Girls Development: Intersections of Gender, Class, Culture, and Race

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Girls DevelopmentIntersections of Gender,
Class, Culture, and Race

• Raising Their Voices, Lyn Mikel Brown

Psy 318 Adolescent Development Dr. Muñoz Wells
College Class notes
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When I Was a Boyby Dar Williams

• I won't forget when Peter Pan came to my house,
  took my hand I said I was a boy, I'm glad he
  didn't check.I learned to fly, I learned to
  fight, I lived a whole life in one night We saved
  each other's lives out on the pirate's deck.And I
  remember that night when I'm leaving a late night
  with some friends And I hear somebody tell me
  it's not safe, someone should help me I need to
  find a nice man to walk me home.When I was a boy,
  I scared the pants off of my mom,Climbed what I
  could climb up on And I don't know how I
  survived, I guess I knew the tricks that all the
  boys knew And you could walk me home, but I was a
  boy, too.I was a kid that you would like, just a
  small boy on her bike Riding topless, yeah I
  never cared who saw.My neighbor came outside to
  say, "Get your shirt," I said "No way It's the
  last time, I'm not breaking any law."And now I'm
  in a clothing store, and the signs say Less is
  More More that's tight means more to see, more
  for them, not more for me That can't help me
  climb a tree in ten seconds flat When I was a
  boy, see that picture? That was me Grass stained
  shirt and dusty knees.And I know things have
  gotta change,They got pills to sell, they've got
  implants to put in, they've got implants to
  remove But I am not forgetting That I was a boy
  too. And like the woods where I would creep, it's
  a secret I can keep Except when I'm tired, except
  when I'm being caught off guard.I've had a
  lonesome awful day, the conversation finds it's
  way To catching fireflies out in the backyard And
  I tell the man I'm with about the other life I
  lived And I say now you're top gun, I have lost
  and you have won And he says "Oh no, oh, no,
  can't you see When I was a girl, my mom and I, we
  always talked And I picked flowers everywhere
  that I walked And I could always cry, now even
  when I'm alone I seldom do And I have lost some
  kindness,But I was a girl too.And you were just
  like me, and I was just like you."

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• Today
• Discuss ideas for autobiography
• Chapters 1 2, Brown
• FilmWhale Rider
• In class work Interactions of gender, class,
  culture, and race as these intersect with an exit
  voice dilemma. Work in pairs.

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When you consider Erikson, Piaget, Anna Freud,
and Carol Gilligans explanations of what happens
in adolescence, what do you see? What overlaps?
What is interrelated? What happens when you
consider gender, class, race, and culture?
Exit Voice Dilemma
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Anger as Political Resistance

• Without anger there is no impetus to act against
  any injustice done to them. If we take away
  girls anger, then, we take away the foundation
  for womens political resistance.
• Lyn Mikel Brown, p. 13

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Anger as Political Resistance

• Anger and conventional femininity are subversive
  of each other.
• Lyn Mikel Brown, p. 12

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Class, Culture, and Race

• The political discourse on class in the United
  States is woefully inadequate and almost always
  feeds an oddly specific stereotype of poor urban,
  black unwed mothersbut there is great diversity
  among the poor, and most officially poor people
  are white. The psychological literature on class
  in the United States is sparse, on white girls
  and class nearly non-existent.
• Lyn Mikel Brown, p. 17

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Class, Culture, and Race

• This analysis, then, contributes to broader
  attempts to mark our differences within
  whiteness to understand how construction of
  whiteness varies across lines of class.
• Lyn Mikel Brown, p. 19

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On Methodology

• Because white middle-class women have defined
  the categories of analysis when it comes to the
  lives of adolescent girls, it was important to us
  hat the girls in this study take the focus groups
  and interviews where they wanted, so that they
  might break out of the narrow elitist categories
  that have circumscribed girls and womens
  experiences.
• Lyn Mikel Brown, p. 31

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On Methodology

• I wanted not only for girls to experience the
  power of their collective voices, but also to
  represent those voices to others and thus to
  disrupt the tendency of psychology to
  over-individualize, to miss the relational and
  societal contexts through which individual selves
  emerge.
• Lyn Mikel Brown, p. 33

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Girls
Cognitive Development
Identity Development
Gender
Personality Development
Moral Development
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Chronology of Research on Gender in Adolescence
(Psychology)
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The Politics of Girls Anger
Concepts

• What are vulnerabilities in girls development?
• How does socioeconomic class affect these
  vulnerabilities differently for the Mansfield and
  Acadia girls?
• What are the identity tensions for girls?
• What are the developmental themes represented in
  these girls narratives?

• Liminal Space
• Ideological Becoming
• Resistance
• Phantasmic Ideal
• Ventriloquation
• Desire
• The Underground
• Freedom

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Ventriloquation
Ideological Becoming
CLASS
GENDER
Themes
Themes
Mansfield
Acadia
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When you consider Erikson, Piaget, Anna Freud,
and Carol Gilligans explanations of what happens
in adolescence, what do you see? What overlaps?
What is interrelated? What happens when you
consider gender, class, race, and culture?
Exit Voice Dilemma