or even become stay-at-home dad to prove that they can strut the home by even more or fully participate so nowadays, there are more and more stay-at-home dad.

More and more working mum and stay-at-home dad are accepted. The reasons of this phenomenon are very long stories. I think the main reason of this phenomenon is both genders can have education and start to become open-minded. With the daily lives with different genders and realization on the basis of what we experience, we start to accept the extraordinary masculinity and femininity, for example, tough girl and tender boy so thinly, different families accept the concepts of stay-at-home dad and working mum.

Expression about Male and Female sexuality through Lyrics

(Chan Ting Yan)

 Nowadays, lots of people would like to express their feeling about gender through the popular culture such as pop songs and movies. They express the feelings on different notions such as masculinity and femininity & male and female sexuality. In the following, I would like to introduce some songs to all of you. 

  
Trey Songz - Slow Motion

“So shawty let your hair down, take a sip.
Go and put this joint between your lips.
Baby, why don’t you make yourself comfortable.
While I go and put this tongue on you.
So tell me when you ready. I’m a speed it up for you just for a second.
Just for a second. Then I’m a slow it back down and keep it steady.”

This song is written by Trey Songz. It talks about men and female He takes off all the burden of the yoke and express how joyful when men do sex with women. He tries to tell out the details Men should know how to please the women's heart and women can get what they want through sex.

Rihanna - Skin

“When my body’s screaming out now. I know you hearin’ it,
you got me moaning now. I got a secret that I wanna show you, oh.
I got secrets imma drop em to the floor, oh.
No teasing, you waited long enough. Go deep.”

This song is written by Rihann. It talks about the women desire to have sex and  possessive desire for the men's body. They appreciate their brown skin tone and everythings special to them. It also express the feelings when women do sex with the men and they are excited about it as the men can satisfy their needs.

In the old years, the cultures were conservative. People did not express themselves in an open way. They avoid to talk about sex and express their feelings on sex to the others. Nevertheless, people change their mind and become open mind nowadays, they can express their feelings about sex through the popular culture such as pop songs. It s really a great leap forward. 

Dove: #Beautify Campaign

#Beautify Campaign 

(Priscilla Poon)

In our society, women have to be tall, slim and with white skins in order to be regarded as beautiful and perfect. Women without these qualities somehow might lose confident in themselves as they think they cannot fit into the society and to be the desired kind of women people normally favored.

Popular magazines such as Marie Claire, Harper's Bazzar and Cosmopolitan usually uses women with perfect figures on the cover. People will then have a misinterpretation about the ideal body shape that a woman should have in order to be beautiful. The photos on the cover page might also been edited in order to be more perfect and appealing to the readers.

In regard to the situation, Dove has established the #Beautify campaign, which aims to hinder art directors’ and designers’ efforts to digitally transform models’ bodies into society’s idea of “perfection,” Dove created a free Photoshop application advertised as a skin glow effect. However, when applied, it actually returns the file to its original state, deleting all photoshop work done to the image of the model. Dove is hoping to catch designers in the act and make them think about the repercussions of their actions.

Video about the campaign

Dove has run this campaign successfully which did arose the awareness of others about manipulation done by different magazines towards the impression of a "perfect" woman body. In the video it mentions that " Making the point that Real Beauty isn't retouched" which is criticizing the use of photoshop on the pictures in order to make them appealing. Perfect figure doesn't imply real beauty, women who are confident in themselves with their body shape are beautiful. It is not other to judge whether a woman is beautiful or not. Only oneself can judge themselves. One should not live up to others' will and should always be proud and confident.

What is beauty?

(Tsoi Man Kit)

What is beauty? "Beauty doesn’t come from make-up, plastic surgery or any outward success. It comes from inner qualities: grace, style, strength of character and personal confidence." German philosopher Rebekka Reinhard explored that question in her philosophical guide to beauty.

It was the expressed experience to learn what beauty is in the gender studies course on 15 October 2015. Actually , the word "beauty" have different means in various countries, cultures and ages. Since every individuals have their own views of beauty that affected by their local environment , culture and media. Even living in a place with similar culture, people have their perception of beauty. What's more,  humans are not living in the same place! I know in ancient year of China, Tang Dynasty, Chinese prefer the women who are obesity because they think it is the symbol of "Rich" and it is easy for procreating. 

In Western countries, most people like to have dark skin. It is controversial because the girls in China eager to have pale skin. Also, in north of Thailand, people think women with long neck is attractive. most of women are forced to wear many rings in their neck so that they will grow with the long neck. In ancient China the women are forced to bind their feet so the they have "three-inch golden lotuses" , however it must the painful and cruel.
In these days, the advertisement create the beautiful women image with the slim body. Some model are forced not to eat more than three meals so they can get the super slim body. Some women may have anorexia and will dead.

If you ask me what is beauty? I think the most important thing is the inner qualities: grace, style, strength of character and personal confidence (as Rebekka Reinhard mentioned before). Beauty is we have the healthy body and emotion that is our soul. Beauty is not what people want you are but what you want to be. Beauty comes out from our soul but not just for the appearance.

Intersex, boy or girl?

(Naomi Cheung)

Intersex in humans and other animals refers to a variation in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, or genitals which do not allow an individual to be distinctly identified as male or female. Such variation may involve genital ambiguity, combinations of chromosomal genotype and sexual phenotype other than XY-male and XX-female. Intersex infants and children, such as those with ambiguous outer genitalia, may be surgically and / or hormonally altered to create perceived more socially acceptable sex characteristics. According to the medical investigation, 1% newborns cannot be defined the genders. IS patients may feel uneasy and distress because of their gender. Those cases of intersex give rise to the wildest attention and criticism from the society. Under such social gaze, they may suffer from discrimination.

There is a japanese drama which is adapted from a comic about intersex. The main character is an Intersex, she studied at kindergarten by using male identity. Therefore, she acted like a boy and loved playing soccer. However, she noticed that she is an intersex when she grew up, then she started to live with her female identity. When her classmate knew that she is an intersex, they started to ignore and edge her out. Intersex’s bitters of life are narrated by this drama. Also, it brings out deep introspection to the public.

In my opinion, genders are innate, no one can choose their genders when they are born. The vexations and pains of becoming an intersex are difficult to understand. Everyone is unique and inestimable. We have no rights to criticize and discriminate against others. They need our concern and support because no one is born to be contempt. Although we cannot provide material support for them, but we can show our love and respect.