EWRT1A-25: reading response 5

Reading Response 5
Aaron Devor, “Becoming Members of Society…”
Choose one or come up with your own focus.

• Explain Devor’s distinction between “I” and “me” (paragraphs 7 and 8). How may this separation contribute to problems with finding one’s own voice? Use examples from the reading, other readings, or your own experience and observation.
• Do some of the aspects of the traditional gender roles described by Devor seem to be changing? If so, which ones, and how?
• Use Devor’s concept of the dominant gender schema to explain how voice is oppressed in either Walker’s or Anzaldúa’s essay.

Also, Devor has a keynote speech he gave once in 1996 and again 1998 up on his website at the University of Victoria. It's called "How Many Sexes? How Many Genders? When Two Are Not Enough" and it covers some of the same ideas as the essay in our reader, but in a different context and using more first-hand testimony. I actually think it's probably a more accessible reading than the one in our book.