Thoughts on the Ideal Gender "Norms"

This is something I've never thought of outside of women's health care rights and gay rights. And it's probably because I grew up with these expectations of what is considered normal in the United States. But today's Gender/Race/Class in Complex Societies class has me thinking what is considered normal for a woman to do with her life.

When I first signed up for the Navy, long ago in 2002, I came across this norm and thought it was weird but never really gave it a second thought. When picking the job I wanted in the military, the petty officer assumed   I wanted to be a corpsman aka a nurse. Nope, not me. I can't stand the coughing, sneezing, runny noses...... if it comes out of your mouth or nose, I'm going to gag. I don't know what it is but spit and mucus really grosses me out. But on top of that, even just the mention of injuries can make me feel like I'm going to pass out. So no, being a nurse is the worst thing for me.

The only thing I cared about was if my job gave me a sign on bonus. aka they give you lots of money just for picking that job. And the job? Aviation Ordinance Man. Ha! This job would have had me loading bombs onto jets. Thinking back I'm glad I never ended up doing this job. I finally got a great job in the military: Cryptologic Technician Interpretive. Or for layman's terms - a translator. I was a Chinese interpreter for 4 years. And I hated it. But that's another story.

I always found it weird that the man would assume that I wanted a nurse type job. Did he assume that every female that joined wanted this job? Did he ask every woman that entered the navy if they wanted to be a corpsman? I'm not sure.  I am sure he didn't make that same assumption with the men that joined the Navy. "I know what you want to be. A Navy Seals!" Yeah, maybe he did. Why not?

It was odd to think that I would want a nurturing type of job only because I am a woman. He was even surprised when I told him that was the last job I'd want to be in. I was "the first girl to ever tell him that". Is it really that common for women to become nurses in the Navy? Though afterwards I still ended up in a female dominated field. Even though the military is around 80% male, my job was about 50-50 or slightly higher female percentage. So maybe I did still end up in a job that was seen as "socially normal" for a woman.

This was a photo from my 5th year anniversary. Looking through my photos I realized I took very little photos of myself in my uniform. 

The day I graduated from boot camp. With my dad who came all the way to Chicago from Atlanta to see me. I'm look extremely tired because the day before I had run battle stations which is when you run around the base all night and perform tasks you might need to do on the ship in an emergency. At this point I had been up over 24 hours.