homosexuality and breaking down the "system"

I enjoyed my project on same sex relationships so much I gave my mom a little lesson the day before Kayla and I presented and walked her through our slideshow. Always having been skeptical and always joking about homosexuality, I think I really taught her something. I loved seeing how she would stop me from going to the next slide because she was still reading or still taking in a picture. It's always cool watching people learn and feel for others--to begin to understand.

Something we discussed in last week's class struck me as very interesting, too. I brought up the point that the men in "The Roaring Girl" seemed most aggrivated and even threatened by the fact that Moll gave the impression and truly believed that she didn't need a man. In a patriarchal society it is important that the man be NEEDED by the woman. Men are physically stronger and are supposed to be caregivers, in theory. I feel as though the male characters react so harshly and degrading because they worry about what would happen if women were to no longer need a man to take care of them or protect them. They are threatened by the upset of the system. This can also be said about the feelings towards homosexuality of that time and of ours, today. We see it in the campaign against gay marriage and general feelings of misunderstanding and sometimes hate towards the threat of the "other" that homosexuality supposedly poses.

So many problems came up about the cross-dressing of females in the Renaissance mainly [I believe] because they were playing both the male and female roles in an imaginary relationship. They appear strong in the masculine clothes and outspoken ways, yet their bodies are those of a female. People felt the sense of order shift. The woman was no longer something to be possessed by the man, and this must be changed--by making fun of her, or using force. This is much like the time of the Women's Lib Movement when women stood up against sexist oppression including gender stereotypes that we see even way back in the Renaissance period. I thought "The Roaring Girl" was especially interesting in while the characters bashed the standing of the female, they also degraded themselves. They showed themselves to be low and weak minded--just what they wanted the audience to feel towards their "enemy".