Why women can't be men.

http://www.lemondrop.com/2010/10/07/karen-owen-duke-sex-list-powerpoint/

During the reading this week we discussed the story of Rebecca. Rebecca was the female basketball player who  had adopted a masculine persona and was by all accounts perceived as a masculine figure throughout the school. this makes me wonder, what does it take for a women to be perceived as masculine. There's a recent trend of women attempting to "own" their sexuality in an attempt to redefine what it means for a woman to be sexually active. However, I feel this very short sighted and ultimately wrong. The above link shares the story of Karen Owens. Karen made a powerpoint detailing all of the sexual exploits she had with athletes while she was a student at Duke university. Karen intended for the power point to be distributed to 3 very close friends. However, one of her friends shared the power point and shortly there after the powerpoint went viral thrusting Karen into the spotlight. In the ensuing media firestorm Karen disappeared from public life and deleted all of her social media accounts. Pro-feminist came to Karen's defense saying that there's nothing wrong with a female being sexually active and that Karen was simply doing boys had been doing for years. This in turn they argued was empowering. 1) If Karen was empowered she would not have disappeared off the face of the Earth. 2) If you read Karen's powerpoint you come to realize that several of the Men in the powerpoint outright used her for sex and she rationalized it by saying that's what she wanted. 3) Regardless of your intention, being used by others because they only value you for your body is never something to be proud of, not saying your a slut, just saying your priorities are immature. Karen's problem and resulting shame is that doing "masculine" things does not making you masculine. As a society we cannot accept the idea of a feminine body doing masculine things. I mean body in the most literal sense, what separates Rebecca and Karen is that Rebecca masculinized her body. In the book Pascoe mentions how by referring to herself as a pimp talked about playing girls, Rebecca had mascunlinized her body. I think it's very important that she said body instead of words, view, or actions. To me, this means masculinity has look, and you know it when you see it. When those students looked  at Rebecca they saw a masculine persona, and we as a society look at Karen we see a feminine persona. To be masculine is to be masculine. By that I mean, acting masculine doesn't make you masculine, and nothing really can. When you're masculine, you simply are it will shine through. Whether you're a man or a woman it will shine through. I consider he case of our guest speaker AJ. It took some time but AJ's masculinity eventually came out. Even now, AJ is a very small man with a vagina who used to be a woman. But AJ had a presence, something you couldn't define as masculine but you knew that it was.